The New York Times :: Cellular Phone Company Gains by Thinking Small
by WAYNE ARNOLD and CARLOS H. CONDE
Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:
SMART, Smart Buddy, Citigroup, Northstream, Philippine Long Distance Telephone, Globe Telecom, Safe Taxi, Virgin Mobile, MasterCard, SMART Money, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble. An excerpt of this story unfolds below the fold...
...Ms. Gazo, a 33-year-old housewife who lives 600 miles south of Manila in Davao City, is one of more than 100,000 mobile phone users who re-sell SMART cellular services through a new prepaid service called Smart Buddy e-Load. With a special, $20 chip for her mobile phone, Ms. Gazo can transfer bits of air time to her friends' and acquaintances' phones - as little as 30 pesos worth (about 55 cents). For every 1,000 pesos she sells, Ms. Gazo collects 150 pesos in commissions, turning her mobile phone into a second source of income for her family of four. "If I can earn 150 pesos a day," Ms. Gazo said, "I don't have to work."...
Since Smart began the program in May, Smart Buddy has exploded in popularity, giving the company a more inexpensive way of distributing service to the country's poorest, most remote neighborhoods and villages. The first such service of its kind, Smart Buddy marries the latest in cellular commerce with a much older marketing concept of miniature packaging that helped bring middle-class amenities to developing countries decades ago.
Smart says 700,000 new customers started using its network in July and August, helping bring its total customer base to 11 million, half of them in rural areas, in a country of just 76 million people. Smart's growth is especially good news for its heavily indebted parent, Philippine Long Distance Telephone, or P.L.D.T. Smart contributed 6.1 billion pesos ($111 million) to P.L.D.T.'s bottom line in the first half of this year. ...
"Texting," as it is known, has cult status in Philippines, and everyone from the poorest student to the loftiest government official uses it. Executives tap out messages during business meetings. When hot news or juicy rumors erupt, they spread like wildfire over the country's text networks, which have become a kind of hand-held national chat room...
K-Collector