How have the first four months at Brightstar been for you?
There’s plenty going on at Brightstar. Having worked in technology for the last 20 years, I kind of have an understanding and we look a lot at market trends so regardless of the fact that I’ve not been in mobile directly, I’ve understood where the market was going around mobility.
Why did you join Brightstar?
When you see the part that they play in the industry, Brightstar specifically were a huge attraction. We have a great infrastructure, we have a great legacy built up by the business and the people over the years and we have a customer-base that our competition would die for.
Has the industry lived up to your expectations?
I’m pleased to say it’s exceeding my expectations. The knowledge of our customers and partners, the facilities, the recent investments we’ve made and continue to make. Our set-up is just fantastic and is exceeding my expectations so far.
Are you looking forward to progressing in 2018?
Yes, absolutely. We are actively working with a number of our partners, a number of our vendors and our customers. We are heavily into our 2018 planning, we know
what we want to achieve, we know when we want to achieve it and we know which service lines we want to focus on. It’s all systems go for us.
How was the event?
We were so pleased with the way the event went. It was an opportunity to network for everyone in their eco-system, along with our sales. It was a really good opportunity for Christian Bowyer [UK sales director] and I to meet key people.
Did you learn anything new about the mobile industry?
The knowledge that sits in that attendee base is phenomenal. Myself and Christian are still listening and learning about mobile as well so the event gave us an opportunity to talk about some of the business problems in the breakout sessions.
Why did you hold the event?
It’s an opportunity to show people that we want to be the business that helps businesses grow. It’s about showing and telling people our story. It was a good opportunity to showcase some of the services that we have but we did that in a different way I think, especially if you look at the accessibility to the market that has thrown out the $1,000 (£880) handset.
What do you think is behind the rise of SIM-only and leasing?
I think there are economic factors at play here and the affordability and accessibility of some of these devices. They are loaded with features and functionality now and the sheer quality of the product is phenomenal – just look at the cameras alone – so I think that is driving differences in consumer behaviour and purchasing behaviour.
How can these $1,000 devices become more accessible?
You will realistically end up keeping your device for longer and perhaps even looking after it a little bit better than we’ve seen in the past. If you look at all of the operators now almost all of them, aside from Three, have an annual upgrade. So I think that’s dealing with the consumer’s desire to have the latest and greatest. Inevitably though there are more parts on the device, more glass on the device so it will break so there’s a repair element to some of these.
Do you think affordability a big issue in the industry?
I think it’s probably a larger philosophical issue rather than a distribution issue. If you look at the figures coming out from the manufacturers, while we rightly have seen a plateau in terms of growth of these handsets, the sheer volume is still in the multi-millions and therefore you have the requirements of distribution and supply chain services remaining there.
That’s before you even look at accessories and protection cases and all of the things that surround the device. Distribution continues to have a huge part in this industry.
Where do you see Brightstar in comparison with the other UK distributors?
We have a key foothold in the area and that’s something i’d like to see continue but also something i’d like to build on. The idea is to promote ourselves as more than just box shifting and the supply chain. We want to wrap services around that and show that we can deliver value around the distribution model.
