Click below to
find interesting
information from our
October 2011a
newsletter
relating to:
Roaming
Travel
Mobile phones
Roaming
Optus
will
soon
tell you
roaming
is
expensive
Optus
announced a few
weeks ago that
it has spent two
years developing
a new service
for its roaming
customers.
Within an hour
of one of their
travellers using
roaming data,
Optus will send
a text message
reminding them
that they are
roaming and how
much the data
roaming rates
are. If they
continue,
they'll get an
SMS every time
they use 15MB of
roaming data (or
$300 worth at
Optus'
$20-per-MB
rate).
Telstra
has also just
announced a way
to monitor data
usage more
easily via its
website.
Maybe we are
just cynical,
but the telco
regulator was
about to force
this on the
networks. We
think it's
really a way to
help Optus and
Telstra avoid
customers
complaining
about the
enormous growth
in data roaming
costs ("you were
warned it was
going to be
expensive").
Given that Optus
and Telstra have
the highest
per-kilobyte
cost of
Australia's
major networks
(and indulge in
some dubious
pricing
policies), we'd
rather they
simply reduced
the data rates
instead of
developing fancy
warning systems.
Join
Australia's
smartest
travellers and
avoid high
global roaming
costs today!
Save more on
data roaming,
use our vSIM
post-paid
alternative.
Travel
Valuable
frequent
flyers
A
highly-regarded
airline
such as
Qantas
values
its
frequent
flyers.
But
there
are 82
Qantas
staff
members
that
value
them
perhaps
more
than the
remaining
32,400-odd.
Those 82
staff
work for
the
Frequent-Flyer
program,
which
accounts
for more
(much
more)
value
than the
business
of
flying
aircraft
around.
Last
year Qantas
reported a big
rise in overall
profit before
tax to $377m, of
which two-thirds
($226m) was from
the Frequent
Flyer program.
Frequent-flyer
programs are
fantastic
stand-alone
businesses. They
sell intangible
things call
"points" for
cash, sometimes
direct to us
travellers when
we want to
top-up to get a
particular
flight, but more
often to hotels,
car-hire
outfits, phone
companies,
banks, even
supermarkets.
About 8% of
these points are
just wasted when
they expire. The
remainder are
held for an
average of two
years (with the
FF program
holding the
cash) before
being redeemed.
Redemption
doesn't usually
cost the airline
much - popular
flights that the
airline expects
to fill up will
be blacked-out,
so redemptions
are usually
otherwise-empty
seats.
Mobile phones
Big things
happening with
smartphones
In a few year's
time, we predict
this will be
labelled the
decade of the
smartphone.
We've seen some
interesting
trends lately.
For
starters,
despite Apple's
iPhone being the
dominant handset
sold in
Australia, that
is far from the
case globally,
where Android
sales (the light
brown part of
the graph at
right) are
exploding - in
fact without
Android sales
the handset
market would be
shrinking. Not
that Apple is
faltering - the
light green area
at the bottom
shows healthy
growth. App
developers are
following -
Asymco predicts
there will be
twice as many
Android apps
available as
iPhone apps
within two
years.
The eco-system
has changed
also. Revenue
from apps has
shifted
dramatically
from paid apps
to freemium apps
(where you get
limited
functionality
for free and can
pay to get the
full app
version) at
around 2/3rds of
revenue (freemium
refers to a free
app that you can
upgrade for a
fee). And the
majority of
app-store
revenue is
shifting to
in-app purchases
(payments for
goods and
services such as
subscriptions
from within the
app) rather than
payments for the
app itself.
To
subscribe
to our
Newsletter
click
here
