Monday, August 16, 2010

Celcom Axiata to double BlackBerry prepaid users

Tuesday August 17, 2010




By DANNY YAP

danny@thestar.com.my





It expects its new BlackBerry Messenger Plan to be a hit





KUALA LUMPUR: Celcom Axiata Bhd (formerly Celcom Malaysia Bhd) expects to double its Blackberry Xpax prepaid subscribers by year-end with its new BlackBerry Messenger Plan (BMP).



Xpac is Celcom’s main prepaid brand accounting for over half of the telco’s eight million prepaid subcribers so far.



Marketing director Zalman Aefendy Zainal Abidin said the telco operator was confident of doubling its BlackBerry prepaid subscribers this year with its latest BlackBerry Messenger service offering.



Zalman declined to give figures, but expects BMP to be a big hit with Celcom BlackBerry prepaid subscribers.





From left: Celcom Axiata head of mobile broadband Harcharan Singh, Zalman Aefendy Zainal Abidin and product manager Effendi Rodzi at the launch



He said currently there were over 20 million active BlackBerry Messenger users globally and the figure was growing rapidly every year.



The new service provided by Celcom enabled its BlackBerry subscribers to have unlimited chat via BlackBerry messenger for a mere 50 sen per day.



“We are the first telco operator in Malaysia and in Asia-Pacific to roll-out such a service,” he said after the BMP launch yesterday.



Zalman said at 50 sen per day, BMP was very affordable to the masses of Celcom prepaid BlackBerry subscribers.



“We believe BMP will help boost Celcom’s market share in the BlackBerry prepaid subscriber market segment significantly in the near future,” he said.



“It’s inevitable that other telco operators will come out with a similar service,” Zalman said.



He said Celcom also provided other services under its BMP service such as shared pictures, voice notes and large media data transfer (up to 6 megabytes), via BlackBerry Advance and BlackBerry Social, but the additional services come at a premium of RM2.50 and RM1 per day respectively.


http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/8/17/business/6867093&sec=business

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