PTC last week announced it was behind the mysterious advertising campaign across major Polish cities featuring a bright-red hand on billboards - and no company name. Its furtive hand has been splashed across the Palace of Science and Culture, billboards, and in railway stations, to the confusion of some onlookers.
With the campaign, the country's largest mobile provider has launched a simpler prepaid mobile service tailored to the younger customer, who talks often but briefly, and puts precedence on price rather then obtaining the latest technology. This target market differs from the business-oriented user who uses subscription services with the latest handset technology, and the Era 'Tak Tak' prepaid customer who can use a more complicated tariff structure.
Anna Hess, analyst at CDM Pekao, says that in the country's three-player mobile market, the competitors tend to follow each others' moves closely lest they lose market share. This is an especially potent trend in the country because the market is closely balanced between PTC, the operator of Era; Centertel, the operator of Idea; and Polkomtel, the operator of Plus GSM.
"Any move now," she says, "will be followed by the others."
Calls to Centertel and Polkomtel had not been returned by press time.
Furthermore, PTC's move could spearhead an anticipated market-wide decrease in prices, Hess says. And as prices go down, they will pose a further threat to the country's consolidating fixed-line sector, that has often lost ground to mobile providers in the past.
However, Hess says that mobile prices are still too high to pose much of an immediate threat to the fixed-line sector.
On the whole, analysts entertain that PTC's new campaign could - for PTC - have a counterintuitive effect on its business model. Should Heyah prove popular among the young, it could cause them to pull out of their existing subscription contracts that are more lucrative for the company.
But Hess acknowledges that this is unlikely because PTC and competitors usually reward the loyalty of their subscription customers by decreasing tariffs over years of use.
PTC has hired new staff to service Heyah and is considering the possibility of making the brand into a separate company.
Timothy Sifert
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