Wireless Informatics Forum

Last week’s post about the value of leveraging the mobile email long-tail (mobilizing accounts from the thousands of email service providers used by today’s consumers), has been developed further in a free ‘industry briefing’ report by WIF partner WDSGlobal. It can be downloaded for free here.

WIF Member / Blog Reader discount available…

Several months ago I was asked to contribute to Visionmobile’s Mobile Industry Atlas. Anyone that knows Andreas Constantinou and his team at Visionmobile, or reads the blog, will know that they publish some highly insightful material.

v1 of the Atlas was published last year and I was truly excited to be asked to contribute to the latest version.

I have my copy of the Atlas proudly displayed above my desk right now, and it’s genuinely a useful tool for getting an overview of how the mobile ecosystem slots together and who the key players are in each sector.

The Mobile Industry Atlas is a visual map of who’s who in the mobile industry, available in glossy A1 wallchart format. This comprehensive map showcases 800+ leading companies in 47 market sectors, spanning all major players involved from handset design through retailing including development and delivery of hardware, software, SIM cards, services and content.

In case any WIF members / readers etc are interested in their own copy of the atlas, we have negotiated a 10% discount (on single purchases only). Just use the following discount code when ordering: AP9899.

There’s more about the Atlas at the Visionmobile site and a video below.

Note -  Visionmobile tell me that this discount code is valid until the end of July 09.

Just how hard the economic downturn is hitting the mobile industry depends on who you speak to. Certainly, on the front line the handset manufacturers are battling with a new age of austerity that has seen many consumers reign-in the frequency with which they upgrade their handsets. Nokia, in particular, has seen quarterly sales fall below 100 million units for the first time in two years. It also lost 3% market share during the first quarter of 2009.

At the other end of the spectrum, more than one mobile network operator (MNO) has tried to appease shareholders by claiming that the industry is largely recession-proof.

Obviously, that statement is not entirely true, even though as an industry it’s expected that telecommunications will fare better than most, the rationale being that a) consumers will not dramatically change their ‘usage’ patterns b) communication has embedded itself as a core component in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Love/Belonging) and c) post paid contract users are signed into 24 month subscriptions, assuring the service provider a relatively secure cash-flow forecast.

On a more strategic level, much of the industry’s ability to remain buoyant is thanks to the critical intersection of technologies, standards and services that has occurred over the last 12 months. Touchscreens have kept us excited about handset form factor, application stores have promoted a move to broader mobile application adoption, mobile broadband has allowed the MNOs to leverage their network assets outside of the handset and the launch of Android prompted the market’s leading OS provider, Symbian, to take the leap into the world of open-source.

Importantly, while all of this helps to maintain the industry, the combination of these intersecting developments and an economic downturn can do nothing but shake-up the establishment. Where MNOs sat comfortably at the centre of the mobile ecosystem, power is quietly being diluted across a more horizontal powerbase, with end-user revenue being shared with software and service providers such as Apple and Google, and even smaller third-party developers who, just two years ago, would have been challenged to break-down the walled gardens being operated by the MNOs.

That’s not say that MNOs are on the fast track to becoming the dumb-pipes that so many predicted. Even if they can’t rule the mobile internet with an iron fist, MNOs still have core assets that, correctly leveraged, will ensure their ‘value-added’ survival and differentiation against the global brands of Google and friends. Not least is the billing relationship held with the end-user and the control of the SIM, a core component in any trusted transaction or requirement for ID management.

The topic of industry resilience to economic conditions was raised at a recent panel discussion I attended. Unlike most conferences, seminars, roundtables etc, populated by members of the industry with their own self-protectionist agendas, the answers given were candid, honest and extremely insightful; especially those from Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent and Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services whose comments caused spontaneous applause from the audience.

Hosted by Gemalto at a private event in France (26 May 2009), the panel comprised Jean Louis Mounier, Senior EVP Innovation & Service Factory, SFR, Olivier Piou, CEO Gemalto, Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services, Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent and Michel Combes, CEO Europe Vodafone Group.

Here’s a selection of key comments / soundbites offered by the panellists.

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Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent

“There is no less appetite [for end-users] to communicate in a recession”

 

Michel Combes, CEO Europe Vodafone Group.

