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PRESS RELEASE From 3GSM World Congress: Barcelona, 13 February
2007: Vodafone and Microsoft today announced they are working
together to deliver an enhanced co-branded and seamless Instant
Messaging (IM) service that can be accessed from both the PC and
mobile phone. The world’s biggest IM community and biggest
Mobile Messaging community will together provide a next generation
messaging service based on the Windows Live Messenger platform.
The new IM service will provide millions of customers with
enhanced IM communication opportunities and will be launched in
select European markets later this year.
The new service means that customers will be able to use the
address book functionality and see the “presence” of
their Messenger contacts and exchange messages when these contacts
are either on their PC or mobile devices.
The co-branded Instant Messenger experience will be available on a
wide range of Vodafone consumer handsets, including those on the
Windows Mobile platform, bringing together customers of other
Mobile Network Operator IM networks, consistent with last
year’s 3GSM announcement (June 2006) on Personal IM.
“Microsoft - through our Windows Live communication platform
- and Vodafone are working together to enhance messaging between
mobile phones and PCs, ultimately delivering a richer experience to
customers,” said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of
the Windows Live Developer and Communications Platform group at
Microsoft Corp. “By way of this launch, we are expanding our
customers’ ability to make smart communication choices and
connect instantly via IM to the people they care about most whether
they are on their phone or on their PC.”
“We have brought together two of the world’s largest
messaging communities with a co-branded seamless PC-to-mobile
instant messaging service. Vodafone customers will be able to
communicate whenever and wherever they want, using IM and its
additional service benefits, make the most of their time with
mobile and PC, and friends and family,” said Frank H
Rövekamp, Global Chief Marketing Officer for Vodafone Group.
He continued: “IM is a growing part of the increasingly
important mobile messaging market. By bringing our collective
customers together, we’ll deliver more options about how to
stay in touch when messaging.”
In June 2005, Vodafone and Microsoft announced the signing of a
strategic alliance agreement involving the interconnection of
existing instant messaging services from both companies.
Today’s announcement is of a new, co-branded and converged
instant messaging offering and underscores Vodafone and
Microsoft’s commitment to collaborating to provide services
that are even more innovative by accelerating the convergence of
telecommunications services, information technology and multimedia.
About Vodafone
Vodafone is the world’s leading international mobile
communications group with operations in 25 countries across five
continents and over 200 million proportionate customers by the end
of January 2007, as well as 36 partner networks. For further
information, please visit www.vodafone.com
About MSN and Windows Live
MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per
month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and
21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling
programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising
opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live, a new set of
personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring
together in one place all the relationships, information and
interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security
features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live
will be offered alongside each other as complementary services.
Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1,
2005; these and future beta updates can be found at
http://ideas.live.com. MSN is located on the Web at
http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at
http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services
and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full
potential.
Microsoft and MSN are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
VODAFONE, Vodafone Messenger and Vodafone logos are trademarks of
the Vodafone Group. The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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