Orange follows Vodafone with S60 software on Symbian OS

Nokia has today announced that it will work with Orange to facilitate device customization and strengthen the role of S60 devices in Orange’s device portfolio. The announcement follows a similar tie-up with Vodafone which was made public at 3GSM earlier this year (see link below).

According to Nokia, the aim of the collaboration is to create an Orange specific software package to complement S60 software on Symbian OS and to accelerate the Orange device customization process. This will in turn help S60 device manufacturers, who will benefit from greater cost efficiency and shorter time-to-market, says Nokia. Joint activities will include creating synergies between S60 and Orange roadmaps, and testing Orange specific software assets and application development in cooperation with the Orange Partner organisation and Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer program.
 
“This announcement is part of Orange’s ongoing Signature strategy, which is aimed at delivering a consistent customer experience across our range of devices,” said Yves Maitre, Vice President, Devices, Orange. “By working with Nokia and S60 on Symbian OS we plan to bring increased consistency and efficiency to our signature customization process. This benefits both handset manufactures and customers through an enhanced service experience and faster time to market.”
 
“The collaboration is an example of the depth of our relationship with Orange,” said Matti Vänskä, Vice President, Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, Nokia. “It also demonstrates S60 software’s ability to respond to various market requirements and further strengthens S60 software’s position in the market. At the same time it reinforces the role of S60 software on Symbian OS for device creation and enables innovation from software developers.”
 
According to Canalys research (July, 2006), S60 is the clear leader in smartphone software with over 50% market share globally. Nokia alone has cumulatively shipped more than 70 million S60 enabled devices. To date, 44 devices based on S60 and Symbian OS have been launched, 15 of which are based on S60 3rd Edition.

Visto, one of the companies trying to break the “mobile email for the massest” market, has secured further funding of $51 million.

This third round of funding since the comapny recapitalised in 2003 brings the complete sum invested in Visto to $280 million.

The money this time is led by led by Oak Investment Partners with new investor DFJ Growth Fund, and existing investors. 

Barry Schuler, managing director of DFJ Growth Fund, and the former Chairman and CEO of America Online, has joined Visto’s Board of Directors as part of the investment deal.

Visto says it will use the funds to grow its subscriber base within operators such as Vodafone and Softbank and to support continued global expansion

“The investment community has again spoken and with this additional round of capital, they have validated our market position as we deploy our product through the world’s largest mobile operators to serious mobile email users everywhere, “ said Brian Bogosian, chairman, president and CEO.

It’s that social networking thing again

3 has released figures for its self-generated mobile content services such as See-Me TV that it says mirror the social networking boom on the internet.

The operator (sorry, mobile media company) says that there have been 100,000 uploads to See Me TV, which makes users cash according to the number of viewings they generate, earning its users £250,000 in total.

Its Kink Kommunity, has 50,000 paying subscribers, 3 says, at a daily rate of 20p or a monthly fee of £1.49. Most of the users are choosing the monthly sub option. Of the 50,000 users 15,000 are “older users”, 3 says. That’s anyone over 30, by the way. Ouch.

Graeme Oxby , 3’s Marketing Director, said, “Social networking sites are massive on the internet and we’re bringing that model to mobile to create new communities over the 3 network.  Clearly it’s working, with over 350,000 messages between kinksters every day – this is already a vibrant community in just two months. User-generated services are driving the development of new revenue streams over mobile in a whole range of ways.”

Margaret Rice-Jones, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motorola Networks’ Core Networks business, and as such a very senior body within Motorola’s 3G and 4GH networks division, has left the company to take up the top job at Aircom.

Aircom provides OSS, network planning and optimisation solutions to the mobile industry, and its previous ceo and founder Steve Mockford has taken a new role as head of business development Northern Europe and Africa.

“It is a privilege to be joining a successful company at such an exciting time in its history”, Ms. Rice-Jones says, “We are seeing growth in every region, and with technologies changing rapidly, complexity growing and customers looking for ever shorter times to market new services, they increasingly turn to other people to support their network engineering needs. I believe that AIRCOM is well on its way to become one of the leaders in the next generation of OSS companies, and I intend to see it fulfil all of its potential.”

