Carphone Warehouse is planning to preinstall its own content portal, mymobilelife, in handsets.
Launched at the end of October as an OTA download via WAP, mymobilelife also provides news, chat, shopping, betting and football alerts. Although most content and services are free, you do still have to pay the data charges.
Irfan Hamid, head of business development at Carphone Warehouse, is a fan of Java portals. “After WAP, subscriptions scares and hidden costs, some people lost interest in content. We feel there’s a real opportunity to get it back with a handset portal that’s quick, cheap and transparent.”
He also sees synergies between mymobilelife and operator portals. “We’re looking at providing links to them from inside the portal. My view is that the networks are changing strategy towards flat fees for data and roaming – they want more traffic on the network.”