“There is a pressure on revenue, not on usage. The industry is of course affected; it is resilient but not immune. For example, there is a tangible decrease in roaming traffic as businesses cut back on international travel.”

 

Olivier Piou, CEO Gemalto

“In the west we tend to think only of the first 300 million users; the high-end users. What should be of more interest now are the other 3 billion. They have very different requirements for handset features and operator services. In India one of the key features on a handset is the flashlight. It’s invaluable in rural areas with no street lighting.”

Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services

“As an industry we are not very good at pushing through new services. After three years of hype there is still very little in the way of mass-market adoption of mobile TV, M2M, contactless transactions and LBS.”

Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent

“There is no problem with technology. Instead there is a desperate need for business models that customers appreciate. We have trained customers for free a internet. Consumers are used to paying for access not for services. It’ll be hard for anyone in the industry to change this behaviour”.

Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent

“Let’s be honest, who would win a battle of the brands between Apple and SFR? There are some key things that mobile operators need to start leveraging in order to differentiate themselves, because brand is not enough.  In particular a) Trust / ID Management – the SIM is the core element in the chain for ID management and it’s a trusted module. The mobile operator has complete control over this entity; b) Billing for micro-transactions – the existing billing relationship between mobile operator and consumer is unique and highly conducive for commerce.”

Is mobile broadband in danger of becoming the industry’s latest white elephant? There’s already a wealth of industry reporting speculating over the sustainability of current business models. Price wars (the price of mobile broadband here in the UK has dropped 30% in the last 12 months) and hardware subsidies are already threatening subscriber profitability, suggesting a need to a) increase pricing for bundled deals b) move majority of subscribers onto pay as you go or c) restrict bandwidth hungry apps such as P2P file sharing.

But the problems, it seems, are even greater.

Over the past few months we’ve been working with WIF founder WDSGlobal to conduct research into subscriber profitability (forget ARPU – it’s profitability that should really be measured).

Full findings from the study are available by downloading the FREE REPORT, but in summary, mobile broadband services are more expensive to support than any other wireless service and are endangering subscriber profitability for many mobile network operators.

The study found that the cost to support mobile broadband products and services is up to 200% greater than the cost to support traditional wireless products such as mobile phones. This means that despite revenue uplift from increased data usage, actual subscriber profitability often remains unchanged and sometimes even worsens.

The area of greatest concern came from USB and PC Card modems. These are sold to allow subscribers access to a mobile operator’s 3G HSPA or EV-DO mobile broadband services from a laptop or netbook. The average duration of a technical support call for such products is 28 minutes. By comparison, a technical support call for a mobile phone averages just less than 10 minutes.

The findings come from analysis of more than half a million ‘technical’ support enquiries. More than 600 wireless devices were represented in the study, which spanned a six-month period between September 2008 and February 2009. Of the bottom 20 mobile devices ranked by Average Handle Time (the duration of a support call), 13 were USB or PC Card modems.

The problem is not always with the technology itself but the necessity for these products to be installed alongside third party hardware and software outside of a mobile operator’s control.

Traditional wireless products are largely in the control of the network operator; it’s their SIM card, they sold the handset and it’s attached to their network. Mobile broadband introduces the need to manage a wireless product on a third-party device such as a laptop. You have to contend with hardware performance and conflicts, driver incompatibility and buggy software. Diagnosis and fault resolution therefore becomes more complex, negatively impacting support times. Add to this the fact that many products have not been adequately tested prior to launch, and the result is an expensive burden on existing support infrastructures.

The study also cites ‘aggressive’ connection management software (the software bundled with the modem) as a key cause of user frustration. During several test cases, installation software looked to make registry edits deep within the PC’s operating system. Most popular anti-virus applications immediately blocked the installation, regarding it as a security threat. In other cases, connection management software looked to hijack control of all network connections, overwriting user’s existing configurations and impeding WiFi access.

The cost of handling customer care and support calls has an immediate bearing on a subscriber’s profitability because, like cost of acquisition, handset subsidies and network maintenance, it forms part of the cost of maintaining a subscriber on a network. Therefore, it’s imperative for mobile network operators to better manage the process of testing, launching and supporting mobile broadband services.

