Following the recent discussion about Virgin Mobile India, the BBC carries the story that Virgin Mobile is looking to setup a 50-50 venture in China as well. Other countries are also under consideration:

"We are launching a mobile joint venture in Canada, with Bell Canada in March next year," said Will Whitehorn, a spokesman for Virgin.

"On top of that we’re looking at Mexico, South Africa and Nigeria."

Not surprising that they’re looking at the many markets where Virgin airlines are already planned or underway. This will nicely leverage the advertising dollars for one across both offerings.

The other day, I saw a great commercial on tv— the kind that piques your curiosity enough to stop Tivo-fast-forwarding and actually watch it a few times.   Turns out, it’s a great Virgin Mobile commercial for Chrismahanukwanzakah. Great ad and something that could only come from the hip, irreverent marketing folks at Virgin. The only downside at all (not that it was major) was that it seemed like a copycat of Seth’s "Chrismahkah" from last season’s The O.C. (which did also run in the UK). Still a fun little spot… If you haven’t seen the commercial, the website has a Flash version that gets the gist. (The commercial features real actors though.)

MobileTracker has the news (or at least a rumor):

Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Group, may be trying to bring his successful Virgin Mobile cell phone brand to India. India is one of the largest upcoming mobile phone markets in the world and the country already has more cell phones than land lines.

An Indian Virgin Mobile would operate in Branson’s typical style—as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). This means the company would buy bulk space from an existing wireless company and resell it under the Virgin brand.

Interesting to see how Virgin uses the virtual model everywhere, keeping operating costs low and really highlighting the brand’s function as a pure marketing play. That is, if Virgin is buying service from another existing player, the margin is made because the Virgin brand can sell that airtime better than competitors in the same space. This is intentional strategy from Virgin, as they again highlighted recently in announcing upcoming 3G services in the UK— without the R&D costs because of their virtual model.