As Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer used to put it, [it’s all about] “developers, developers, developers.” Vodafone realizes that, hence it decided to set up an office in Silicon Valley to allow an army of developers to test their apps and services on one of the world’s biggest mobile networks. Of course, its U.S. subsidiary Verizon Wireless (Vodafone owns a big chunk of Verizon’s mobile business) will also have a presence in the same space, making for an even better deal for those interested to have their stuff running on two networks.
According to the new center director Fay Arjomandi, “It’s a corporate objective to accelerate innovation of products.” As a result, once Vodafone has decided to work with a partner, that company’s service will be running in user trials in a Vodafone market within nine months, which sounds pretty fast to me considering how big Vodafone is.
Aside from the ability to sample Vodafone’s network, the Redwood City-based facility also offers office space to partners, which can stay there for several months or just a day or two, depending on the app/service they’re working on and how much Voda likes it…
[Via: AllThingsD]