Orange maps out agreement with Nokia

Orange has signed a three-year deal with Nokia to bring the Finnish phone maker's mobile maps and games services to its customers in nine European countries, including Britain, this year.

The deal, to be announced today, is a step back for Nokia, which had threatened the position of mobile phone operators with the launch of its own suite of mobile services under the Ovi banner last year.

Ovi was seen as a direct challenge to the power of the big mobile operators such as Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile which are trying hard to persuade customers to do more than talk and text.

But today's deal, under which Orange will share revenue with Nokia, will see the latter's mobile maps co-branded with the operator's name.

The two companies are aiming for 10 million Orange customers using Nokia's mobile maps by 2010. The deal is not exclusive and Nokia already has other partners.

While Orange and Nokia will sell their own games under their own brands, most significantly the deal does not include Nokia's music service, which caused consternation among mobile phone companies when it was unveiled last year.

They saw the service as a direct challenge to their relationship with customers and Orange said it would not let its users access the Nokia music store.

Anyone buying one of the 10 new Nokia handsets from Orange in the second half of the year will have one-click access to Orange's music store, which has about a million tracks.

Kai Öistämö, Nokia's head of devices, said the perceived fight between the company, and the rest of the industry was more "a public image rather than a reality".

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Apple's iPhone Officially Coming to Romania, via Orange

Orange, one of the largest mobile operators in the world, announced today the future availability of Apple's iPhone in Romania, as well as in many other countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The announcement comes after Vodafone, one of Orange's main competitors, also unveiled the upcoming release of the iPhone on ten new markets where the V carrier is present.

Although the iPhone's availability in Romania is officially confirmed, for the moment there are no details about the handset's price, nor about the exact date when users will be able to buy it. Moreover, Orange did not mention if it would bring the original edition of the iPhone or the new, 3G one that should be unveiled by Apple in the next months. I guess we're going to find out only when Orange decides to finally offer the handset.

Since its release in the US, back in September 2007, Apple's iPhone became one of the most wanted mobile devices ever created. At only 11.6 millimeters in thickness and 135 grams, the handset comes with a wide range of advanced features, including the 3.5 inch touchscreen display (320 x 480 pixels and 16 million colors), an innovative multi-touch interface based on the Mac OS X, high-end multimedia and Internet capabilities, a 3.5mm audio jack, Google Maps, Wi-Fi, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, all "assorted" with a generous built-in memory of 8 or 16 GB (depending on the phone's version).

Besides Romania, the rest of the markets where Orange will launch Apple's handset during 2008 are: Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia, Jordan, Egypt, the Dominican Republic, plus other African countries where Orange offers mobile services. These are Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali and Senegal – the iPhone will most probably be available there too.

source : http://news.softpedia.com/