Last Friday saw the completion of Vodafone's ‘LiveGuy’ campaign, which was created to promote the company’s partnership with Dell. The tie-up meant that Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 netbook – the first of its kind to provide embedded mobile broadband - would be exclusively available from Vodafone in the UK.
The netbook itself
has an 8.9 inch screen and weighs less than 1kg, as well as being
capable of one of the fastest mobile broadband connections for such a
model (up to 7.2Mb/s). More spec information on the Vodafone site if you want to get technical.
As for Vodafone’s LiveGuy (a real man
by the way, just wandering around Britain), he’s been touring and
testing out the netbook while posting clues to his location via Twitter
and the LiveGuy blog to name but a few. He’s given up to three Inspiron
Mini 9’s away every day for two weeks, and all you had to do was find
him and repeat the magic password (which I hope was something
ridiculous). A fourth netbook then went to someone online that could
best locate him on a Google Map.
Now that the dust has settled, I’m wondering what comes next. I have
lots of questions about Vodafone’s move into this space that will
remain to be seen for a while. But I can at least hazard a guess at
this stage.
It’s becoming more and more apparent to brands, especially within
the Telecoms space, that people absorb more and access data at an
increased rate via their mobile. They are well aware of this fact;
they’ve got all of the data to substantiate this fact. But, one of the
fastest areas of growth is mobile Internet usage - with predictions
stating that by 2013, 47% of all broadband will be provided by mobile
networks themselves.
The everyday user can’t always work out how
to access email or be bothered with fiddling about on a small handset.
They want a full screen, in a light, robust package - that’s easy to
pick up and run with. Quite apart from the fantastically timed launch
with the credit crunch, when everyone’s looking for cost effectiveness.
I do wonder though, how fast the viable market for mobile
broadband will develop. Will it grow as quickly as mobile voice? Or
will it simply appeal to the contract subscription market, high-income
users and corporate segment for the time being? Voice ‘took off’
because people realised that communication was important - but now,
consumers are already switched on to the concept of mobile
connectivity. Therefore, much of the Education process is already
complete and the speed of uptake will be greatly increased.
As for competition, Asus and the Sony Vaio
have the netbook/mini laptop market pretty much wrapped up - but with
Vodafone offering the Inspiron for free on a 24-month contract at £25
per month including 1GB usage; they just might have the advantage. Even
taking the total price into consideration, if you were to buy the
Inspiron separately (at around £200) and then take out a mobile
broadband contract – the price still evens out.
This of course, is combined with the
fact that Vodafone's 3G coverage is widely regarded as the best around
(but for how long, considering 3 is ‘upping its game and increasing
connection speeds’ come January). But if you're going to be tied to one
company, Vodafone is a pretty good bet.
What’s less clear is where Vodafone sees the future of this space heading. As a friend pointed out, the Inspiron’s USP is its embedded
mobile broadband. But say networks start pre-loading their phones with
an application such as Joikuspot (which allows you to effectively use
your phone as a Wifi hotspot/dongle). This would remove the need to use
a Vodafone-powered machine, as you could use any laptop you like. I’m
sure a Mac user - always keen to remove unnecessary bulk (overlooking
the whole MacBook Air/CD drive issue) - would jump at the chance to
ditch a dongle and just use their phone.
Do Vodafone see future netbooks coming
with a version of Vodafone live being installed? This would surely
increase usage and strengthen the community, never mind push the brand
journey onto the next level (remember when AOL was pre-installed in
most desktop PCs from Currys?)
Anyway, what about an automatic sync with recently purchased Zyb–
allowing for automatic mobile data back-up? Or, introducing the concept
of a direct port for a mobile handset to plug directly into the netbook
(a la Flip). We’ll have to wait and see, but my feeling is that this is just the beginning.
The lovely people at Vodafone have
given me an Inspiron to play with, so keep your eyes peeled for a full
review soon. My point of contention with most netbooks has always been
dinky keys, so I’m keen to see how I’ll manage with this one.