The Virgin Mobile Australia Company, Optus Company and Vodafone Company - Case Study Example

Download file to see previous pages The paper "The Virgin Mobile Australia Company, Optus Company and Vodafone Company" is a perfect example of a marketing case study. The Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) Company was first established in October 2000 as a partnership with the Virgin Mobile UK and the Optus on a 50/50 business share agreement. The company was the first of its kind in Australia which provided the mobile virtual network operations. The partnership of the two companies was aimed at helping the VMA to use the already developed infrastructure by the Optus Company while in the actual sense the Virgin Company was expected to do all the marketing tasks and anything to do with managing customer experience through product branding and customer service as well as billing (Aus, VirginMobile, 2010). By 2002, the Virgin Company had increased their shareholding to 74.20 percent after its core partner the Optus refused to invest more cash after it was discovered that it had lost over A$116 million since the joint venture began. However, in April 2006, the Optus bought all the remaining shares a move that shows the VMA become a subsidiary of the Optus. In April 2006, the VMA has again merged with the SIMplus and the M8 as well as the other Optus subsidiaries where it is still trading as Virgin Mobile Australia with a customer base of over 1 million.

On the other hand, the Optus Company was started in 1992 after it was licensed to become the first private mobile company to challenge the monopoly enjoyed by the Australian Telecommunication Corporation. In November 1998, the company was listed in the Australian Stock Exchange as Cable and Wireless Optus Limited. However, in 2000 as a company’s strategy, it decided to diversify its business from just providing the market with broad-based telecommunications (Australian Productivity Commission, 2009). This change of strategy led to the SingTel a Singapore based company and the market leader in the Asian Pacific Region to become the new owner of the company who later announced that the company will continue trading in Australia but under the new name: the Yes Optus banner. Currently, the Optus Company is one of the leading communication companies in the region and together with SingTel; it has given the business a global look with a range of quality and excellent services with the high level of reliability and stability for the market.

Finally, the Vodafone Company is an international telecommunication company with its headquarters based in London. Vodafone is the world’s largest mobile communication company in terms of revenues and the second-largest in terms of the number of subscribers worldwide behind China’s Mobile which has over 345 million subscribers by November 2010. The name Vodafone has been built on three names which are voice, data and fone in order to reflect the core service of the business which is to provide voice and data transfer services by use of mobile phones. In 2001, the Vodafone Company acquired the Eircell Company which was one of the largest communication companies found in the Republic of Ireland (Smith, 2011). Later the Eircell was rebranded to be known as the Vodafone Ireland. The Vodafone Company is also currently carrying out its businesses in several countries of the world including the J-phone of Japan and the TDC Mobil of Denmark. The Vodafone Company has engaged itself in several partnerships which have helped the company to market itself. One such deal that has helped the company to do its marketing of online services is the sponsorship deal with McLaren Formula One in 2007 which since then has been trading as Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. Currently, the Vodafone Company is trading as Vodafone Essar after buying all its shares from Essar Group Ltd in May this year. In general terms, the three companies are well linked with their customers and suppliers as well as business dealers and intermediaries as one way of ensuring that their mission is achieved which is to be the best communication group in the industry.

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