Virgin Mobile USA wants to add touchscreen handsets to their line up

Virgin Mobile USA CEO Dan Schulman wants in on the touchscreen market. Noting that only 20% of the cellphone market consists of such devices, the executive expects that figure to rise to 50% in the next 3 to 5 years, which is why he wants his firm to offer such phones. At the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations conference, Schulman says that he wants his phones to be aimed at the low and middle income youth that Virgin currently has as its main demographic target. No details were given about the touchscreen models and when they might be rolled out.

Because Virgin Mobile is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator and resells access to the Sprint Nextel network, it has lower overhead than most other carriers who have to buy spectrum from the government and build and keep up cellular towers. The carrier offers both monthly and prepaid plans and actually grew their accounts last year by 6% to 5.4 million as the economic downturn forced many cell users to switch to prepaid plans from monthly contract payments. Schulman also said that it wouldn't surprise him to see more pressure on pricing in the business. And with 20% of the company's revenue coming from services other than "voice", the CEO says that the sweet spot in Virgin's market is both voice and messaging although the definition of the latter now includes social networking.

source:  Yahoo