If online gaming companies really needed any more incentive to drop whatever they were doing and focus on developing mobile apps, here it is. Mobile phone operator 3UK has decided to offer its UK smartphone customers unlimited mobile access. And the company is adamant: as far as their One Plan goes, “unlimited really does mean unlimited.” A 3UK spokesman noted that even with generous limited plans, consumers “are unsure how much they’ve used and they get nervous. So we remove that concern.”
The question now becomes, will this ‘all you can eat’ move encourage enough customers to switch over to 3UK, requiring competitors Vodafone and Orange to ditch their own 500Mb per month download ceiling? With a 10% market share, 3UK is the country’s fourth largest mobile phone operator, and the company is hoping that One Plan could help it enlarge their slice of the pie.
Mobile technology has grown a lot over the past year. It’s not seamless, but we’re beginning to get a proper sense of the sector’s true potential. Overall data use already doubles every four months. If the mobile companies continue to let out the slack à la 3UK, mobile’s already impressive growth could go exponential. Online gaming companies that don’t want to get left behind better get their mobile act together.