Typically, the lowest Average Handle Times are associated with older, entry-level devices. These are not subject to high data demands and are typically limited to basic voice and messaging functions. Generally, as device complexity increases so too does the Average Handle Time, and the cost-to-support; however WDSGlobal notes that Average Handle Times are also impacted by the network to which a device is attached and the end-user’s price plan.

A full copy of the study can be downloaded for free at www.wdsglobal.com/mobile-broadband

About the Study

The study focused only on technical support calls. Tier 1 calls, relating to general billing or coverage enquires would be subject to much lower Average Handle Times (AHT) and were not included.

WDSGlobal audited 635,971 in-bound support calls taken between September 2008 and February 2009. Only mobile devices that presented more than 50 support enquiries during this period were included in the study. In total 698 mobile products are included; averaging 911 support enquiries per product. To protect WDSGlobal customer confidentiality, the total for a device’s Average Handle Time has been averaged across all networks and price-plan types.

Post-Mobile World Congress there’s always plenty of technology round-ups. If you want to know who launched what and why, then there’s plenty of excellent resources out there.

Instead, here’s a lightly different take on the show. Can these left-field observations help us better understand the ’state of the telecom-nation’?

• The GSMA claimed 47,000 visitors attended during the week. Not by my estimates. I’ve attended / worked the show for many years and numbers were 20% down at least. Halls 1 & 2 were worryingly quiet on the Monday.
• While we’re disputing GSMA states; the post-event press release claims that 50 per cent of Mobile World Congress attendees hold C-level positions. Really? Maybe I’m going to the wrong parties but everyone I meet is either sales, marketing, recruitment or business development (read sales again).
• €23 for 4 sandwiches and a bag of crisps makes international roaming look like a bargain.
• On the plus side, the quality of attendees was better. Word on the stands was that visitors were noticeably more senior.
• The iPhone was supposed to raise the bar for handset design and functionality. It hasn’t; it’s just made everyone else jump on the bandwagon and release buggy, slow touchscreen interfaces for the sake of it.
• Symbian’s trying too hard to be open-source. The branding’s gone all web 2.0 with handrawn cartoons and even business cards that feature a robot (android). It’s obviously an improvement on old; but smacks of the geeky kid having a makeover the night before the prom. If ever there was a brand designed by committee, here it is.
• A dry ham baguette is not lunch.
• As far as their employers were concerned, a lot of people were on a ‘ business trip’ and visited MWC under their own steam. I met more than one operator delegate whose company had expressly limited the numbers of delegates being sent; instead many just phoned their suppliers to blag a free badge and made their own way to Barcelona.
• Pickpocketing is almost an official sport along Las Ramblas.
• Sure signs of belt-tightening: Poor swag (500mb flash drives no longer impress me), Barcelona devoid of industry advertising (no wrapped hotels opposite the main entrance), parties where you have to buy your own drinks and no free 5-day metro passes given out when you collected your badge.
• The female cleaners in the male toilets have probably seen it all before.
• It doesn’t matter how good your new handset is; the CBoss dancing girls in Hall1 are still the most photographed feature of MWC.

OK, slightly (!) tongue-in-cheek I admit. The event was still enormously enjoyable and is the only really globally event in the industry’s calendar. However, based on exhibitor feedback you have to take your hat off to the bravery of the GSMA who (I’ve been reliably told) have increased their prices for next year.

By the magic of the GSMA points system (the more you pay the more leverage you have with them) and the threat of losing precious stand locations, many budget holders will have been strong-armed into signing for next year before being allowed to leave the country. I’ve been told that there’s a 30-day cooling off period; but that’s certainly not enough time to build credible RoI on the event (given the typical 6-9 month sales cycles in this industry), so much of the decision is going to be on gut feel.

It’s not unusual for a mid-sized company to plough over €200k into MWC. That’s significant – especially within the current climate. More than ever before, CEO’s will be breathing down the necks of their marketing directors to justify the spend.

Personally, as much as I enjoy my annual week in Barcelona the GSMA has a serious job to do if it’s going to maintain the credibility of the event in 2010.

 

Just a week after its official launch in the United States, where it was locked to the T-Mobile network, it was reported that the Android-powered G1 handset was appearing for sale on the streets of Beijing.

