The three biggest mobile operators in Spain have all launched Joyn, the consumer-facing brand name for Rich Communications Services. But, with entrenched over-the-top rivals such as WhatsApp, is this long-gestating platform too late? Read more »
The Spanish telecoms giant has made its big infrastructure-as-a-service play with Instant Servers, which it claims will beat entrenched rivals through better reliability and scalability. Read more »
One of the many digital content services going global is music video outfit Vevo. Certain new countries mean a mobile-first approach – but that puts services at the mercy of a mobile ad ecosystem they say is still playing catch-up to desktop. Read more at paidContent »
The Wholesale Application Community’s dream of a single pool of APIs shared among all global carriers may have died, but Telefónica may be trying to revive it. It’s recruited fellow mega-operator Telenor into its BlueVia developer platform. Together they reach 400 million global subscribers. Read more »
European startups love to analyze their failures and look for reasons the continent finds it hard to build huge new businesses. Now a great, comprehensive piece in The Economist manages to show how the problems are deep, dangerous — and go back at least 50 years. Read more »
Fon may have launched in Madrid, but lately the company taking on a very Japanese flavor. According to the company, which pioneered the concept of a global community Wi-Fi network, 1 million or a full one-sixth of its global access points now reside in Japan. Read more »
Roku just started rolling out a firmware update to its media players that includes a translation of its user interface to Spanish and German. This comes just days after we broke the story that Roku is eyeing Germany and Span as its next foreign markets. Read more »
Roku’s web developers left some hints in the code of the company’s website that suggest an expansion to Germany and Spain. What does this mean for Netflix, which has traditionally been the most popular service on Roku, and closely tied to its previous international expansions? Read more »
Spanish mobile operator Telefónica might be the world’s sixth largest network — but it says that the future could be more about other services, with a strategy to expand its footprint in areas like cloud computing, operating systems and machine-to-machine networks. Read more »
One day after Philipp Humm’s surprise resignation from T-Mobile, Vodafone announced he has joined its ranks. Humm won’t just be supervising one of Vodafone’s numerous European subsidiaries – he will take charge of eight carriers in Northern and Central Europe. Read more »
Declining sales in Spain and France suggest that Europe’s relationship with mobile has reached the ‘it’s complicated’ stage. But what are the reasons for the precipitous falls being witnessed by mobile companies across the continent? And is it actually a bad thing? Read more »
It seems the world has a new digital media M&A power player. Fresh from buying Play.com, Kobo and a piece of Pinterest, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is acquiring Spanish TV and movie streaming service Wuaki.tv. Read more at paidContent »
Football’s Euro 2012 tournament may be distracting plenty of people from their normal lives, but there are still plenty of events taking place across the continent for anyone interested in technology and the future. We pick three to watch out for. Read more »
Economic growth has created a new middle-class ‘digital Latino’, observers say. Now three big internet brands are embracing Spanish and Latin American audiences with local launches this week. Read more at paidContent »
Hot on the heels of Telefonica’s Wayra accelerator, Deutsche Telekom has opened up a rival incubator in the German capital Read more »
A GigaOM exclusive: A tiny company you have never heard is about to have an outsized impact on the global mobile industry. Global giant Vodafone is using a technology developed by a small Silicon Valley/Madrid startup called InToTally to supercharge its 3G networks. Read more »
A Madrid-based mobile advertising network is taking investment to challenge big U.S. competitors. Read more at paidContent »
A quarterly report from Elance indicates that with the lengthy economic crisis in Europe showing no signs of coming to a happy conclusion, workers in troubled countries are increasingly turning to remote work as an alternative to finding jobs in their stressed home economies. Read more »
Searching for a new lease of life, Mozilla is joining forces with Spanish operator Telefónica to build handsets that have web technologies at their heart. But can Mozilla succeed where Palm failed? And is there room in a difficult market for more players? Read more »
Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica — the world’s third-largest mobile firm — saw profits cut in half after a troubled year. With Nokia, Siemens and Deutsche Telekom all facing a torrid time, is the writing on the wall for Europe’s mobile businesses? Read more »
Kindle may launch in Japan and Brazil in 2012, according to reports published in the last week. Read more at paidContent »
The Kindle Touch WiFi is now available in some additional countries, but not the biggest international e-reading markets that already have t… Read more at paidContent »
Spain once symbolized a great solar boom – and then bust – as its government lowered incentives to reign growth. That repercussion of that boom has continued, however, and on Friday the government announced a suspension of the incentive program to cut costs. Read more »
Considering the staggering results reported by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) last night, this should come as little surprise: the company’s iPhone is b… Read more at paidContent »
Huffington Post today took one more step in its ongoing march for a wider international reach: it has now officially opened Le Huffington Po… Read more at paidContent »
CES, currently in full swing in Las Vegas, promises to bring out another wave of Android tablets, to add to the 40+ that were on the market… Read more at paidContent »
After much deliberation, Spain’s Sinde Law — an antipiracy initiative similar to America’s proposed SOPA legislation — has passed. But it is not entering the statute books without controversy over its reach, remit and the threats made by the U.S. government to force it through. Read more »
Apple’s iPhone 4S has propelled Cupertino’s smartphone share back to growth in many markets, including Britain, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech released Thursday. But Apple’s latest smartphone isn’t leading to runaway success everywhere, owing in part to economic concerns. Read more »
Smartphone penetration is slowly approaching the tipping point where it will be more common to have a smartphone than a feature phone among… Read more at paidContent »
The news aggregating behemoth Huffington Post is continuing its march into new markets: the next stop is Spain, where the site will partner… Read more at paidContent »
Amazon’s Kindle Fire today is only on sale in the U.S., but according to one report that Fire could be spreading to the UK as soon as Januar… Read more at paidContent »
It’s taken a few years, but Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has really ramped up the number of countries where it is selling its Kindle products. Today… Read more at paidContent »
As the Black Friday shopping opportunities continue to pile up, the mentions of mobile payment services get ever more frequent, too: in just… Read more at paidContent »
Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) has put its digital eggs into one basket — centralizing all its global digital operations into one new unit — and w… Read more at paidContent »
Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia is launching an e-book publishing program, “E-books De Vanguardia.” It appears to be the first Spanish newsp… Read more at paidContent »
Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Orange have long been rivals in mobile phone markets in Europe, but as growth slows down in the region, the two are… Read more at paidContent »
Another development in the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) versus Android patent story as the various cases work their way through the courts. Samsung ha… Read more at paidContent »
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been going tooth and nail after big Android device makers, especially Samsung, accusing them in courts worldwide of l… Read more at paidContent »
We have seen time and again how the growing number of Android-based handsets from a plethora of OEMs — and the popularity of some specific… Read more at paidContent »
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) definitely didn’t break out Kindle Fire pre-order numbers in the investor call following today’s earnings report, but CF… Read more at paidContent »
