Orange expects to attract one million users to its push to talk (PTT) service in the 12 months following launch, a very ambitious target for a new service. KPN Mobile and 3 in the UK set similar one million-subscriber targets when they launched i-mode and 3G services respectively, which proved to be overly optimistic.
After months of rumours and speculation that major European operators were conducting PTT trials, Orange has finally announced plans to commercially launch the first PTT offering over GSM in the UK and France in Q2 2004 and across eight other markets by the end of 2004. The tide is definitely turnimg in favour of PTT so far as its prospects in Europe are concerned. According to Devine Kofiloto, Principal Analyst at EMC and author of a recently published EMC Insight: Push To Talk , ‘Endorsement by a major European operator is a significant boost for the service and if Europe is to mirror developments in the US market, we should expect Vodafone and T-Mobile to announce their own service offerings in the coming months.’
Branded ‘Talk Now’, Orange’s service is currently being trialled by selected business users, with technology provided by Kodiak networks using the Treo 600 handset. EMC expects further handsets based on Symbian and Microsoft operating systems are expected to be added to the portfolio later in Q2 2004.
Today’s PTT market is limited and confined primarily to iDEN and CDMA networks but already has over 12 million subscribers. Howeverin 2003 Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson launched a joint initiative to define specifications to create an open standard for PTT over Cellular (PoC), thus extending the capability to GSM/ EDGE. GSM subscribers accounted for 71 % of global mobile subscribers at the end of September 2003.
Click here to view GSM global subscribers (Sept 2003) graph: http://click.cminteractive.com/?hwNiFgC6=306069
For more information on the NEW EMC Insight: Push to Talk please contact EMC on +44 (0)20 7017 5070, enquiries@emc-database.com or visit www.emc-database.com
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