Orange Partners With Netvibes to Offer the World's Largest Collection of Mobile Widgets
By Orange, PRNEWednesday, March 3, 2010
The Partnership Will Bring Netvibes' Widget Platform to Millions of Mobile Users Across Europe, Middle East and Africa for the First Time
PARIS and SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2010 - Orange and Netvibes today announced a partnership to bring the world's
largest collection of mobile widgets to all types of mobile phone user across
an extensive range of handsets. Netvibes' huge catalogue of nearly 200,000
real-time widgets will be available on Orange widgets, a service featuring on
80% of handsets shipped by Orange. It will also be available on djinngo
mobile, an Orange service open to any mobile phone user in the world. And
soon, mobile widgets will be available to Orange customers in the recently
launched Orange Application Shop.
The widget collection, known as Netvibes Ecosystem, is a library of
popular widgets from the leading content providers around the world.
Customers will access Orange widgets with one click from the Orange
homescreen. The service has a carousel from which they can chose their
favourite widgets and will be available on devices from the majority of
handset companies, including basic phones right up to the most sophisticated
smartphones.
Orange widgets first launched in July 2009 and was designed to be quick
and easy to use - even for customers totally unfamiliar with mobile
multi-media services. By providing access to the best, most popular local
content, in customers' own language, Orange is seeking to open a new mobile
widget marketplace for everyone.
By bringing a user-friendly widget service to the mobile mass market,
Orange is also giving content developers access to an entirely new market of
users. To facilitate this, Orange is creating a software developer kit to
ensure a simple and efficient process for developers to create new and
value-adding widgets.
Commenting on the partnership, Paul-François Fournier, Executive
Vice-President, Audience and Advertising, Orange said: "As the largest
independent provider of real-time widgets across 90 languages, Netvibes was
the ideal partner for us. Our strategy is to make mobile widgets a reality
for everyone - not just the mobile multimedia fans with sophisticated
smartphones. Our approach is to offer diverse local content, in all
languages, with an intuitive and simple experience that will appeal to all.
Netvibes' catalogue includes widgets from content developers around the world
and this was important for us as we will be offering widgets across Europe,
Middle East and Africa."
"Our vision is to personalize the entire online world and empower
consumers to customize their entire Web experience. Thanks to our partnership
with Orange, we are bringing personalized widgets to millions of consumers
everywhere," said Freddy Mini, CEO Netvibes. "The era of the real-time,
personalized Web has truly begun."
While the partnership will focus initially on mobile widgets, the
partners will draw on Orange's leadership in broadband internet and IPTV to
extend the experience across other screens.
Lean more about the Orange Netvibes partnership on video at
www.orange-innovation.tv/mobile
About Orange
For more information (on the internet and on your mobile):
www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com,
www.orange-innovation.tv
About Netvibes (business.netvibes.com)
Launched in 2005, Netvibes pioneered the leading personal dashboard
publishing platform for the Web. Today, Netvibes powers real-time dashboards
and widgets for more than 1,500+ of the world's leading brands, interactive
agencies, government organizations, non-profits and enterprises–serving half
a billion widgets every month. Netvibes has offices in Paris (EMEA) and San
Francisco (Americas and Asia).
Press contacts: Orange: United States: Carolyn Owen, carolyn.owen at orange-ftgroup.com / +1-818-245-2652; France: Erika Gelinard/ Khadija Komara, service.presse at orange-ftgroup.com/ +33-144-44-93-93; Netvibes: Vincent Chang, vincent at netvibes.com / +1-415-806-1769
Tags: France, March 4, Orange, Paris And San Francisco, United States of America