The Premium Services Mobile Market

Here's one that might be interesting to watch:-

http://voce.com

Voce is a "premium cellular provider". You purchase a phone for a one-off $500 (you can upgrade for free every 12 months), then pay $200/month for unlimited cellular and GPRS usage. There's no contract as Voce wish to "... earn your business every day". In itself, for some of us, that's not a bad deal already.

But the key feature that Voce offer is the availability of a "Personal Assistant" that you can contact 24/7 by dialling 611. They guarantee to pick up in three rings, and can be asked any questions which can be answered by either internet or phone (so you could have them book restaurants, research something for you, take your place in a hold queue etc).

This is an interesting idea which looks well executed and at the right price-point to appeal to the 30-somethings.

I've been thinking for a while that there's a gap in the voice market where "Premium Service" value adds could fit nicely. This applies equally to VoIP "landlines" - a niche space to differentiate your service from the stereotypical Voice 1.0 providers.

Reply from tjardick on Apr 22, 2007 - 07:21 PM

Interresting concept, i for one would probably opt for this, as my phone bill is allready round this amount anyways and the fact of the personal assistent sounds interresting. Do they also take your voicemails for you?

Tj

Reply from dean on Apr 24, 2007 - 02:02 PM

Moshe Maeir has picked up on my suggestion and (half) jokingly taken it to an extreme.

While I don't agree that being the most expensive VoIP company is the way forward (this is a services value market), I do absolutley believe that there are niche market opportunities where premium functionality will carry a lot of weight. That premium functionality is what you can charge for - that's where you make your profit.

The market is all about differentiating your service from any other and making your money on the difference.

Going full circle back to my original post, this is where a virtual mobile operator like Voce can make a success of itself. The same opportunities exist for the virtual landline operators.

As an aside, and another improbable extreme(?), if Moshe also offered an in-house patent application process, then you could really create something that had major value for white-label customers. You see, the major problem with creating any niche market is the competition that naturally follows. And as often as not the competition has a greater marketing budget. Or just plain does it better. To truly be unique and to remain unique you need to not only carve out your space, but also protect it.

That's exactly where Vonage came unstuck.

Reply from dean on May 21, 2007 - 03:50 PM

Here's a video of a $310,000 mobile (is this getting a bit too ridiculous now?!) that's on a different service to Voce, but same concept:-

<Warning : Engage popup blocker before clicking>

http://www.hallpass.com/media/worldsmos ... phone.html

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