Despite a hefty US$580 price tag, and the necessity for Chinese owners to contact T-Mobile US for an unlock code, the appearance of the handset some 6000 miles away from ‘home’ shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Like the iPhone before it, the G1’s rapid appearance outside of official distribution channels, demonstrates the high-end of the grey-market for mobile phones and accessories. This isn’t a grey market driven exclusively by price sensitivities, but by desirability. Indeed it is now estimated that over one million iPhones have been unlocked and sold through unofficial channels; that’s nearly a quarter of all iPhones sold.

The market for such devices typically doesn’t take long to develop. Even in the case of the iPhone, whose distribution is religiously maintained by Apple and its chosen network partners, it was only a matter of weeks before the device began appearing in the electronics districts of Beijing and other major Asian cities. Most other devices, primarily from major manufacturers such as Nokia, are readily available through no-name distribution companies who often ship containers of product into countries under the radar of local customs and import tax officials.

Of course the problem isn’t limited to high-end, aspirational devices, nor is it new. The ‘public-face’ of the grey market handset industry can still be found in highstreets and markets across many Asian and African countries. In an interview with Bangladeshi magazine, New Age, Nokia’s General Manager for Customer and Market Operations in emerging Asia, admitted that until 1995 as many as 85% of all Nokia’s sold in Bangladesh were sourced from the grey market. The figure, Prem Prakash Chand says, has now dropped to about 40% following nationwide consumer education programs.

India is where many observers look to when assessing the grey market. At it’s grey-market peak in 2001, it was estimated that 89% of all mobile handsets in circulation where purchased outside of official channels. The market was fuelled by rapid demand for handsets in a geographically disperse country that couldn’t be catered for by official outlets and by high taxes on mobile products. A steady supply of handsets, many refurbished models from South East Asia and the Middle East and many smuggled into the country, helped to meet demand and allowed handsets to be sold for between 20-40% less than their ‘official’ counterparts. Higher-end handsets saw price differences of up to 70%. It was a problem that cost the Indian government many millions of dollars in lost revenue and delayed the entry of handset manufacturers entering the market with official aftersales programs.

Since its peak, the Indian government has dropped import duty on many mobile products from about 16% to 4%. Combined with dropping prices from the handset manufacturers the disparity in prices quickly shrank. Handsets, after all, are often bought from the same source, it’s just how they enter a country that determines the street-price. As much as the changes have improved the market share of official devices, the grey market persists, often with varying degrees of strength depending on factors such as local sales taxes. Nationally, several million handsets are still sold through the grey-market each year; many are high-end devices sourced from Europe and not yet available in the country, others are smuggled in from tax-free Dubai.

Routes to market

There are many routes through which grey market devices find their way into a market. Refurbished handsets represent a major share and even reconditioned iPhones can find themselves for sale under the counter at electrical retailers.

Many damaged or defective iPhones are returned to Apple or the mobile operator; in turn these are typically passed to specialist refurbishers. On of the largest refurbishers in the United States, Ohio-based Cellucom Group, receives up to 500 iPhones a week. Many find their way to wholesalers who may unlock them and sell them on, either directly to consumers or to wholesalers and distributors in other countries. From here, a phone can resurface on internet auction sites or market stalls across Asia.

Most of the major handset manufacturers have, in the last few years, launched dedicated programs to introduce low-cost handsets into emerging markets. The availability of cheap(er) handsets from the manufacturers, a growing number of official retail outlets in geographically dispersed regions and lowered import taxes means that in many cases its now not worth sourcing a low-end device on the grey market. To adapt, the grey market has geared itself around feature-phones and higher end devices that may not be available locally.

Many European dealers now view Asia and Africa as a convenient dumping ground for unsold stock. Highly subsidized and frequently replaced, the European handset is cheap and prevalent. Dealers constantly battle to manage their stock and anticipate consumer demand. Outdated models (in reality less than 12 months old) frequently find their way onto the grey market. The high handset churn rate in Europe, the US and the Middle East has even opened up smaller routes to market in the form of recycling schemes.

