HTC's Chacha hits 3UK, check out Sedge's video

In the UK, the mobile operator is king. If they don’t range your handset, then the chances of it selling in volume are pretty poor. The UK market — like a few others in Europe — is heavily, heavily dependent on ‘free phones’ (or operator subsidy).

Consumers don’t mind paying a little bit of cash up front, but ideally, they want the device free. Of course, the contracts get longer and longer when you’re after a top of the range device, free of charge.

It’s all about the handset. People still swap networks to get hold of a particular handset.

Which means that operators really need to work hard at pitching their ‘terminals’ (as many senior folk in the industry still refer to them).

Over the years we’ve seen some particularly compelling videos from the teams at Vodafone and Orange (Conor at Orange has been leading the way, especially with some of the higher end Android phones).

Three are no exception. Here’s a great example of a recent video highlighting HTC’s all new BlackBerry-like Android device. The presenter, Sedge, does a super job of delivering a watchable 4 minutes of social media recommendations interspersed with examples of how the HTC works with Facebook. (It’s one of the first to arrive complete with that famous Facebook button). Across the four minutes, Sedge points out the various features of the phone without getting too technical. It’s all filmed ‘on location’ at Windsor, so there’s plenty of nice scenery and backgrounds — the camera work is uber-smooth and it’s got the professional shine of something you might see on the likes of the Gadget show.

I think it does a good job of educating, converting and convincing for anyone who’s half interested in the phone. Nice work!

Here’s the accompanying blog post.