Vodafone set to sell own-brand 3G handsets: source
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British mobile phone company Vodafone   Plc is set to announce it will sell own-brand low-cost 3G   handsets from October, a source close to the company said on   Wednesday.
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Mobile phone firm Vodafone is to enter the UK fixed-line broadband market after striking a deal with BT.
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Japanese mobile phone firm DoCoMo is in talks to buy 3G handsets from Motorola.
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(InfoWorld) - Shareholders of Vodafone Group soundly rejected a proposal to spin off the company's stake in Verizon Wireless on Tuesday, signaling they want the British mobile operator's management to stay the course. Vodafone, which has cellular businesses in 23 countries around the world, owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless. Incumbent wireline carrier Verizon Communications holds the other 55 percent. Efficient Capital Structures (ECS), an investor group, presented a resolution for Vodafone's Tuesday annual meeting that called on the carrier to either create a new holding company consisting of its stake in Verizon Wireless or create a separate tracking stock so investors could choose to buy into that part of Vodafone. ECS argued investors can't take advantage of Verizon's success today. "The investment is 'buried' within Vodafone's Emerging Markets division, preventing the market from valuing it directly," ECS Chairman Glenn Cooper said in a statement to shareholders. He also argued that because Verizon uses CDMA while the rest of Vodafone's networks are based on GSM, it should be broken out. However, less than 5 percent of Vodafone shares were voted in favor of the resolution, one of a series of proposals by the group that the company's board opposed. All of them were voted down. Verizon Wireless is one of the two dominant mobile operators in the U.S. Rival AT&T has 62 million subscribers to Verizon's 60 million, but Verizon had slightly more revenue last year at about US$38 billion. Vodafone's stake in the operator gives it a toehold in the U.S. mobile market but doesn't allow it to run its own business or build up its brand. Vodafone tried to acquire AT&T Wireless in 2004 before that company was acquired by Cingular. Joint ownership also leaves Verizon Communications without full ownership of its cellular business, which rival AT&T now has. That may make it easier for AT&T to bundle wired and wireless services for subscribers. Last week,Â Vodafone denied reports that it was considering buying all of Verizon CommunicationsÂ and then spinning off the wireless business. Vodafone had 198.6 million customers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region at the end of last year. Â
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Vodafone Group PLC, the world's largest mobile phone network operator, said Monday it agreed with Internet search leader Google Inc. to develop maps for mobile telephones.
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Britain&#39;s BT Group Plc re-entered the mobile phone market yesterday, launching its own branded cellphone service on Vodafone&#39;s network as it looks to boost revenues with its fixed-line business in decline.
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Leading world mobile handset maker  Nokia (NOK1V.HE) is set to announce three new phones aimed at  business users on Monday, the International Herald Tribune  newspaper reported.
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Vodafone Group, the world&#39;s largest mobile phone operator, fired the first salvo in the pre-Christmas marketing war today when it announced the full launch of third-generation wireless services.
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Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) will begin sales of third-generation mobile phones ahead of a commercial launch in the first quarter of 2005, the company said.
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Britain's Vodafone Group Plc   will outsource application development and maintenance services  globally to U.S.-based tech firms EDS  and IBM ,  the mobile phone giant said on Thursday.
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Mobile phone giant Vodafone says it will introduce 10 new 3G handsets, many of which will be useable in both Europe and Japan.
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(InfoWorld) - In the third content deal in as many days, Vodafone Group announced a service that will allow its mobile customers to view and upload videos to YouTube. The announcement follows others this week from Vodafone withÂ MySpace.comÂ and eBay. The deals point to a growing interest from online content providers to offer their services to mobile customers as well as continued efforts by operators to drive usage of their wireless data networks. The mobile YouTube service will launch initially in the U.K. where customers will be able to view select videos, forward links of videos and upload and search for videos. Vodafone plans to launch the service in other European markets as well. YouTube has a similar offering in the U.S. where customers of Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and Verizon Wireless can all upload videos from their phones. On Thursday, Vodafone said it will be the first to launch a new mobile service from eBay in Europe outside of the U.K. Vodafone Italy customers will be the first to be able to download a free application in order to search for and buy items on eBay. The application will come loaded on phones in the future and Vodafone expects to launch the service across its European markets later this year. EBay has experimented with different mobile offerings. In Germany, it launched a customized version of the Opera Mini browser that lets users buy, sell and track bids. EBay also allows any U.K. mobile user to bid for and buy items on their phones. Also this week, Vodafone announced that its customers, starting in the U.K., will be able to download an application to their phones that will allow them to edit their MySpace profiles, upload photos and blog entries and send and receive MySpace messages. It's the first mobile offering for MySpace in Europe, Vodafone said. All three services will be available within Vodafone Live, the operator's mobile portal.
