Last month, we wrote about how Yahoo! was planning to acquire a majority stake in video storage and sharing website Dailymotion. This deal is no longer happening, but it was not because of agreement issues between the two companies. It actually has to do with the French government.
Google is paying money to French telecommunications company Orange because Google’s network of websites like Google.com, YouTube, and Gmail are consuming over 50% of Orange’s overall mobile data traffic. Orange CEO Stephane Richard said that the payments from Google are a “balance of forces” that will offset the base cost for the 230 million plus subscribers that the company has. Orange CEO told BFM Business TVthe details about the Google-Orange partnership. Richard said that massive Internet companies should be forced to cover traffic costs because of the volume of data that their visitors use. Supposedly Orange competitor Free is limiting the amount of traffic that YouTube is receiving.
Orange, the mobile company owned by France Telecom, has made a deal with security software company Lookout. France Telecom now has equity stake in Lookout and the company has become a software standard on Android devices in France, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Deezer is a France-based music streaming startup company that has raised $130 million in their fourth round of funding. Access Industries (the parent company of Warner Music Group) and Idinvest put the $130 million into the company. Idinvest is a previous investor in the company. Around $32.6 million of that funding will be used to buy out the previous shares. Orange used to own around 11% of the company and considered acquiring them at one point. Deezer is doing well in France, but they are now looking to expand internationally. Many of Deezer’s subscribers are coming from bundles with mobile plans. [TechCrunch]
France-based telecommunications company Orange is currently preparing to buy the rest of the stake in Dailymotion. Orange currently owns 49% of the company, which they acquired for $77.8 million last year with an option to acquire the rest of the shares later on. The remaining 51% would cost Orange $90.4 million. After buying the company in full, Orange would likely seek partners to expand DailyMotion to compete intensely against YouTube. Dailymotion currently receives 135 million unique monthly visitors and handles about 1.8 billion video views worldwide per month.
The Nokia Lumia 610 will be the first Windows Phone smartphone to be powered by NFC. The announcement was made at WIMA. The Lumia 610 will support Visa and MasterCard. and it looks similar to the Lumia 710. The 610 will include 256MB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. Orange will be the first phone company to get their hands on the device. [Nokia Conversations]
T-Mobile and Orange have both announced that they will be getting their hands on the HTC One X and the HTC One S this Thursday. They will be available in stores and online. Both networks are offering the One X for free (at £41 per month) and the One S for £36 per month. Here are links to the press releases from both companies: Orange, T-Mobile UK. [Engadget]
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has submitted a proposal for a standardized SIM card design that is smaller than the micro-SIM card that is being used on the iPhone 4 and iPad. French telecommunications company Orange has agreed to support the new proposed standard.
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