“France Telecom has formed a central digital content services division to aggregate content acquisition and service launches across its Orange and Wanadoo brands, set to merge under the Orange brand next year. “We’re in ten European countries, with mobile operations in four, so we will make full use of our size,” said Grech. “Bringing it all under one roof is very interesting for music and film companies, so they know exactly who they’re dealing with.”
The idea is that by combining all the companies—both mobile and fixed line—they’ll have have a lot of purchasing muscle. The focus of the Orange will initially be on music (which is hardly a surprise in the current market) and there are suggestions of scenarios where consumers can preview music on their mobiles and buy it later on their broadband connections. I’m not too sure about that, unless by ‘preview’ they mean listen to a short clip of a song...otherwise the customer may as well buy the song on their mobile (assuming its the same price if its from the same company).
Still, there are a lot of possibilities available with content spread across the two platforms...the most obvious is combining mobile marketing with fixed-line distribution, but I’m sure there’s a lot more ideas which will come out…
Related stories:
--Microsoft to Launch Phones in France
--France Telecom Offers Glasses To View Mobile Films
--France Telecom and Warner Team Up Regarding Content