Yesterday the 3 Group presented their 3 Skypephone, for sale at November 2nd in the UK and Italy for about 100 US-Dollars bundled with a pre-paid plan, or free if you choose a 18-months contract. It is basically a cheap Internet-ready 3G mobile phone with a 2 megapixel camera. It doesn’t even have a cool user interface, or special easy to use Skype buttons (other than the big Skype button in the middle).
The group hypes the ability to call or chat with Skype buddies
anywhere in the world, anytime… totally free
this is not entirely true. Skype-to-Skype calling and IM face high roaming charges if the user initiates a call or IM session outside a 3 network. While the phone is bundled with a mobile plan, Skype-Out calls are of course prohibited, as they would cannibalize a mobile provider’s own business – unlike installing Skype on any Internet-enabled phone that can handle the mobile Skype client.
All in all, one has to be careful to hype the phone too quickly:
I think that Vodaphone will counter with their recent innovations at their mobile IM client, and they will revise their Best for Both tariff plans to match up to the minute/SMS quota flexibility – like the T-Mobile Flext rate and 3 Group’s Mix & Match. At T-Mobile on the other hand we will see major improvements to their IM Web’n'Walk offerings before X-Mas, especially around identity management, buddies, and favs. While the T-One phone failed for a variety of reasons, a service offering of using a combined WiFi / 3G / 4G/ DVB-H approach is more likely to be successful from a business perspective. I don’t think that 3 Group’s current offering will substantially eat into the subscriber uptake rate of T-Mobile or Vodaphone.
