TORONTO – While subscriber numbers are being held back for now and legal challenges from its competition are in progress, wireless brand chatr has gained a strong foothold in the Canadian market as it heads into a crucial two-month sales stretch, according to Garrick Tiplady, chatr’s senior vice-president.
“We’re not releasing (subscriber numbers) now but what I can say is we’re quite pleased with the results – and when you step back… we’re seeing strong results across the country in all the markets we’ve launched in,” Tiplady said in an interview Tuesday afternoon with Cartt.ca.
Chatr is so far available in the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
Despite some initial worries, said Tiplady, the brand is not claiming customers from the parent company’s other brands, Rogers Wireless and Fido, because the customers chatr targets are far different: an urban dweller who doesn’t travel much, who really wants or needs unlimited talk and text and who doesn’t want to pay a lot.
“Our customers want the certainty to talk as much as they want or to text as much as they want,” without any bill surprises, he added. And so far, “99% of the customers are using the service within their (geographic) zones.”
Albeit just three months in, chatr customers are mostly proving to be brand new to having a wireless phone of their own and enjoy the easy choices: two pricing plans and five handsets (soon to be six). “We’re seeing the growth of a new category, the all-you-can-eat market, similar to what we saw in the U.S. a couple of years ago,” said Tiplady.
“Three quarters of the customers are new phone numbers with chatr, so they’re not porting. So the assumption you can make there is that the customers coming in without a phone number are new to the market.”
Up next for chatr (and all of the other brands for that matter) is the all-important Christmas selling season. The company will unveil its “no worries, gift happy” marketing campaign featuring its newest handset, the $100 Nokia C3 smart phone (pictured).
If you’re a TV watcher, web surfer or media consumer – no one will be able to escape the Christmas wireless marketing blitz about to begin. “The Christmas season is going to be very competitive in the all-you-can-eat market,” he added.
