Google has launched a music-subscription service to complement the sale of music downloads from Google Play. The strangely titled Google Play Music All Access will go up against the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody and Xbox Music in the US, with overseas rollouts expected soon. There is no advertising-supported tier, and a monthly subscription costs $9.99. An introductory price of $7.99 is in place until the end of June. Like its rivals, All Access offers curated playlists and suggested music-discovery options. All Access ties in with Google’s music-locker service, which provides storage for up to 20,000 tracks owned by a user.
The innovation arm of Spanish operator group Telefónica has announced a global direct carrier billing deal with Korean device maker Samsung. Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will integrate BlueVia payment APIs into its handsets and tablets for Telefónica customers.
Canadian firm BlackBerry (formerly known as RIM) plans to make its popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) application available on iOS and Android platforms later this year.
Mobile operators should not measure voice services in terms of minutes used, as it no longer reflects how we communicate, according to Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis. Speaking at the TM Forum Management World in Nice, Bubley argued that voice is a 130 year old product that has seen little innovation in its lifespan. As a result, the industry is using an outdated metric to measure its core service.
In a push to generate momentum around its mobile operating system, open source software developer Mozilla is releasing free Firefox OS handsets to developers ahead of the commercial launch of the platform later this summer.
Cloud and Big Data specialist Cloudera has announced the availability of its first developer kit, catering to Apache’s open source software framework Hadoop (CDH). Cloudera has been a champion of Hadoop development, and the kit is designed to help developers to build apps in Hadoop environments faster and more easily than ever before.
Mobile operator group Vodafone has announced that telecommunications services provider ACN Europe’s CEO Brian Fitzpatrick will join the firm as group carrier services director.
Social networking site Facebook has seen a rise in revenue and profit year on year in the first quarter of 2013. The firm revealed that mobile advertising revenue represented 30 per cent of all advertising revenue for the quarter compared with 23 per cent in 4Q12.
Telecoms.com talks to Andrew Robinson, head of digital media and tech at Liverpool Football Club about the decision to make wifi connectivity available to fans in its its Centenary stand and the revenue benefits that the club expects to derive from the installation.
The volume of OTT messaging traffic is set to be twice that of P2P SMS messaging by the end of the year, according to data collected by Informa Telecoms & Media.
Smart cities represent the most beneficial outcome of machine to machine (M2M) technology, according to a survey of IT decision makers. The majority of respondents also believe that firms that fail to implement M2M technologies will fall behind competition.
A US-based start up that launched last year has been snapped up by Google for an estimated $30m as natural language search and summarisation captures the industry’s imagination.
Operator group Vodafone has launched a cloud hosting service in Portugal that users can access via their TV screens.
Payment processing firm Visa Europe has introduced a service allowing consumers to make mobile payments across the region immediately and using any European currency. Meanwhile in India, popular money transfer and payment service M-Pesa has now been fully launched.
Turkish operator Turkcell and SIM card and mobile security solutions provider Gemalto have each found themselves at the hearts of two mobile payment projects that promise to transform the transport and retail sectors in Turkey and the USA respectively.
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