Not all products and services that are launched on the market turn out well, but some have more chances than others to succeed. The launch of Movistar Home did not seem to come at the best time and, five years later, this product will disappear, adding to a long list of failures such as Aura or the Tu.com store.
At the beginning of 2018, Telefónica surprised with the announcement of Aura, a voice assistant based on artificial intelligence that was here to change everything. This was the great bet that came after months of work to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The service was integrated into the applications, but also into an innovative device with a screen called Movistar Home, also led by Chema Alonso, Chief Digital Officer and member of the Executive Committee of Telefónica.
This evolution of the landline phone allows interaction with Aura and with all Movistar connected home devices. Among the things that it allows us, we have the possibility to transfer calls from landline to mobile, manage everything related to television such as turning it on, watching the favorite channel, activating subtitles or receiving a video call. In addition, over the years it has been receiving new features, although they have always given the feeling of not being “too useful” for customers.
A Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The big problem with Movistar Home was not only its limited functions, it is that the user had to pay to get the device. In a market led by Alexa with Amazon’s Echo devices and, to a lesser extent, by Google, Telefónica’s voice and screen assistant did not end up offering anything differential. The same thing happened to Aura, when he was presented in public before the media, after 60 minutes of explanation, the only conclusion that the press obtained is that Aura was only used to change the channel, raise and lower the volume and little else, functions Today it is clear to everyone that they are carried out with the remote control of the television. The result was as expected, less than 1,000 customers used the service, which cost huge amounts of money to develop and involved the entire Telefónica CDO team for a long time. Not even the massive campaigns using talking parrots as a claim were able to arouse the slightest interest in the product created by Chema Alonso.
The operator launched Movistar Home for 79 euros, although it activated a temporary offer of 49 euros for the first 5,000 interested parties. Both were steep prices for the features being offered at launch. Therefore, a little later, they had to rectify it and began to offer it free to customers of miMovistar/Fusión with fiber, Smart WiFi Router and Movistar Plus+. The rest have to pay 19.90 euros.
However, not even with these have they managed to popularize a product with many shortcomings and no room for improvement. It is true that right now it is light years away from what it was at its launch, but it is too late. Movistar Home reached a hyper-competitive market, with a high price and few or no distinguishing features. Not even Rafa Nadal and Buenafuente were able to promote a product that their manager tried to raise on several occasions. Can you imagine watching a series and being able to buy the glasses or the shirt that the leading actor is wearing? All this can be done from Home. As you can imagine, no one made any purchase through the device.
After the Aura and Movistar Home fiasco, Chema Alonso’s great star project, Open Gateway, remains. Presented at the last Mobile World Congress, it was announced as the future telecommunications boom and it is precisely where the credit that remains in the company is at stake. The future will tell us if it becomes an interesting project that generates income or, on the contrary, it ends up being banished like the previous ones. For now, what we do know is that there is Concerns regarding user privacy.
