SMART wins Asian Mobile News Award
goodnewspilipinas.com
First Posted 12:05:00 07/05/2008
WIRELESS service provider Smart Communications was cited as the Mobile Operator for The Year 2008 -- Philippines in the 5th Asian Mobile News Awards in Singapore.
The award was given by the Asian Mobile News, a leading cellular industry magazine in Asia which organizes the annual awards for the top mobile operators and handsets in Asia.
It was the second time that SMART was recognized as the country’s mobile operator of the year, having first received the award during the Asian Mobile News Awards 2005.
Speaking at the awarding ceremonies last Thursday, Smart president and CEO Napoleon L. Nazareno said that in its 15 years of operations, Smart has “led the way in putting mobile phones in the hands of more Filipinos than was previously thought possible by virtually all industry analysts.”
“We’ve done this through world-first innovations that enabled us to sell profitably to people whose low income levels had previously excluded from using cellular phones,” he said.
In the late 1990s, the conventional wisdom among industry analysts was that mobile phone penetration in the Philippines could not exceed 20 percent to 25 percent on account of the country’s relatively low per capita incomes. By end-2007, however, over 60 percent of Filipinos had become mobile phone users.
Nazareno attributed the Philippines’ success in promoting the usage of mobile phones to the introduction of various innovations in cellular technologies and business models. He cited the introduction of prepaid services in the 1990s which Smart has aggressively promoted.
“This innovation opened the door to just everyone -- students, housewives, employees, blue collar workers, farmers, fishermen and families of overseas worker,” he said.
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