It has been a busy year for the mobile industry in Australia. Here’s a rundown of how we saw it as we tracked mobile carriers, phones and plans throughout the year.

Mobile Carriers:

The biggest news of the year was the finalization of the merger between Vodafone Australia and Three Mobile to form VHA. The market shifted: from 4 major players with Telstra and Optus clearly leading the other two, to 3 players with similar marketshares.

Telstra shifted gears under the new CEO David Thodey. We saw a less aggressive and somewhat humbler organisation. Thodey brought the corporate focus back to the customer with aggressive new plans, better communication and improved service levels across the board. Even Telstra’s slightly premium prices felt justified considering the coverage issues being faced first by Optus and now by Vodafone.

On the device front Telstra scored a few exclusives this year, the biggest being the HTC Desire and they did an awesome job of promoting it through social media.

On that note, all carriers really got into social media this year with dedicated staff on Twitter, Facebook and forums addressing issues more efficiently than the phone support.

Optus appeared to be finding its feet with constant plan changes right through the year. Plans groups came and went with tiring regularity – Yes Caps, Social Caps, Optus Caps, Timeless Caps, Timeless Max, Timeless Extreme. They kept us on our toes, they did. Especially considering the additional challenge of navigating through the Optus website without timing out. Like others Optus also scored exclusives, especially with Motorola – Dell Streak, Garmin A50, Motorola Quench and HTC Aria to name some, but with no notable stars.

Vodafone, now VHA, faced a tumultuous year as they struggled to integrate Vodafone Australia and Three Mobile under a single roof. At a corporate level things appear to have settled down, but the network integration is proving to be a huge challenge as is embarrassingly obvious from the recent coverage fiasco and the subsequent Vodafail fallout. But putting that aside for the moment, Vodafone have done a decent job putting out new propositions through 2010. eg. the Infinite Plans which offer unlimited calls and texts to Australian numbers. Vodafone also lent their considerable marketing muscle to promoting Android setting little red robots loose on Sydney streets. (did anyone else thing they looked a bit like those ambulatory ATMs from ANZ?)

Nokia N8 and HTC Desire HD were two big exclusives for Vodafone this year with the Desire HD being the biggest draw. After iPhone 4, Desire HD has consistently been the most searched phone on our site.

Apart from the big three, the industry also saw some interesting new players move into the MVNO space. It started with Woolworths launching Everyday Mobile late last year, and more recently Amaysim and iiNet mobile. I expect we’ll see more of this in 2011 given how easy it is to set up your own little MVNO.

Mobile Devices:

2010 was a big year for devices with smartphones really taking hold. Apps got cleverer, screens bigger and brighter, and processors faster.

iPhone4 launched in July 2010 with all the usual Apple hype and gloss.  Australians have always loved iPhones and with the iPhone4 Apple sealed its position as the number one smartphone brand in the country. It well and truly set the bar for what the ideal phone must be. But demand consistently outstripped supply and stock shortages continued into the silly season. In fact our post on iPhone4 stock status was the most viewed post of the year. All carriers rushed to put out dedicated iPhone4 plans with huge amounts of included data setting stage for data heavy plans for the rest of the year.

Android made serious inroads into the smartphone market, nipping hard at Apple’s heals especially towards the close of the year. We saw some truly sophisticated devices like the HTC Desire HD and Motorola Milestone 2, with more to come as Android 2.3 startsshowing up on more devices next year. Google Nexus S is the one to watch, and Samsung have hinted at an early 2011 availability in Australia.

Microsoft made its way back into the market with the new Windows Phone 7 operating system. Late in the game, the biggest challenge faced by the company was a lack of a robust application ecosystem – the main reason why people buy smartphones. WP7 phones have seen a lukewarm response thus far which to be honest is probably the best possible outcome in this crowded marketplace. The marketplace numbers have been ramping up with almost 5000 applications at the end of this year. Of course it is still a far cry from 200K apps for Apple and Android.

This year also paved the way for a flood of tablets in 2011. iPad was launched mid 2010 and was received with an equal mix of excitement and but-what-will-I-really-do-with-it. But it was soon followed by very slick Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and plenty more.  Next year promises to see more variations, form factors and capabilities. Apple have already announced iPad 2.0 and Microsoft, HP and most phone makers have tablets in the pipeline. One to look out for is the Gingerbread based Adam from NotionInk.

Mobile Plans:

With smartphones taking off this year, data inclusions became more important when selecting a plan. The carriers were slow to move and we saw stories of people with sky high data bills as they got slugged for data at $2/MB!

Start of this year, most plans came with little to no included data, but now even an entry level $19 plan comes with 100 MB included data.

Cap plans continued to dominate the market, but we also saw the rise of Infinte and Unlimited plans with all-you-can-eat calls. The success of these plans also contributed to network outages as people made the most of free calls and huge amounts of included data. Vodafone, Optus, it would have helped to prep the network before launching these network hungry plans.

Telstra tried to break the ‘cap’ mould with Unlimited I and Unlimited II plans that came with included minutes instead of included credit, but failed as people still preferred the Next G Cap plan, as was obvious from usage patterns in the Mobile Deal Finder. Arguably, the preference could have been because the Next G caps offer a better selection of phones.

Across the board, we saw included credit go up over the year, but so did the call rates – in March a $49 Cap would get you between $250 and $400 with a typical call rate of 80c/min. Now you would get between $350 and $500 credit but call rates have gone up to 90c/min pushing towards the $1.00/min mark.

Another quiet trend has been excluding calls to voicemail from the cap. Most people call their voicemail at least once every couple of days, and at 90c/min, it can quickly add up to a chunk of the total. Virgin Mobile plans offer free voicemail out of the box, but in most other cases people need to check the fine print.

That about wraps up this wrap. Its been a very exciting year for the industry and also for us at Phones & Plans. Wish you all a terrific 2011.