Ericsson and Napster, announce the largest European hosting contract for Napster Mobile, with O2 UK.
O2 UK's customers will be able to search, browse, preview and purchase full-length tracks from Napster's immense catalog of over 5 million tracks and play them on their mobile handsets and PCs.
The Napster Mobile service contains several sophisticated features, including a recommendation engine that makes content recommendations based upon each consumer's musical taste, and dual delivery, a feature that sends a copy of the content purchased on the handset to the customer's PC.
Under the hosting agreement Ericsson's responsibilities include systems integration, operations, maintenance and content management of the Napster Mobile service for O2 UK. Hosting is a part of Ericsson's Managed Services offering. It is a business model that ensures easy and cost-efficient launches of end user appealing services.
"This is another great example of our strategy of creating deep level partnerships with the best companies in the world to deliver compelling services to our customers," says Sally Cowdry, Marketing Director, O2 UK. "Working with the right partners at O2 UK is crucial to our success and we have joined forces with a leader in this space to bring our customers a high quality, great value service with the widest choice of songs available on mobile."
"We're extremely excited to be partnering with O2 UK on the launch of Napster Mobile," says Brad Duea, president of Napster. "We look forward to delivering a superior mobile music experience to O2 UK's customers, along with the largest mobile music catalog available. It's the perfect extension of Napster's online service in the UK."
Ged Doherty, Chairman, Sony BMG Music Entertainment UK and Ireland says: "Napster pioneered subscription services in the online world. We are delighted to support them as they move into the mobile space with O2 - another brand making a considerable impact on the music landscape."
