Nokia considering setting up a head office in the US
Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop is considering setting up a shadow HQ in California to position it more closely amongst the growing smartphone market.
According to sources, Elop is considering shifting the executive centre of gravity to Silicon Valley, creating a virtual HQ in the United States. The move would therefore require Nokia’s Executive Board to spend most of their time outside Finland, accelerating a process of de-Finnistration, that may have started with the weekend reports of a cull of senior directors at the company.
The company is expected to announce a major shift in its handset strategy this week, which could involve starting to support either the Android of Windows Phone 7 platforms in addition to its own Symbian or MeeGo platforms.
However, mobile networks are reportedly uncomfortable with the growing domination of the Android platform and would prefer Nokia to stay aloof from the ongoing convergence so that the consumers retain some choice in the handset market and that the operators can reduce the risk of becoming dumb pipes and losing their value added revenues to Apple and Google.
Telefónica to present economical web calls
Telef³nica is soon going to launch its new web call service, in competition with Skype in the market through the Spanish telecoms group’s purchase of Jajah, a Silicon Valley-based internet phone company.
O2, Telef³nica’s UK mobile phone business, is launching a low-cost international calls service for its customers this week. The service has been developed by Jajah, which Telef³nica bought for $207 million in January.
Jajah’s cheap international calls service was first launched at Telef³nica’s German mobile unit in July, and the Spanish group plans to introduce similar arrangements at five of its Latin American businesses next year.
Calling people abroad was usually very expensive, but Skype, made it possible for people to talk wherever and whenever over the past seven years by offering free or low-cost calls.
Skype and other companies using VoIP (voice over internet protocol) technology are now starting to dent mobile operators’ revenues derived from phone calls as these services are moving to smartphones enable calls to be made using the data portion of customers’ handset tariffs.
Jajah also uses VoIP technology, but Trevor Healy, the company’s chief executive, claimed its phone service offered higher quality calls compared with Skype’s.
According to Healy, customers at Telef³nica’s German mobile unit were signing up to Jajah’s low-cost international calls service at a rate of 800 a day. Mr Healy described this as amazing given there had been no marketing campaign.
By focusing on Germany and the UK, Telef³nica is launching Jajah’s products initially in countries where it has limited fixed-line operations.
Cingular sponsors bands battle
SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) – Cingular Wireless LLC has agreed to sponsor an online battle of the bands on YouTube Inc., providing the Internet’s most watched video site with a cash infusion as the rapidly growing startup tries to prove it will be able to parlay its popularity into profits.
Financial terms of the deal announced Wednesday weren’t disclosed.
The backing of the nation’s largest cell phone provider has symbolic as well as financial value for San Mateo, Calif.-based YouTube, which serves up more than 100 million videos per day.
Because many of those videos feature risque and bawdy material, some analysts have questioned whether major companies will want their brands stamped on YouTube’s site.
But Cingular, a joint venture of BellSouth Corp. and AT&T Inc., shrugged off those concerns and agreed to pay for a competition that will invite bands without recording contracts to submit videos from Oct. 2 through Oct. 18.
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Atlanta-based Cingular views the sponsorship as a way to promote its efforts to connect with music lovers as it tries to sell more mobile entertainment options.
‘We look forward to building our relationship with YouTube and demonstrating our unique approach to mobilizing the music experience for our customers,’ said John Burbank, Cingular’s vice president of marketing.
If it can’t win the support of big advertisers like Cingular, YouTube figures to have a tougher time to pay its rising bills — a circumstance that might force the privately held company to raise more money from outside investors or seek a buyer. That’s something YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have said they don’t want to do.
News of the Cingular sponsorship comes just a few days after another major milestone in YouTube’s evolution.
Warner Music Group Corp., the nation’s third-largest recording label, has agreed to transfer thousands of its commercial videos to YouTube and license its library songs to amateur video makers in a deal that may help ease the piracy concerns looming over the site.
YouTube has been subsisting on credit card debt and $11.5 million in venture capital since Hurley and Chen, a pair of 20-something buddies, launched the company in a Silicon Valley garage 19 months ago.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Source- http://www.hemscott.com
Technorati : Cingular, Mobile, Wireless, You Tube
Ice Rocket : Cingular, Mobile, Wireless, You Tube
