3 / Skype Marketing Technique

I was recently contacted by Matt of 3mobilebuzz.com and offered the chance to trial a pair of 3 (the network) Skype
(the VoIP company) mobile phones (3skypephone.com) for a month. (No obligation to do anything, other than the mention of returning them after a month.)

I thought it was an interesting marketing ploy – it seems very generous, but is probably not actually particularly expensive to such large companies.
I also thought it seemed a little risky – how many people will return the phones? How many people will actually generate any hype, and will it be positive?

The first link above will show that the scheme has been going for some time already and world-wide – highlighting one of the benefits of calls made using VoIP (i.e. via the internet).
You can also see that they’re being fair with the selection of linked blog articles – some have negative points about the phone.

I’m not going to review the phone itself since many others have done that already, unless enough people leave comments here.