Will iPhone damage Vodafone’s 360 strategy?

Does Vodafone UK’s iPhone deal have negative implications for its recently announced 360 platform and serve as an acknowledgement that third parties have the power?

These are some of the questions being posed by analysts in the wake of Apple’s drive to put the iPhone in the hands of the mass market by all but removing exclusivity deals worldwide.

Commenting on this week’s deal, Michael Kovacocy, telecoms analyst and sector strategist for Daiwa Securities, said that Vodafone’s iPhone push reverses former CEO Arun Sarin’s strategy around own-branded handsets and raises some material strategic and long-term questions.

With its Vodafone 360 strategy, the carrier is looking to avoid becoming a bit pipe provider by tapping into what it hopes will prove a lucrative value added service and application revenue stream. “Critical to this strategy is Vodafone’s role as a “gatekeeper”, an aggregator for which it can monetise broadband traffic and application usage,” Kovacocy said.

But the analyst argues that if Vodafone was not able to succeed with a network operator centric model when it came to handsets, how successful will the network operator centric Vodafone 360 strategy truly be? “We applaud Vodafone’s ambitious attempt to fight becoming just a pipe, and will monitor closely the Vodafone 360 proposition. But question marks exist,” Kovacocy said.