Leap Wireless International Inc. said it will begin offering its Cricket wireless customers the mobile AOL Instant Messenger service, allowing AOL members and AIM users to receive instant messages, alerts and reminders from their Cricket phones. The service will cost $5 per month for unlimited use.
Leap, which claims its more than 1.5 million customers currently send more than 3.8 million text messages per day, said the AOL IM service would be available in select markets beginning next month with plans to offer the service to all Cricket customers by February.
“Our customers talk a lot … and our customers rank sixth in the nation in terms of text messaging, so unlimited IM is another perfect communications tool for them,” noted Nitu Arora, vice president of product development for Leap.
The AOL IM service joins the carrier’s traditional text message service, which also costs $5 per month for unlimited use and is Leap’s first third-party text messaging offering.
Leap also launched its Spanish Anywhere service for the carrier’s BREW-based downloadable content Cricket Clicks offering. Leap said the Spanish Anywhere service includes a Spanish/English and English/Spanish dictionary containing more than 5,500 word pairs, including parts of speech as well as a Spanish phrase book with more than 1,000 phrases organized into categories. The service is available for $10 per month.
Leap, which has initiated a number of marketing efforts targeting the Hispanic market including Spanish language advertising, noted that the Hispanic market currently makes up nearly 20 percent of the carrier’s customer base.
