Nokia is
taking aim at the mobile content sharing market with the announcement that it
has bought media sharing company
Twango.
The Finnish mobile giant said that it has acquired "substantially all assets
of Twango", which provides a system for organising and sharing photos, videos
and other personal media, similar to web 2.0 sites such as
Facebook
and
MySpace.
"The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our vision of seamless
access to information, entertainment and social networks at anytime from any
connected device in any way you choose," said Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice
president and general manager of multimedia at Nokia.
"When you combine a Nokia Nseries multimedia computer with a rich media
sharing destination like Twango, people will have exciting new ways to create
and enjoy rich media experiences in real time."
As part of the deal, Nokia will be sending a team of its web service experts
over to Twango.
Pete Cunningham, a senior analyst at
Canalys,
told
vnunet.com
that Nokia's huge user base puts it in a good position to roll out web 2.0
services, and that a seamless integration could significantly improve average
revenue per user.
However, the analyst warned that users migrate to their chosen services by
themselves or via word of mouth and "will often go where they want to go, and do
what they want to do, rather than what large companies may want them to do".
As a result, Nokia may face a user backlash if it attempts to railroad users
into using its system rather than allowing to migrate freely.
Nokia is also exploring other media sharing experiences such as
combining
GPS-based location information with photos and videos.
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