Vodafone Rings YouTube, Internet brands

Katie Fehrenbacher | Friday, February 9, 2007 | 9:00 AM PT | 6 comments

Vodafone’s got Internet brands on its mind this week, and announced today that the company will offer YouTube content to its mobile subscribers over Vodafone live. Like the Verizon Wireless-YouTube deal, it looks like another one of those services where the companies will provide the user with what they call “a daily selection of new videos” — i.e. a truncated lame version of the online service. Ah, well, it’s still a little closer to what we want from the mobile web.

And, it’s the third partnership between Vodafone and a major Internet brand this week! Thursday it was a deal with eBay to provide a mobile eBay application that enables users to browse and bid on stuff and buy fixed price products from cell phones. Earlier this week it was a mobile application for MySpace.


We guess Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin wasn’t kidding when he professed his company’s newfound interest in mobile social networks, mobile video, mobile advertising and advanced mobile applications. The company announced a mobile advertising deal with Yahoo last year. And he told Business Week that he expects all these mobile content services to generate 10% of the company’s revenue within three or four years.

Yowsers — that’s a huge amount of revenues. But the company needs to do something. The carrier reported an operating loss for the six months ending in September 2006. Voice revenues just aren’t growing like they used to. Like Om says here, a mobile operator facing the prospect of slowing growth does a lot of strange things.

1 trackback so far

February 22nd, 2007
1:36 PM PT

[...] YouTube on cell phones: YouTube movies will be available on Vodafone cell phones in U.K. [source] [source] [...]

5 comments so far

February 9th, 2007
9:51 AM PT

Either they will have to make larger screens for cell phones ( but then they won’t be cell phones anymore, they will be PDA with integrated phone feature, or small laptops or notebooks) or most people will have eyesight problems, or it won’t be that succesful…

February 9th, 2007
10:20 AM PT
TW said:

To be fair to vodafone, i actually think that the 10% figure also includes revenues derived from their move into broadband provision. Given the german unit Arcor Already contributes about 4% of group revenues that 10% figure starts to look wholly more realistic.

February 9th, 2007
10:38 AM PT

Thanks, there is some debate over that BW quote. I’ll ask Vodafone for clarification.

February 9th, 2007
12:00 PM PT
mojo man said:

Does Arun Sarin speak for the UK/Europe mobile user or the US mobile user ?

Are mobile social networks really the next big thing in compelling mobile apps ?

February 10th, 2007
6:15 AM PT
Nick said:

This is smart. Although I hate social networking sites, mobile data is where you make extra cash. I still use eBay over WAP because I’m old school like that. Do I think it’s a good idea? Yes. Will Vodafone recoup their investment? Maybe.

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