Demand up for second-hand, low-end cellphones
NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL By Margaret Jao-Grey
The Philippine Star 11/16/2004
There’s talk that one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world is seriously thinking of investing big bucks in John Gokongwei Jr.’s Digital Telecommunications Corp.
And why not?
By the end of 2004, Digitel’s Sun Cellular mobile phone brand is expecting a subscriber base of six million (from zero at the start of the year) vis-a-vis Smart’s 18 million and Globe’s 12 million.
In large part, the significant increase in Sun Cellular’s base can be traced to the ongoing 24/7 promotion – the brainchild of marketing manager Charles Lim (who was pirated from Globe Telecom) – where a Sun Cellular user has unlimited text/call usage for the fixed sum of P250 a month.
This promo is said to have single-handedly increased the second-hand value of low-end mobile phones. The idea here is for, say, a couple to buy two second-hand units (each with a Sun Cellular SIM, for course) to endlessly communicate with each other while reserving the more expensive usage of their primary phones (with either Smart or Globe SIMs) for other people.