I just read the Q2 2008 results from Germany’s o2.

The average customer in Germany on O2:

• Voice 144 Minutes (plus 9 percent)
• SMS 829 (plus 12 percent)

Turnover development (weakening due to prepaid erosion) Contract customer: Euro 29.30 (plus 17 percent) - 6.7m customers - customer growth (17 percent) Prepaid Customer: Euro 6,10 (minus 9 percent) - 6.8m customers - customer growth (18 percent)

Total ARPU / customer (pre and postpay) / month: Euro 17,60 (minus 16 percent) (compared to Q2 2007)

My analysis:
While VOICE and SMS are growing quarter by quarter (annual growth between 10 - 12 percent) the business is under very strong pressure from price erosion in the prepaid segment. Contract customers are moving heavily to prepaid (mix now 50 / 50) (confirmed to me by CEO of Carphone Warehouse Germany). Therefore strong revenue and margin cannibalization from prepaid discounters for all mobile players (o2 is offering 9 euro cent / min), T-Mobile 8 euro cent / min which is about the termination rates in Germany. O2 discounters are Fonic, e-plus simyo, T-Mobile Maxxim, Congstar, Vodafone Bild, all of them at 9 cent / min except now Maxxim with 8 eurocent / min.

Clearly money is still being made as the small print reveals that special numbers like 018 (service numbers) are charged at very high rates, (example 69 cent / min at Maxxim) as well as very very high rates for prepaid for international Calls. We think this is a great opportunity for Truphone to act as an add on to millions of prepaid customers who don’t want nasty surprises when calling international. My personal experience has been that truphone saves 80-90% on international calls.

Conclusion:
While voice and SMS is dead (turnover wise), it is growing in actual volume at very healthy levels (not to dissimilar to the napsterisation of the music industry). Once a product goes free the volume explodes. See truphone to truphone usage (see what happens when you convert your near field into truphone customers, voice minutes and SMS goes up dramatically). If all your near field uses truphone (within your companies, your family and friends) your call pattern changes dramatically, plus productivity increases within corporations and individuals due to the added benefit of quick and simple person to person communication globally.

truphone is crystalizing itself as the global telecom operator of choice (for individuals and corporations) for the next century. The next century will be a support driven economy versus the managerial economy of the 20th century (mainly build via the models of entrepreneur Ford and managers like Sloan). So individuals and corporations can adopt by choice a platform like truphone to build a customized AT&T, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom based solution in the IP domain versus the switched infrastructures of the telecom corporation of the 20th century.

This shows how we can improve our marketing. White text in front of Yellow just do not work.

A short summary on where we are:
Truphone launched almost 1.5 years ago an application on the Nokia E and N Series phones. We are now on 14 Nokia phones. The installation process is theoretical as easy as SMS to +44 7978881111 word TRU download app from WAP push. However here the striking difference between Nokia and iPhone starts. Even truphone being one of the highest quality providers we had in our best days hundreds of downloads globally for the app. iPhone in comparison has seen more in the range of thousands per day. As of yesterday tens of thousands of apps had been downloaded. However even more striking is success rate of app to completion ration: When downloaded the Nokia users are highly incapable to make the apps work on Symbian (because it is just to complex), most people do not even find the apps, while the success rate is about 5 – 10x higher on iPhones. All of this success on iPhone even the truphone Nokia app is capable of much more (receive calls, app is constantly running in background, Truphone Anywhere calling outside of WiFi (coming on the iPhone next), VoIP over 3G, SMS over WiFi, SIM updating for forwarding when abroad, etc). Nevertheless the user wants the app and can make the app work on the iPhone.

In fact I made yesterday my first FREE call between a Senior Yahoo exec (from US) using truphone on his iPhone to my truphone number running on my Nokia E51 (in London). All FREE of charge, a call which I normally would have done on GSM now went seemless over IP. In addition before getting to my home we had initiated the conversation with him on GSM. What was striking was that the WiFi bandwidth and IP connection was clearer and better to understand than GSM / 3G. I switched upon reaching my home in Notting Hill to the house IP / WiFi network and we continued for another 45 minutes.

Some background:
In theory truphone is capable to authenticate 40 million subscribers globally on IP offering and offer to the same group very high quality Voice and SMS over IP services. Something the traditional carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefonica, China Mobile are offering now, GSM services to large subscriber numbers, using HLR’s costing hundreds of millions of dollars. However the per sub cost in all IP for truphone is 10 – 100x lower, provisioning is a software download, (a virtual SIM), network building has been done by the users (WiFi), truphone components are all taken from open source using some of the wolds best network engineers at truphone to build something so far away from the Vonage experience set on mobile. Nevertheless 40m mobile subscribers would be a sizable mobile company even in mobile VoIP, effectively a global carrier build out of software, with a very highly non country specific footprint, able to challenge incumbents everywhere. Clearly the question I am asking myself, was Skype only the first stepchild to the telecom industry challenging a low margin fixed line network. What is is going to happen to the mobile carriers once truphone takes off with growth rates we have seen in recent days on the iPhone. (a country like Germany (80m people) signs daily about 3000 new subscribers, truphone has been signing 5000 – 6000 new subs per day globally.

Let me give you several example of call patterns I encounter as an intense truphone user.

My office at PIXSTA where I am the CEO is on a VoIP network. My Nokia E51 has a SIP number and I call 2464010@sip.gradwell.net to reach them from anywhere in the world FREE over IP using the truphone app, I call my wife or SMS her from my office to our home informing her about being late for lunch or dinner by dialing her Nokia E65 on her truphone number FREE of charge. I call my associate on Straub Ventures on his truphone number free of charge in his office. Clearly not all calls are yet within the IP network, however when I travel the truphone call forward finds me in China, Germany, France on my local SIM even when I am not in WiFi if my employees keep dialing my truphone number (which once in IP will follow me anywhere on GSM/ 3G). After 18 moths I have been able to convert my sister doing a PhD in Spain on truphone, my parents in Germany, even the great grandparents to take an IP mobile phone with truphone on it. No mobile phone people can still reach me using Google Talk dialing ext+447978800012@truphone.com or the facebook call me FREE button. So about 50 – 70% of my calls are now carried in the FREE IP versus the GSM domain. Even it is called mobile.

As you know we have been live from day one on the iPhone and Steve Jobs has publicly said that WiFi calling will be allowed. I believe this represents a threat for incumbent carriers, but equally a fantastic opportunity for consumers to break free of a century of switched networks, moving the last frontier, the mobile phone on to IP networks (end to end) (handset to handset).

I believe the iPhone not the cumbersome Symbian based Nokia E and N phones will the the catalyst. This is also heavy reflected in the share price when you compare Nokia previous 9 month tumble from 40 to 25, while at Apple it has risen from 120 to 180. Nokia has lost almost half of its value even they are selling more handset currently per day as Apple is selling iPhones in a year.

I agree it is not the phone itself also it helps it is the Apps which will revolutionize the mobile industry. I predict 20 million iPhones to be sold by the end of the year, not 10 million.