In a report oreviewing handset recycling schemes, even the GSM Association acknowledged that; “A number of organizations are operating reuse schemes where handsets are refurbished and provided to targeted social groups or supplied to developing markets as low cost handsets. While reuse can provide greater environmental benefits, it does raise other issues such as increased fraud potential, ‘grey market’ phones and the ability of service infrastructure, especially in developing countries, to support the phones.”

Impact on the mobile operator

So what, if any, damage does the grey market for handsets have on the mobile operator? It’s a question that elicits a multitude of responses, from those that believe it’s relatively harmless and an (almost) victimless crime, to those that see it as a weakening of their control over the end-user.

The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly, the former is grossly naïve and is representative of the land-grab mentality that welcomes new subscriptions without appreciation of the continued user experience or need to build loyalty.

Support

How, for example, should an operator react if presented with a support enquiry from a user with a non-official handset? Data services such as mobile email can be frighteningly complex to set-up and configure; in fact configuration issues account for almost half of all technical support calls taken by operator customer care channels according to support specialist WDSGlobal. Often, such support calls cannot be effectively resolved, either because of internal policy, or simply because the operator does not have the knowledge available to problem-solve a non-official device. In such cases, the handset returns to the network handicapped and unable to connect to high-margin data services that drive much needed revenue.

If a support call can be resolved, it’s likely that a lack of knowledge about the handset within the operator’s own support infrastructure will lead to a longer than average call handle time, a factor that adds significant cost and instantaneously damages APPU (Average Profit Per User). Surprisingly, many customer care centers are not adequately equipped to log and disseminate information about ‘new’, non-official devices when first presented. This means all subsequent calls are immediately subject to similarly lengthy, and costly, call handle times.

The problem also extends to operators’ SelfServe websites, an increasingly popular way for users to resolve issues without the intervention, or associated cost, of a live agent. SelfServe systems typically guide users through configuration and setup wizards, again defined by a predefined, and pre-populated, list of approved devices. If your handset isn’t listed, chances are you’ll leave without a resolution.

Parity of Services

The handset is increasingly being seen as the interface through which end-users access a range of operator services, from on-device portals through to messaging services and multimedia content. Often, these services are accessed quickly and easily through an operator’s branded firmware variant; from dedicated softkeys (linked to the operator’s portal) to tailored menu-items and bundled applications.

A handset’s firmware sits between the hardware and the application layer, effectively controlling how the handset operates and how services are presented and delivered to the end-users. Operators frequently work with their handset supplier to build their own variants of the standard firmware; this may include branding to the operator’s corporate colors, through to changes in menu structures, messaging clients, bundled applications and even functionality lock-downs.

Handsets present on the network with the manufacturer’s vanilla firmware will of course function correctly but their owners won’t be exposed to many of the operator’s revenue generating services. There is, in effect, no parity of services across an operator’s installed device base.

Handsets presenting vanilla firmware may also find themselves unsupported by the operator or may find that over-the-air configurations sent by the operator fail to install or configure correctly.

Incorrect CRM and CEM systems

In some markets handsets are heavily subsidized and given away at low-cost as part of a bundled contract. It’s not uncommon for users to discard or sell-on the bundled handset and use the SIM card in a handset that’s been unlocked and churned from another network or even a grey market handset. This is particularly common in Europe. Mobile operators without a device detection module within their network may not recognize this switch, leading to incorrect data within Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) systems. This can result in poorly targeted marketing campaigns; for example, promoting a service not supported by the grey market handset, or incorrect configuration instructions being pushed to the handset.

Damage to profitability and loyalty

Each of these scenarios can have a profound impact not just profitability but also loyalty. The way in which consumers acquire and share handsets has changed and

mobile operators must decide where their support for the end-user ends. A blanket refusal to support users with grey market handsets, on the basis that it breaches the service contract or internal process, serves only to alienate the end-user and potentially limits the use of the handset to lower margin services such as voice. It is, realistically, more likely that operators remain reluctant to support non-official devices simply because the knowledge to do so doesn’t exist within their customer care or device management systems.

