Vodafone Unveils ‘360’ Social Phonebook Layer For Samsung, Other Handsets

Further details and range of supported handsets @ http://info.vodafone360.com/en/phones/360H1

Robert Andrews, Sep 24, 2009 , mocoNews.net

Vodafone has unveiled Vodafone 360, and it’s not an app store. The service is first a piece of software, layered on top of handsets’ own OS, that aggregates users’ friends and messaging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIYqAduDqi4

It unifies contacts and their activities from the handset’s address book and from social networks to create Vodafone People, a connected address book that scoops up contacts from Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and, soon, Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ. The will all sync automatically to a web counterpart for remote desktop access, too. Some aspects of the service will be available to non-Vodafone users via download, though it’s not clear which.

Voda is pushing the initiative across two exclusive new Samsung handsets (a “H1” and an as-yet-unnamed device), which it says “give the best customer experience of the services” and support the funky 3D view seen in the demo video. But the operator is also making the UI available through the LiMo operating system. on a range of its own Vodafone 360 handsets from “multiple manufacturers as possible” - this will include four Nokia S60 handsets from launch, though no more are named in the announcement.

http://qik.com/edent

Many people had expected 360 would be Vodafone’s answer to the rise of rivals’ app stores. But 360 is the culmination of Vodafone’s €31.5 million acquisition of Danish connected phonebook software maker Zyb in 2008. The growth of multiple social networks, each requiring separate accounts, risks splintering users’ communication ecosystem and requires reunification. In 360, messages and status updates can be sent and received from one native interface - not even an aggregator add-on - rather than separate apps.

Launch comes to Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK by Christmas, with India, Turkey, South Africa, New Zealand, Romania and in France (SFR), Russia (MTS) and Vodafone Hutchison Australia amongst the others slated for 2010. No word on Verizon.