Damien Saunders

Vodafone has agreed to acquire 100% of ZYB which operates a social networking and online management tool enabling mobile phone users to back-up and share their handsets’ contact and calendar information online.

Source: http://www.vodafone.com/start/media_relations/news/group_press_releases/2007/vodafone_announces5.html

The British Phonographic Industry, which represents the British recorded-music business, said total music download sales for the year topped 77 million, a 50 percent increase over 2006.

2.94m online music tracks were downloaded in the UK in the last week of 2007, according to the BPI, a record industry body. The figure is double that for the same time in 2006, when 1.47m tracks were downloaded, and nearly three times that for the same week in 2005, when only 1m songs were downloaded.

Source: http://www.strategyeye.com

My role as music product manager in a global organisation does allow for some time out .. today is the first official day back in the office … so happy new year.

A few interesting stories that I will certainly be watching

• Warner and Amazon announced DRM Free for their USA store  - I wonder how long before Amazon launches in the UK
• Fox announces video content on Itunes - but its still DRM’d
• Billboard says 2008 will be the year we get digital album artwork as part of our online purchases - great news!

Nokia Corp. said it joined forces with Universal Music to offer unlimited music downloads for a year on phones bundled with its Ovi Web services platform.

Universal Music Group expects its deal to offer free music for 12 months on new Nokia phones to have a wider, “stimulating” effect on the digital music business next year, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The world’s largest music group Universal and the world’s top cellphone vendor Nokia said on Tuesday they would offer a free 12-month access to Universal’s music for buyers of Nokia music phones starting from the second half of 2008.

“I believe the announcement will act as a catalyst for a whole number of business partners to step forward. It’s definitely going to stimulate the business next year,” Rob Wells, Senior Vice President for digital operations at Universal, told Reuters. Universal is owned by French media group Vivendi.

The “Comes With Music” offering would differ from any other package on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded for free during the 12 months, the firms said.

sources: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119676374309413001.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  and Reuters

O2 sent an email to stores an hour after the launch, claiming that 2,000 customers who bought iPhones from O2 stores had registered their devices at 7:02pm. That figure soared to 8,000 by the end of the night.

Sales vary considerably from store to store, with anecdotes of disinterest from some, disbelief at the price tag from others and customers queuing in the snow at O2’s Aberdeen store.

Source: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/content/17234.asp?men=2&sub=1

Most O2 and Carphone stores said they sold ’solid numbers’ of iPhones – tens rather than hundreds.

Microsoft is closing its acquisition of Musiwave, the French mobile music company, for USD46m in cash and USD4m in debt. The price is less than half what Musiwave’s California-based owner Openwave paid when it bought the firm for USD117m in Jan 2006.

The deal is important for Microsoft as it gives it a foot in the door for mobile content delivery to consumers … as well Musiwave still works with a lot of the leading mobile operators.

http://www.strategyeye.com/2007/11/16/microsoft_completes_musiwave_deal_for_usd50m/

O2 UK expects to sell around 200,000 iPhones by the start of the New Year. Sales will start on 9 November, and Matthew Key, CEO of O2’s UK business, told the Financial Times he expected “a couple of hundred thousand” iPhones to be sold in the first two months.

O2 has ordered “hundreds of thousands” of iPhones from Apple for its stores and online outlets as well as shops run by Carphone Warehouse. After the June launch in the US, 1 million iPhones were sold in just under two and a half months.

The iPhone will sell for GBP 269 in the UK, and customers will have to take out an O2 contract for at least GBP 35 per month for 18 months.

Youppo at www.youppo.com is a new social space in Turkey to catch up with friends with free storage for your pics and talk about what’s happening.

Youppo has been in the planning since late last year and development for it is not stopping. While very much in a beta site, we are working to add new features each week to keep the site busy and fresh.

my page is www.youppo.com/web/damien

More than 6.5 million Turkcell subscribers have started using mobile Internet since the introduction of Turkcell-im, a web-based platform in which all of the company’s value-added services are offered together.

Turkcell Assistant General Manager Cenk Serdar said the Web site has been visited by 56 million people since it was launched seven months ago. The visitors have download multimedia content for their phones such as music, videos, pictures and games. While the number of copies of song albums sold in 2006 was 15 million, the number of songs downloaded from Turkcell-im exceeded 10 million, said Parlak. He also said they have earned $450 million from value-added services, excluding messaging, and these services also comprised 14 percent of the company’s total revenues.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=108125

Comment: Terminal manufacturers are developing new applications and intergrating the user experience of other brands. Can this be a harmonious relationship with operators own portals?

With a selection of mobile phones from Christmas 2006 sitting on my desk from several big names its apparent that 3rd parties are now working with the terminal suppliers directly to port their web experience to phone apps. You can see this happening in Europe primarily with Google for blogging and search, but in the US, Helio has had success with its brand phone and social-networking tools.

Since the early days of mobile, it was primarly the reponsibility of the operator and terminal manufacturer to develop phone applications or new services for customers. Traditionally this has been in 3 areas -

• Native phone firmware or apps which includes the terminal settings, pictures and themes an operator installs, and
• Shell Apps like Java, flash or other applications developed and ported across phones, and
• Web/wap apps which are quickest to develop and are used in portals like Docomo and Vodafone live! as well as any third party.

Its the native apps that the 3rd parties are now working to integrate. Sony Ericsson camera phones now come with ‘Send to Blogger’ and blogging clients on the phone and some devices come with a static internet jump page that already has an internet search box.

The handset manufacturers are installing these applications in their part of the firmware. This is now a new area for operators to test and check these apps work or alternatively, to block from working (such as those operators still with walled gardens or child-blocking technology). Interestingly how can this be commercialised for the benefit for customers? without a direct billing relationship, customers are still going to be paying data charges for these searches which are not included in their on-net portal browsing.

Its certainly a reason for customers to argue for simpler pricing models like the flat rate xseries from 3 UK. More likely, these apps will stay in the 3rd party or expensive off-net browsing section with its per kb or timed data charges (opps revenue)