New mobile focused magazine in New Zealand

MyMobile is a new magazine from the iStart editorial group. It focus on mobile phones and other mobile technologies and how this is used in New Zealand. Editor David McNickel says the idea for MyMobile came a few months ago when he decided to upgrade his phone. "All I wanted was a phone that could make calls and wouldn’t be heavy in my jacket pocket," he says. "So I started looking around – and the choices that confronted me were quite overwhelming – did I want a mobile that could take photos or shoot video? What sort of camera quality should I expect? What about web browsing, WAP, MMS and predictive text? Did I want a slider or a clam? Did I need Mobile JetStream [Telecom New Zealand CDMA] or Vodafone’s GPRS? There were so many options and I really had no clue about how to sort through them all."

The magazine includes New Zealand’s complete mobile phone buyers guide of every network approved handset on the market that month – complete with a picture, pricing and specifications checklist. In addition, he promisses to review up to five new handsets in every issue.

Currently their website holds information on subscription only, the content is not available on-line (yet). As part of the press information David also sent us some interesting statistics of mobile phone usage in New Zealand:

2.8 million New Zealanders currently have a mobile phone (in a country with 4 million people!)

On average New Zealand users buy a new phone every 12-18 months

The "handset only" price range of mobile phones in New Zealand is currently NZ$149 (the Sony Ericsson T105) to NZ$1699 (the Falcon Pocket PC Phone Edition CDMA).

Vodafone achieved market leadership locally in early 2003. The current mobile marketshare in New Zealand is around 54% Vodafone (GSM), 46% Telecom (CDMA).

Both mobile operators promissed to deploy a 3G network. Vodafone will base its network on WCDMA, while Telecom New Zealand is working towards CDMA EV-DO.