French mobile operator, Orange, announced some interesting stuff at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Let’s briefly go through their news, shall we:
- First and I guess the most interesting news item is that they’ve managed to score the exclusive launch rights for the highly anticipated LG Watch Phone in Europe. We’ve seen LG’s cool product at CES when we covered it. I’ll only add that Orange will bring LG’s wearable baby to many of the Europe’s markets where it operates. (release)
- Then we’ve seen them launching the Orange Care, a three-tiered package that provides customers with such services as easy transfer of contacts and content at point of sale, insurance and backup (i.e. extended warranty and regular backup of contacts and content), and phone recycle service. (release)
- Orange also announced the launch of its mobile widget offering. Set to start operating in May of this year, Orange will bring a selection of simple, connected mobile widgets, such as weather updates and news alerts to its entire Signature customer base. The same release also talks about Orange’s plans to add multiple platform support to its Application Shop. (release)
- Orange’s strategic partnership with Sony Ericsson is now extended to additional two years “opening the door to more fun and easy mobile multimedia services.” As a result, the France Telecom-owned mobile operator will add an array of Sony Ericsson handsets in its portfolio, with some of them being a part of the carrier’s Signature Series. For the record, Orange is the biggest provider of Walkman phones in Europe. (release)
- Finally, the carrier signed three-year pan-European agreement with HP to distribute a range of notebooks and HP Minis with mobile and/or fixed broadband access across its markets. That being said, customers in UK will be able to grab the new HP Compaq Mini 700 for 30 GBP a month. The package consists of Orange’s “Internet Everywhere” mobile broadband service and dongle as well as a 3GB data allowance and 24 month manufacturer warranty. (release)
More information about Orange is available from their website.