Virgin Mobile USA: profit, ARPU down
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 18th 2008 6:57PM
posted Aug 18th 2008 6:57PM
The sad part of Virgin Mobile's Q2 earnings story is that it lost customers (to the tune of some 111,000), saw ARPU slide from $20.97 to $19.32 year over year, and watched its profits get halved over the same period to a slim $3.5 million. The happy part? Hey, at least they're in the black, and we're sure they'd rather break even than hemorrhage cash the way virtually all of their MVNO brethren have. At any rate, the company thinks that it'll turn things around heading into '09 with the addition of Helio to its portfolio, which it confirms will be leveraged to offer "new data services and feature-rich handsets" -- both concepts that bare-bones Virgin isn't accustomed to offering in the States. The Ocean 2 would be a nice way to kick off that plan, would it not?
The OZ2 is never coming out its just a myth like Bigfoot, Aliens, and the Lockness monster.
It would be a great idea to release the Ocean 2 NOW! However, I don't think that is going to happen.
Such a disappointment.
The Ocean 2 is a disappointment totally from what has been released so far. It's an Ocean with minorly improved features, NO THANKS! As much as I love my Ocean, I don't want to put up with the crap it has on another phone (poor battery life, VERY slow, sub-par signal reception, freezes and crashes often, etc).
I've been a loyal Helio owner, very happy to spread the word about the service. Now, since Virgin has bought Helio, and destroyed all of it's corporate culture, I'm telling people to shy away and I will be cancelling my service as soon as the Helio name disappears, even if my contract isn't up yet. Sprint here I come! (Hooray Airave!)
Sorry Virgin, you'll be losing me too.
Yeah I hate to say it but I'll have to agree with ShadowDrake, Virgin has done nothing since acquiring Helio at the end of june, and the Helio brand and nname being phased out are sure to take a good amount of customers with it when it goes. I've had the Ocean for a year, loved it, talked it up to friends, but am now ready for something new, and Helio has rested on the Ocean for quite a while now. Without more phones (and I mean GREAT phones) Virgin will continue to lose customers to other companies who can actually put out new devices more than once every year and a half.
No matter what Virgin Mobile does with Helio, there problem is keeping customer, and when you don't have customer service, or even try to have a relationship with your customers unless it's taking their money, you're not going to keep too many customers, I had their service and it looked promising not to have a stupid contract, I'm willing to pay more for a phone that's not subsidized, so that I don't have to have a contract.
The big thing in the sales and retention of customers is CRM customer relationship management something Virgin Mobile is lacking, hence the inability to keep customers. They have that automated customer service representative which spends most of your time trying to steer you toward signing up for service or services offered, or trying to get you to add money to your account, actually speaking to a Live Adviser as they call it is an arduous task at best, I think it's done to discourage people from getting credits for services charged that you have never used or have.
The Helio customer will bolt when their contracts are up.
They pretty much deserve to disappear like all the other MVNO's.