Ericsson brings Napster Mobile for O2 UK

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."

"We're happy to see this second launch of Napster Mobile in the O2 group, following that of O2 Ireland in 2006. Music is an important area for telecom operators and we believe that O2 UK's subscribers will find this a very attractive service. Napster Mobile combines the strength of Ericsson's multimedia offering and hosted services capabilities. Combining the two enables us to provide a very attractive offering for operators to launch to their end-users." said Jacqueline Hey, Managing Director, Ericsson UK.

O2 sells iPhone in Ireland

O2 Ireland today confirmed that it will be the exclusive Irish carrier for Apple's revolutionary iPhone when it makes its official debut in Ireland on March 14th. iPhone combines three devices into one: a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod and the best mobile Internet device ever, all based on Apple's revolutionary Multi-Touch™ interface and pioneering software that allows users to control iPhone with just a tap, flick or pinch of their fingers. iPhone will be sold in Ireland through O2 retail stores. The device will also be available through Carphone Warehouse retail stores. iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for €399 (inc VAT) and a 16GB model for €499 (inc VAT) and will work with either a PC or Mac. Three new iPhone tariffs will be available from O2, starting at €45, all of which will include anytime minutes, texts and a 1GB data bundle.

Commenting on the announcement, Danuta Gray, O2 Ireland CEO, said, "The iPhone is changing the way people use their mobiles forever, and we're thrilled to offer it to O2 customers in Ireland. Our strategy in Ireland continues to be to bring our customers the very best innovations and experiences in mobile communications." The activation process for customers who sign up to iPhone tariffs is very simple, with the SIM being activated immediately in-store. Once at home, all customers then have to do is sync the device to their PC or Mac, download the latest version of iTunes, follow the easy to use activation steps and the device will be ready to use.
Once activated, users can easily sync all of their phone numbers and other contact information, calendars, email accounts, web browser bookmarks, music, photos, podcasts and TV shows just like they do when they sync their iPods with iTunes.