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Nokia said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Vodafone that brings some of the latest and greatest mobile phones exclusively to the carrier.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone has begun offering new fees and features to stir demand for mobile Internet services as competition hits the company's profits from voice services. Two of the group's largest subsidiaries, Germany's Vodafone D2 GmbH and Vodafone Ltd. in the U.K., announced new mobile data offerings on Wednesday with subsidiaries in several other markets planning customized packages of their own, according to Vodafone Group spokesman Mark Street. "Pricing for these new mobile Internet services will be on a market by market basis, and it will be up to each market to decide on features," Street said. "But what I can say is that as a group, we're looking at prices that are predictable and transparent and services that offer value for their money." The move comes as Vodafone, which has been facing tough competition from low-cost mobile phone operators, seeks new revenue streams to offset falling prices from its traditional cash-cow voice service. It has also been prompted by mobile Internet services, such as T-Mobile International AG's Web n' Walk, designed for quick, easy, and competitively priced mobile phone surfing. As of July 15, Vodafone customers in Germany can subscribe to the new mobile Internet service, called "Handy 2.0," available for a flat monthly fee of â¬9.95 ($13.44) . The service uses the open-source Opera mobile phone browser, which formats content for easy viewing on small displays, according to Vodafone D2 spokeswoman Bettina Donges. "Handy 2.0 will be like a PC experience," Donges said. "You'll be able to surf all around the Net with your mobile phone, the pages will be compiled fast, and they'll be easy to read." The new flat-rate Internet offering, however, doesn't apply to VoIPÂ applications, according to Donges. Vodafone will not support mobile VoIP service until it can guarantee quality service, Street said. In addition, Vodafone has struck Internet partnerships with eBay, Google, YouTube, and MySpace.com to provide services specially tailored for mobile phones. Customers access the Internet service through the Vodafone Live mobile portal. The portal service is included in the various bundled minute packages available from the German operator. Initially, several handsets, including the Nokia N73 and N95, the Motorola V3 and V980, and the Samsung Zv60 and D900i, will support the Handy 2.0 service, but other phones will be added over time. In the U.K., Vodafone is launching a similar service that takes Web pages designed for PCs and makes them easy to read on handsets. The Vodafone Mobile Internet offerings also includes partnerships with eBay, Google, YouTube, and MySpace as well as Yahoo. Analysts see a couple of advantages to the partnerships. By collaborating with these brands, Vodafone not only gives customers a better experience of using their Internet services on their phones but will also benefit from advertising revenue opportunities, according to John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum Ltd. One slight difference between the German and U.K. offering is the price: U.K. customers who sign up for a data pack pay Â£7.50 ($14.90 ) per month for 120MB of data, which is equivalent to four hours of viewing YouTube or up to 160 mobile Internet pages every day for a month. Other customers are charged per kilobyte, up to a Â£1 per day for 500KB, with no additional charge unless the day's usage exceeds 15MB.
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Vodafone KK President Shiro Tsuda has said the company will stop offering new second-generation cell phone handsets in 2005 to force customers to switch to 3G handsets.
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Vodafone has confirmed that it will launch its 3G service in the UK in November. The announcement came hot on the heals of the operators announcement of the handsets it will be making available for the launch.
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Vodafone Group Plc, the world&#39;s largest mobile-phone operator, expects cost cuts and bulk-order savings to boost earnings by more than a third before 2008, as the company reins in spending from Germany to Albania.