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COMMENT: INQ1 - From Skypephone to Hypephone
ME Staff Nov 17 2008, 10:33am
Just how disruptive could 3's new INQ1 handset be? Tim Green speculates...
So Hutchison Whampoa has introduced its new INQ1 handset, touting the device as one "set to change the way people think about mobile communications".
A tad excitable? Well, fair enough, that's how PR works. It made me think back to the last time 3 changed the world - or thought it would - when it unveiled its Skype collaboration at 3GSM in February 2006.
Now that was pretty shocking. At the time, VoIP inspired bulimic spasms in the mobile operators, who were convinced it would swallow their voice revenues whole.
Indeed, insiders tell me 'VOiP fear' was behind operators' general reluctance to introduce flat rate data. And here was an operator embracing Skype. It was as if 3 had slept with its wife's sister or something, and I well remember being cornered by an O2 exec after the press event eager to know all about these bedroom antics.
Now, don't get me wrong, the Skypephone has been pretty successful. 3UK says that in the last month it carried 20 million minutes of Skype calling. But look around you. How many of your friends are using the Skypephone? How many call you from their N95s via wi-fi? Exactly.
It was the same with mobile IM, which was supposed to kill SMS for five minutes in 2005. Sometimes these disruptive new technologies don't disrupt at all.
They just sit quietly with the rest of the class.
But I feel a little differently about the INQ1, mainly because of the timing. The Skypephone came out with data bundles in scarce supply and with operators still clinging to their content gatekeeping dreams. Now, all-you-can-eat data is a reality, social networking is driving more mobile internet traffic than anything else and operators are surrendering their home pages to the web's biggest brands.
Indeed, we've been joking in the office that 3 should call the INQ1 its Hypephone. Why? Because it bundles together hype-drenched services such as Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and even Last.fm. If they could just find a way to integrate skinny jeans and Ugg boots, they'd have the full set of latest big things.
3's offer of unlimited access to all these services from £15 per month is pretty amazing, and it moves the company even closer to being a neutral network for other firms' services and further away from its dream of being a 'mobile media company'. I'm sure the rival operators will be watching carefully.
Although the handset itself will steal precious few sales from Nokia, Samsung et al in the short term, the bundle seems to me a marker of things to come.
Operators hate the phrase 'dumb pipe'. So do I. It's overused and hackneyed. But I think penetration of the term in verbal markets is set to escalate.