Rice-Jones is well known within the mobile industry, and represents a loss to Motorola, which has struggled in 3G, and now has its hopes pinned on “beyond” 3G technologies.

She was recognised in 2000 by the GSM Association as one of the initial 100 members in honour of her long-term commitment to the GSM market.

Nokia has reached an agreement with Microsoft to integrate Live Search capabilities into its Mobile Search platform, enabling consumers access to Live Search from Nseries  and other compatible Nokia S60 devices.

“Adding the advanced searching capabilities of Microsoft’s Live Search to our Mobile Search platform provides our customers with unique and powerful new ways to search the internet on their multimedia computers and many other compatible Nokia mobile devices,” commented Ralph Eric Kunz, vice president, Multimedia Experiences.  “The Mobile Search platform is dedicated towards creating a user experience that is easy to access and optimally integrated into other functions of the device. “
 
“We are pleased to provide advanced Live Search services to enhance the search experience on Nokia’s S60 handsets,” said John DeVitis, product unit manager of Live Search for mobile at Microsoft Corp. “Live Search offers consumers unprecedented control and personalization giving them easy access to searching the web plus targeted instant information from their mobile devices.”
 
The Mobile Search application is expected to be available in select markets in the standard sales packs of the Nokia N80 Internet Edition, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, and Nokia 6681, it is also offered as a free download for select Nokia S60 devices from www.nokia.com/mobilesearch.

Operators and handset manufacturers have, in the past 12-18 months, signed a series of search agreements with Google, Yahoo and others, as search becomes one of the focal points of exposing content services and applications to users.

Nokia’s tie-up with Microsoft is also a further sign that the two companies, who used to be at daggers drawn over the mobile market, are feeling secure enough to work together on certian applications. It’s also evidence that Microsoft is willing to exploitmultiple platforms for its software.

Will

Jan Wäreby, currently Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing at Sony Ericsson has been named as the boss-elect of Ericsson’s newly-announced Multimedia division. He will start in the new job on 1 January 2007.

Wäreby has held his current position at Sony Ericsson since the establishment of the joint venture on 1st October  2001. Prior to joining Sony Ericsson, Wäreby held the position of Executive Vice President and Head of Consumer Products Division at Ericsson.
 
Commenting on today’s announcement Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson, said, “Jan Wäreby was directly involved in the creation of Sony Ericsson when the joint venture was established five years ago. He has been instrumental in building our sales and marketing operations world-wide and has made a tremendous contribution toward the success of our company. We wish him every success in his new role at Ericsson.”
 
Jan Wäreby said, “My five years at Sony Ericsson have been exciting, challenging and very satisfying. I was always impressed by the passion and commitment of our employees and customers who believed in our vision during the early days of the company. I am proud of the success we have achieved so far, and I am particularly pleased that Sony Ericsson has grown into one of the coolest brands in the telecoms sector. I look forward to applying the experience I have gained from this dynamic consumer environment to my new role at Ericsson, and to continue to collaborate with Sony Ericsson in the future.”

Groove Mobile is powering TMN Portugal’s mobile music download service with a platform giving TMN Portugal’s 5 million customers the ability to download full music tracks direct to mobile phones.

“TMN Portugal is teaming up with Groove Mobile because their innovative features and leading technology make them an important partner for the mobile music service”, stated Miguel Geraldes, TMN Business Unit Director of Data and Content.  “TMN is committed to providing customers with the world-class products they demand, and our new mobile music service delivers the latest tunes, hottest artists and best music features right to the phone.”
 
The service has full-length tracks available from Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, V2, DRA, The Orchard, and Beggars Group as catalogs from local independent labels. Subscribers are able to access multiple charts, receive recommendations based on purchase history, sideload music previously purchased online or from CD’s as well as browse, preview, and download smash hits from a huge number of artists. The music service also features “a la carte” and bundled pricing.
 
“The TMN Portugal mobile music service extends our worldwide leadership in bringing the best features to the growing number of music fans who prefer listening to music on mobile phones,” stated Adam Sexton, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management, Groove Mobile.  “Our constant innovations, including music recommendations based on purchase history, have made Groove Mobile the choice of music fans across the globe.”
 
