Mobile Choice Blog

Nokia and Vodafone put differences aside for Ovi deal

Recently, Nokia announced its launch of 'Ovi', a suite of mobile services that would include music (the Nokia Music Store), games (the new N-Gage) and mapping/navigation. It was presented as a big change of strategy for the company, moving away from its hardware-focused roots.

However, some operators reacted with suspicion, worrying that Nokia was moving too much onto their turf in trying to provide services.

However, it seems Nokia is winning them round. At least, it's signed a deal with Vodafone to launch its Ovi-capable handsets in 2008, with much talk of how Ovi will be integrated with Vodafone's own games and music services on the Vodafone Live portal.

Vodafone finally launches its Second Life virtual network

Frankly, we have too much work and socialising to do to spend much time in Second Life, but we're told it's the hottest thing in online virtual worlds. Vodafone obviously agrees, as it's just launched a virtual network within Second Life.

It means users can make phone calls to each other within the world, while also calling and sending texts to real-world mobile handsets. To get started, you have to find one of Vodafone's Inside Out vending machines, and get a unique phone number that you'll use for calls and texts.

It's free until the end of November, although Vodafone has yet to announce how much it'll cost after that. Hopefully not much, given the experimental nature of the service.

(via Pocket Picks)

Vodafone criticised for mobile web problems

You might have noticed Vodafone's recent marketing campaign around the mobile internet, but did you know it's causing ructions with mobile developers? It's all to do with the 'transcoding' technology that Vodafone uses to reformat websites to look good on mobile phones.

The trouble is that if websites are already doing that themselves, Vodafone's technology breaks them. We noticed this when Facebook Mobile stopped working, although the fact that it's okay now hints that the problems can be resolved.

The issue has been controversial though, with mobile developers claiming that Vodafone isn't doing enough to fix the problems for all sites, rather than the bigger ones. It just goes to show that even when the operators throw open their portals to the wider internet, there can be teething problems.

(via MobHappy)

When is a Christmas mobile exclusive not an exclusive?

Want a Sony Ericsson W910i music phone this Christmas? You'll have to switch to Vodafone then, as they've bagged the exclusive. Oh, but wait a minute, that's only on the Havana Gold coloured edition. If you want the red W910i, you'll need to go to Orange, who've - you guessed it - bagged the exclusive.

Presumably later this week, O2 will announce that it'll be exclusively selling the khaki-coloured W910i, while T-Mobile will proudly unveil the exclusive cheese-shaded W910i, and 3 will parade its exclusive pigeon-coloured W910i. Possibly.

It's enough to make us wonder: would people actually switch operators in order to get a particular shade of their most coveted mobile phone? And if not, what's the point of all these exclusives? And cheekily, we wonder how many of these handsets will be advertised with a big EXCLUSIVE tag on them, with the implication that, say, the W910i isn't available on any other network.

How Vodafone's MusicStation subscription service could take on the iPhone

Mobile music is set to be the key battleground for the UK mobile operators this Christmas, and while Apple hasn't announced which operator will be selling the iPhone, you can bet that the ones that miss out will be pushing their own music phones and services hard.

Take Vodafone, which has just announced an exclusive deal with Omnifone to launch the latter's MusicStation subscription service in the UK this November. It will allow users to pay £1.99 a week for unlimited song downloads from a catalogue of more than a million tracks, with the ability to share playlists and songs with friends added into the mix.