Pan-European retail giant Carphone Warehouse is planning to pre-install its own content portal in the handsets it sells.
Carphone is set to launch its Java storefront – called mymobilelife – in the UK this week as an OTA download delivered via WAP push.But the company is now in talks with major handset companies to pre-install it and vastly increase the potential user base.
Mymobilelife gives consumers one portal for news, content (games, tones, videos etc), chat, shopping, betting and football alerts.
It represents another ‘crack’ at content from the high street name after previous attempts to create a market for music, video and games on memory cards. It also built a WAP site, which was underpinned with the Bango billing system.
Irfan Hamid, head of business development at Carphone Warehouse, believes Java portals represent the best way of restoring consumer confidence in content.
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He said: “After WAP, subscriptions scares and hidden costs, some people lost interest in content. We feel there’s a real opportunity to get it back with a handset portal that’s quick, cheap and transparent.”
He gives the example of the football alerts service. “Via WAP it takes a lot of work to find information, while text alerts can cost a fortune as well as being very slow to send the messages. Our service gives scores 60 seconds after the event and requires one £9.99 subscription for a year,” he said.
Nor does Hamid believe there’s any conflict between mymobilelife and operator portals. “We’re not deterring anybody from visiting those sites. In fact, we’re looking at providing links to them from inside the portal. My view is that the networks are changing strategy towards flat fees for data and roaming. They want more traffic on the network.”
Carphone Warehouse has 1,921 stores in ten countries.