Groove Mobile also powers the award winning Sprint Music Store, the first full track download service to launch in the United States. With this launch, Groove Mobile says it now has access to 81 million mobile phone subscribers worldwide

Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile among them

The industry is now used to mobile operators combining to push forward developments they wish to see happen. Previous examples, successful or otherwise, include the OMTP, SIMpay, FMCA, and many others. Now, with the launch of the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative, there is another one.

Leading mobile operators including China Mobile, KPN, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Vodafone
have joined forces to create the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative, which has this week become a limited UK company.

NGMN  has created a set of requirements for a future wide area mobile broadband network that is designed to offer enhanced customer benefits by delivering competitive broadband performance alongside high levels of interoperability.

The initiative, which MNGN says will work alongside existing standards bodies,wants to shape the “development and
standardisation of the next generation of mobile technologies”.

The group has specified that the evolutionary path should focus on existing infrastructure and spectrum allocation, and has outlined a series of guiding principles that include:
• High levels of data throughput alongside low levels of latency
• Low operation and maintenance costs
• Compatibility with legacy networks
• Support of high levels of authentication and security, and differentiated quality of service
• Improved terminal certification schemes

Thomas Geitner, the current Chairman of NGMN Ltd, said the move would help to create a high-performance and efficient mobile network for the future: “As major players within the industry and heavy consumers of mobile broadband infrastructure, we believe that the future of mobile networks should be determined by a mix of technical and performance standards.

“We are convinced that by drawing on our combined experience and commercial insight as operators, we will be able to bring a whole new perspective to the debate and continue to ensure that we give our customers exactly what they want.”

The operators say they are keen for other operators and “key industry partners” to join.

The operator push for interoperability between mobile broadband technologies can probabaly be interpreted as a sign that operators are trying to avoid vendors pushing them into technologiical blind alleys when it comes to mobile broadband.

As with most operator-led alliances, the proof of the pudding for vendors will be in the desire of operators to insist on NGMN compliance among their suppliers. Some previous alliances have stalled when the operators were unable to exert enough of an influence, or gain a large enough consenus among their peers.

Ericsson is the number one player in mobile networks. But with numbers two and three, Nokia and Siemens, having merged their networks businesses, and with Lucent and Acatel most likely to complete a merger, there is added pressure on the company to perform.

Add to that the threat of the Chinese companies, and Ericsson’s own lack of activity so far in the M&A market, and there is probably good reason for a bit of housekeeping at Ericsson to keep things shipshape.

At a press conference today Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO said that the business would be re-alinging itself into three divisions focussed, respectively, on Networks, Global Services and Multimedia. The new organisation will come into effect as of January 2007, when the multimedia unit is made effective. .

The reorganisation is intended to help the company address the challenges of convergence and the build out of next generation networks.

The company said it would be hiring 500 “engineers” in the areas of multimedia and next generation IP networks.

Radio access, core, transport and fixed networks will come under the networks business unit. While enterprise and mobile platforms will fall into the new Multimedia unit.

City Council first customer for corporate FMC product

BT has announced the launch of a corporate version of its Fusion FMC product, which uses dual mode GSM and WiFi phones to route calls made within a hotspot via WiFi Access Points into BT’s fixed network, rather than into a mobile operator’s network.

The lanch is further evidence that FMC provides as much of an opportunity to steal minutes from mobile operators as it does for mobile operators to subsititute fixed for mobile minutes.

The first customer to trial the service in the UK is Leeds City Council (LCC), the second largest local authority in the UK.  The Council, which has the largest in-house ICT provision of any local authority, is piloting BT Corporate Fusion across two of its premises, in order to assess its capability to improve productivity and improve communications.

BT will announce details of mobile handset strategic suppliers in the coming weeks.  The service will initially be launched in the UK and Italy in early 2007, followed by a phased international roll out in Germany, Benelux, Spain and France, with confirmation of these and other countries following².
    
BT’s previously announcemedon 11th May  a relationship with Alcatel to develop a hosted variant of the BT Corporate Fusion service (referred to in this announcement using its generic name, Enterprise FMC. BT Corporate Fusion is the brand name for BT’s suite of Enterprise FMC services)