News
More details on Nokia/Orange deal emerge
Tim Green May 22 2008, 1:47pm
Nseries devices will be part of the Orange/Nokia deal on multimedia services.
The partners announced today a three year partnership on music, games, advertising and maps. The deal will add ten Nokia handsets to the Orange Signature range from H2 2008 across nine major markets.
Orange has now confirmed to ME that these handsets will include some new Nseries models. This is a minor climbdown for the Finnish company, as it previously insisted it would pre-load all its Ovi services on Nseries phones regardless of the operator’s stance. This is not strictly the case here.
Matthias Hilpert, Orange Group’s deputy VP of devices told ME that N-Gage will be loaded within a wider Orange Games area, Nokia Maps will be branded ‘Orange Maps powered by Nokia’, while Nokia Music Store will be present only as a link.
The primary music offering will instead be Orange Music, which will be offered as a fully functioning app comprising browsable storefront and operator billing.
“We want to stress that this is genuinely a joint offer to provide the largest choice to our customers. It’s not defensive at all. For example, we see N-gage as a complement to Orange’s own games store, which is built around casual gaming,” said Hilpert.
Orange says 80 per cent of its entire device range is branded Signature, and that it expects to add between 70 and 80 devices a year to the portfolio.