Inadequacies within internal systems points to the importance of validated repositories of device information. An obvious case is customer care who must be cognizant of the increasingly fluid nature of handset ownership and breadth of channels through which consumers can source handsets. There must be a balance between managing average call handle times and meeting first time resolution rates, two very important SLAs within the world of customer care, if they are to maintain the profitability of a user. Even an in-network device detection module, which detects a new handset when it registers on the network, is only as good as the database behind it. Without an ability to understand the capabilities of that device and how to provision it, the information is worthless; as it is if the information is left siloed and not shared with the appropriate CRM and CEM systems.

The grey market for handsets has evolved. We no longer see market shares of 90% largely thanks to the evolution of low-cost components and import taxes being managed to lower the price disparity between the official and unofficial channels. Instead, focus is shifting to the aspirational characteristics of the handset and the desire for consumers to acquire high-end devices at a lower price point or even devices that are not even officially available in their home countries. Such factors have even brought the grey-market to North America and Europe. And while the penetration of these handsets has declined, their user base now includes early adopters and power users; all of which are socially influential, revenue generating and networked. To ignore them seems a lost opportunity indeed.

When will the mobile industry stop overhyping the reality of its products and services?

Remember when WAP first launched, promising users the chance to ’surf the mobile web’? Services were grossly overhyped and one UK operator (BT Cellnet) was famously hauled over the coals by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for its misleading commercials.

Nearly a decade later and nothing much has moved on. Once again the ASA has had to in; this time banning an Apple iPhone 3G commercial that was deemed misleading for “exaggerating the speed of the iPhone 3G”. The commercial shows a user surfing through multiple applications (email, maps, browsing) at lightening speed. The piece quickly drew negative attention from US and European consumers who challenged the reality of the speeds shown. In fact, a nice comparison video here shows the reality of the experience on a 3G network.

It seems that the iPhone advert was edited to speed up the experience.
The argument that “this is advertising, what do expect?”, is not good enough. Setting an expectation in the mind of the consumer and then not delivering on it will only ever lead to dissatisfaction and buyer’s remorse.

In 2000, industry analysts suggested that BT Cellnet’s exaggeration of its WAP services, and the resulting negative attention, resulted in a six month set-back for the industry. Apple’s faux-pas may not be as damaging but it highlights just how easily the mobile industry can fall into the trap of believing its own hype and land-gabbing market share in lieu of long-term brand loyalty.

They are becoming ever more sophisticated, yet the average mobile phone remains largely unexplored says a new study by WIF member WDSGlobal, a specialist in support and device management services for the wireless industry.

A survey of 500 mobile users revealed that only 20% of a phone’s services and features are used regularly and up to a quarter remain completely undiscovered.

“For the most part, users struggled to list more than half a dozen services featured on their current mobile phone. Regular usage was largely confined to voice, text messaging, address book, camera and alarm clock. Users do dip into additional services, such as the music player, Internet and games, but we found that a large proportion of features remained completely undiscovered,” says Doug Overton, vice president of consulting and analysis at WDSGlobal.

Service discovery, the company suggests, is now one of the most challenging barriers to mobile service adoption.

“Many mobile phones offer dozens of features and preinstalled applications. It’s often the case that users feel overwhelmed,” explains Overton. “Poor user interfaces and complex menu structures mean that many revenue generating services are buried several layers deep and are unlikely to be discovered. Conversely, users who know what they want often struggle to find the relevant application or service and simply give up.”

The survey was conducted in support of WDSGlobal’s vDevice offer, virtual handset simulators that allow end-users to quickly explore handset capabilities, compare features and discover new services. Using simple-to-use tutorials, vDevice simulators are also one of the most effective ways of helping end-users to set-up services such as mobile email and Internet browsing.

“Mobile operators and handset manufacturers around the world typically apply our vDevice simulators to their web-based self care portals. They fully immerse the end-user and introduce them to new features and benefits far more effectively than traditional paper-based manuals. Simulators are also hugely beneficial within customer care operations where they typically reduce average call duration for complex service set-up or synchronization issues by up to 50%,” finishes Overton.

WDSGlobal is offering free access to vDevices samples at www.wdsglobal.com/vdevice

Six handsets are available (Nokia E61i, HTC Touch, Sony Ericsson, Nokia 6110 Navigator, HP iPAQ rw6800, Toshiba Portege G900), featuring a range of virtual tours, tips and tricks and tutorials, including multimedia messaging, web browser configuration and mobile email set-up.