{"id":389948,"date":"2010-03-04T13:59:21","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T18:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-03-04:article\/419-orange-inks-widgets-deal-for-mobile-with-tablets-to-come-next"},"modified":"2010-03-04T13:59:21","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T18:59:21","slug":"orange-inks-widgets-deal-for-mobile-with-tablets-to-come-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/389948","title":{"rendered":"Orange Inks Widgets Deal For Mobile, With Tablets To Come Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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More apps for the non-smartphone set: mobile operator Orange has announced a deal with Netvibes, the France-based widget developer, to roll out its library of 200,000 widgets covering brands like Facebook, Twitter and BBC, to most of its portfolio of signature feature phones. These pared-down “apps” are all free to download, but Orange says that in future they will also include paid widgets, and those with in-widget charging options.<\/p>\n

Orange, which this week also had its merger approved with T-Mobile in the UK, also said that it is already working with Netvibes on services for other screens: these include the operators’ IPTV service as well as future services for tablets<\/strong>—Orange has been among the operators rumored to be in talks with Apple<\/a> over supplying the iPad in European markets. “We\u2019ve been focussing first on mobile and having that ready but we’re also looking to develop and test what widgets would mean on other channels like tablets and set-top boxes,” says David Nahmani, director of business development and partnerships at Orange.\n<\/p>\n

Orange says that it is the first mobile operator to partner with Netvibes, although Netvibes already offers access to its widget catalog directly through its own wap portal<\/a> for basic phones as well as portals for specific devices such as Apple’s iPhone<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Orange has been offering widgets on mobile handsets since July 2009. The hope is that widgets will boost mobile data usage among their 130 million subscribers, most of whom do not use smartphones. This deal will give that strategy a big boost: Orange had only rolled out widgets to 25 of its handsets on devices like the Nokia (NYSE: NOK<\/a>) 6500 and the LG (SEO: 066570) 505 but now plans to make widgets available with a pre-installed link on 80% of its devices by the end of this year. <\/p>\n

“We still have a lot of people who are heavy users who are not on smartphones that would like to access applications,” says Nahmani.<\/p>\n

It looks like widgets may be coming of age here. Orange plans also to make the widgets available on smartphones by linking the Netvibes catalog to its own Orange App Shop, and presumably when a widget is accessed from a more enhanced device, it will give a user a more enhanced experience. <\/p>\n

And in an attempt to attract more developers to the widget platform, Orange also said that it is releasing tools for developers to create apps that can be sold for a fee, or include the functionality to charge for the service within the widget—the service would link up with Orange’s own billing system. These areas, says Nahmani, are still in development. They would have a “classical” revenue share model behind them, he says, although he would not reveal more specifics.\n<\/p>\n

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More apps for the non-smartphone set: mobile operator Orange has announced a deal with Netvibes, the France-based widget developer, to roll out its library of 200,000 widgets covering brands like Facebook, Twitter and BBC, to most of its portfolio of signature feature phones. These pared-down “apps” are all free to download, but Orange says that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}