The mobile market has had quite a bit of a shakeup over the past few weeks, first of all with T-Mobile and Orange announcing a merger, which, when it goes ahead will create the largest mobile operator in the UK, something that feeds into my next point, Vodafone rejigging their brand. Because Vodafone will effectively be pushed into last place by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile(3 Mobile hardly counts as a competitor), so they decided to rejig their brand from the tagline of “Make the most of now”, to a bigger focus on mobile internet, with the slogan, “Power to you”.

Lastly, there’s the shock news today of Orange announcing the sale of the iPhone in the UK, thus ending O2’s exclusivity deal, which, in turn feeds back into the first point I made. With Orange set to become the biggest mobile operator in the UK, Apple have seized the opportunity to finally bring the iPhone to mass market. It doesn’t stop there though. Rumours predicted that the network who wins the iPhone contract will only be able to sell the 3G model, though Orange confirmed today that they’d be selling the newer 3Gs, too.

Great news for me as I’m a current Orange customer, but what will it actually bring to consumers looking to buy the device?

• A lower entry price – I’m very hopeful of this, in fact it’s something I’m almost certain of. Considering Orange’s network coverage isn’t as good as O2’s, along with their reputation, they’re going to really have to try to reel people in from O2.
• Good deals for current Orange customers - I’m currently an Orange customer and I’m quite satisfied. I’m also pretty certain that Orange will offer very good upgrade options to their current customer base – they always do. Thing is, if they don’t offer me a good upgrade path, I’ll just threaten to switch to O2, which brings me onto my next point.
• Leverage - Because there’ll be two companies offering the iPhone it can finally be competitive. This means that both O2 and Orange are going to be fighting for your business. If you’re any good at bargaining then you can use this to your advantage, especially if you’re a business customer.

(more…)