The market's outlook for mobile shared plans predicts rapid growth within this segment as Mobile Operators roll out more innovative, responsive and attractive packages that bundle data, devices and content to create the complete package to meet the internet, communication and entertainment needs of today's subscribers who are becoming highly dependent on having access to these services throughout the day and from anywhere they are. Solution vendors are tailoring newer and more flexible solutions that enable Operators to take advantage of this growing market, and are already enhancing their suite of offerings to match Operator strategies and growth plans. PCC Mobile Broadband's analyst recently spoke to Martin Morgan, Openet's Director of Marketing on some of the strategies deployed by Operators across their shared plans and how these strategies are working out, in terms of Operator's profits and overall market growth. Martin elaborated on some of these in the following:
Providing incentives to share and making plans 'stickier':
Sprint sees their latest “Framiliy” (friends and family) share plan as more than a share plan. Their CEO is promoting Framily as an ' marketing innovation platform'. It offers incentives for framily group members to encourage new members to join their group (more you add, more you save concept). On the flip side, there are financial penalties on Framily group members when someone leaves their group. Originally started off as data shared plan, with voice and text, Sprint has now enhanced their Framily offers by adding content into the mix and is offering free trials to Spotify’s music service. By marketing other services to Framily members there is the opportunity to make the plans very sticky, as increased benefits are delivered when more Framily members use more services.
Adding tablets to shared plans and getting customer to use cellular tablets:
T Mobile US is looking to attract more tablet customers by running ‘Operation Tablet Freedom’. In an attempt to liberate oppressed tablet users from the tyranny of life under a Wi-Fi only regime, T Mobile is offering tablets with LTE cellular connectivity at the same prices as Wi-Fi only tablets, trade-ins on Wi-Fi tablets and an amount of free LTE tablet data. This marketing initiative makes sense when you consider that there were about 60 million tablets sold in the US in 2013, and of these 10 million are using an embedded cellular connection. This suggests a very large untapped market.
Tablets are only the start. The number of LTE connected devices from cars to home security services is increasing almost daily. The number and range of services available on these devices is booming.
What success are operators seeing from shared plans?
The recent Q1 results were reported heavily in the general business press and also in the telecoms press. Forbes magazine ran with the headline “AT&T posts strong Q1 on adoption of Mobile Share and Next plans,” whereas in the land of telecoms publications, PCC Mobile Broadband went for “Shared Data and Overall Wireless Revenues Drive AT&T's $32.5billion First Quarter Income.” Clearly the market sentiment is that AT&T’s Mobile Share plan is doing well. The figures back up this sentiment as the number of AT&T customers on Mobile Share plans almost tripled in the past year to 11.3 million accounts with nearly 33 million connections (about 45 percent of postpaid subscribers). This is up from 21 million connections (about 29% of AT&T’s postpaid base) at the end of Q4 2013. In addition the take up rates of its 10GB+ plans grew from 27% of its Mobile Share base at the end of the Q4 2013 to 46% in Q1 2014.
