By WINSTON CHAI
DESPITE receiving an overwhelming response from consumers, the final hammer has quietly dropped on M1's popular mobile auction service.
Introduced in June last year, the offering allowed customers to bid a range of snazzy handsets like the Nokia N80 and the O2 XDA Atom at the operator's mobile portal - MiWorld Mobile - for as low as $1. Customers will have to incur data charges when they log on using their phones to place incremental bids ranging from one cent to a dollar.
Industry sources told BizIT the company had pulled the plug on the offering and an M1 spokesman confirmed the move.
'We offered m-Auction for six months, and it ended in November last year,' he said.
This curtain call came despite the immense popularity of the service. According to M1, five to eight handsets were put up for auction every week and during the six-month period, it received more than 150,000 bids from customers. The results are hardly surprising given the auction platform is a sure hit with bargain-hungry Singaporeans as evidenced by the growing popularity of sites like eBay and Yahoo.
Moreover, each placed bid also served to boost the M1's mobile data revenue, a feat which all three local telcos are trying to achieve with the availability of higher speed networks and the proliferation of third-generation (3G) multimedia handsets.
As sales of 3G phones in Singapore continue to soar, operators have been pulling out all the stops to get consumers to do more with their new-fangled handsets. These include promises of video calling, faster Web surfing, and even the ability to watch TV on-the-go.
According to statistics from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the number of 3G subscriptions stood at 953,400 in January this year, representing nearly one-fifth of Singapore's total mobile subscriber base.
When queried, M1 said it took down m-Auction as it is 'evaluating the service' and 'exploring' enhancements. However, the company did not confirm plans to re-introduce the offering.
No comments:
Post a Comment