GSMA unleashes mobile broadband campaign

European and US consumers will see the GSM Association's much-hyped "mobile broadband" logo attached to new laptops by Christmas.

But GSMA marketing director Michael O'Hara says he expects a "time lag" before the products ship to Asian markets.
 
"Several hundred thousand" laptops will hit the stores in the next month, backed by an Intel inside-style advertising campaign to promote HSDPA, he told telecomasia.net.

The campaign is led by a group of global vendors and cellcos, who expect to spend around $1 billion on an Intel inside-style campaign to brand HSPA and HSDPA as "mobile broadband".

These include Dell, Ericsson, Microsoft, Orange, T-Mobile, 3 and Vodafone, plus Asian hardware firms Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba.

GSMA will manage the brand, the licensing and the certification of products, O'Hara said.
 
He said much of the growth of HSPA would take place in Asia, with 26.5 million of the estimated 60 million HSDPA users worldwide. That figure is expected to double in 2009.

The campaign will focus initially on laptops, but will eventually extend to MP3 players, cameras and digital photo frames, O'Hara believes.