International Business and Trade - Essay Example

The first part of the article revealed the ailing performance of Carphone's broadband brand TalkTalk. Carphone stocks plunged as news showed the service performance problems of TalkTalk subscribers. The poor performance, according to Carphone is partially due to British Telecom's (BT) Openreach division. The retail giant assumed that BT's progress in transferring of customers from the latter to the former "was slow." However this issue was overshadowed by the fact that Vodafone, UK's leading mobile service provider, signed an exclusive contract with Phones 4u, Carphone's main competitor.

Carphone is UK's leader in mobile phones retail. Thanks to the innovative minds of Charles Dunstone and David Ross, the mobile retailer, which was initially a small store along Marylebone Road in London, became a 4 billion giant industry. Vodafone, the leader in mobile services, had been a close partner in Britain's mobile communications industry growth. Dunstone's aggressive dream to make Carphone a real mobile leader ushered him to integrate TalkTalk broadband service. The entrepreneur also partnered with Sir Richard Branson in launching Virgin Mobile in France.

Another bold move, the 320 million impending acquisition of AOL UK would make Carphone a driving force in broadband and internet industry. Carphone's ambitious moves make it both a mobile retail an. To better grasp this, let us look at the history of UK's mobile industry. UK's mobile industry has transformed drastically from its introduction to the market. As expected, both mobile phone retailers and mobile service providers had a very harmonious mutual relationship in serving enthusiastic buyers of the recently supplied, sophisticated gadgets known as mobile phones.

But as almost every British person has his own mobile phone, the rules of the mobile industry changed. At present, to improve performance, mobile service providers concentrate on how to woo subscribers of contract services away from competitors, prioritising on high paying contract customers more than the more transient pre pay customers. On the other hand, mobile retailers profit on the upgrades of devices, switches for a better deal and service for their customers, and other activities that require their service.

With its source of profit coming from commission and service revenues, retailers are concerned more on the activities of their customers: the greater number of activities, the greater the profit. Proposed Marketing StrategiesGiven a brief background on milieu within which Carphone is involved in, the writer suggests that, to improve its overall performance in the mobile industry, it should first concentrate on solving the issues in its bread and butter service: mobile retail. Repositioning its mobile retail business will open a way to fix the problems it has with its broadband business.

Carphone has to fix its core business first before it should move on to his later business ventures. Repositioning Carphone's retail serviceThe first step that Carphone should take in boosting its weakening performance in the eyes of its