Managed service provider thinks Voda will find it challenging managing its new service in-house.
Vodafone's announcement of its Vodafone 360 service last week continues to make waves within the industry, with managed service provider IMImobile the latest to pass comment.
"Vodafone 360 is an exciting consumer proposition and could have important strategic implications for the industry," says Anu Shah, head of IMImobile in Europe.
"Along with being one of the first internet services for the PC and mobile to focus on providing a myriad of content and social media based around the customer’s mobile phonebook, Vodafone is clearly investing significant development capital and operating support into the service."
Did you guess there's a 'but' coming?
"But given the history of operators developing, rolling out and managing services internally, this could present a significant degree of risk for the company."
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You would expect a company like IMImobile to say this, given that its business model is about managing these kinds of services for operators rather than watching them go it alone.
However, the flipside of that is that Shah should have a good idea of the challenges that Vodafone will face with its new initiative.
"It isn’t just about getting the suite of services off the ground in one part of the world," he says. "As parent company to a number of subsidiaries globally, it will be interesting to see how Vodafone handles worldwide roll-out - again something operators have struggled with due to technical, operational and local knowledge issues."
However, Vodafone's decision to go it alone could have positive knock-on effects for IMImobile and its rivals in the managed service provider sector, if other operators look to follow suit without making a similar investment.
"360 has the potential to be a huge success for Vodafone and paves the way for other major operators to use the phonebook as a central point of interaction with their subscribers," says Shah.
IMImobile recently bought Mobytec, the company behind the Mobyko phonebook and social aggregation service, so this is clearly a trend the company is keen to encourage.
"Perhaps even more importantly, 360 could act as a catalyst for the innovation of new consumer-centric services," says Shah.
"However the decision to manage this in-house with what appears to be a client-based solution could prove a challenge. We will have to wait and see."
