By Max E. Lambie, ContributorTO judge from the current proliferation on full-page newspaper ads, what used to be a skirmish has escalated into an all-out media battle between the Phone Service Providers (PSPs) in the mobile phone market.
Newcomer Digicel has captured the dominant position in the market, while Cable & Wireless has been swamped. Both are now struggling on almost equal terms for the still unsigned customers - hence the media blitz.
Different types of marketing bait have been dangled in front of the consumer in an effort to hook new customers or to get them to upgrade their handsets. The latest lure is offering an across-the-board array of brand-names and models of handsets, from the basic that anyone can afford, to the ultra-phone, fit only for the large pleasure boats or private aircraft pilots.
The jury is still out on whether the marketing activities of the PSPs are accurately focused on where the dollar in the cell phone market is now.
That's where a new company has entered the fray. Cool Corporation of Ocho Rios has looked into its crystal ball and noticed that not enough effort and innovation have been devoted to expanding the sale of user time by enhancing the techniques of retailing of prepaid cards that now account for 90 per cent of the market.
UNIQUE TO JAMAICA
To fill what it sees as that void, Cool has equipd retailers at popular shopping outlets with electronic terminals that print the same numbers that is expensively done on plastic cards on simple slips of paper.
Marketing surveys reveal that the strategies of vending prepaid user-time for the 1.2 million cell phones ranges from being clumsy to be in need of streamlining. Unlike the United States, Digicel and C&W have manufactured and distributed their own cell cards under their own brand names.
In the U.S. the PSPs such as ATT and the regional Bell Companies license dozens of private distributors who produce cell cards under their own private brand names, hence a wider and more efficient distribution system occurs. Still the U.S. system is fraught with bottlenecks and vending deficiencies.
The bottom line now in Jamaica is that Cool determined that the market for cell cards could be boosted by applying technological innovation to the retailing and distribution of cell cards to the extent that the increase could eclipse that which can now be had from pushing the latest gizmos.
Cool Corporation will license retailers to dispense the standard input numbers on paper slips printed on thermal printers for either Digicel, Cable & Wireless or MiPhone and for any amount.
The creation involves the use of the versatile electronic terminal that sends the request to a remote computer that has numbers stored in its server and the computer sends back the numbers for the customer at the retail terminal. The terminal puts countertop convenience into the palm of the clerk's hand in that it is an all-in-one design that can be a magnetic-stripe card reader, a smart-card reader or a thermal printer. It is best known as the gizmo that reads both debit cards such as MIDAS or credit cards such as VISA.
Having a phone is one thing. Having it loaded with user-time by inserting the numbers on a cell cards is another.
Of course, a large percentage of users are always skimping on purchasing cell cards and have very little call-time on their phone. There are others, too, that only receive but do not send out calls.
Though statistics are not available, the survey reveals that the major percentage of cell phones has very little user-time. But the market that Cool will aim for, that of handset owners who can afford to have their phones loaded but have not done so because they find the effort needed to purchase a cell card discouraging.
There is ample opportunity to increase the sale of cell time, then.
To see why this is so, look on the history of the market. The cell phone explosion created over 230 stores all over the country in prime locations furnished with exquisite interior decors and glitzy show cases.
On Knutsford Boulevard, New Kingston, for example, there are 7 vendors within a few hundred feet of each other. Even small country villages have vendors selling phones and in Ocho Rios there are 14 phone vendors including Courts department store and Cable & Wireless's office.
But sales this year of cell phones will decrease to $300-million from the plateau of $1.1 billion it was in 2001.
