By silicon.com, 24 November 2004 14:55
NEWS 24.11.99 Orange has announced a deal with a raft of content providers to offer information services to the UK's first ever WAP-enabled (Wireless Application Protocol) phone, available from Thursday.
The deal will see news from ITN and the Press Association transferred direct to Nokia's Orange-branded 7110e phone. Other providers include Lastminute.com, Sporting Life and Thomson Directories.
Users will access information on the phone through a 'microbrowser'. Orange also plans to provide financial services over the handset in the New Year.
24.11.04 Five years on and content deals struck by mobile operators are still big news, though arguably most important to the operators. The advent of consumer 3G in particular has led another surge, with first 3 and then Vodafone proudly showing off all manner of deals.
Make no mistake, these will be crucial to success, but let's remember how little 'killer content' is out there. Maybe some sports. Maybe music. Certainly, for some, porn.
After the deal-making of five years ago, let's not forget services were let down by the performance of WAP. Funnily enough, WAP is now a success, though no one talks about it much. Instead we know the online services from major operators - O2 Active, Orange World, T-Mobile's T-Zones and Vodafone live! - based on packet-based technologies such as GPRS and increasingly 3G.
People want services that are easy to use and, hey, if they are from reputable content brands, then that's all the better.
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