With rival operator T-Mobile adding last.fm to its phones, vodafone
hasn’t be too far behind the German mobile operator by putting the app
onto its phones.
The company launched a beta of its new Wdiget Manager. The app is only
available on selected Nokia phones at present. These are the N95, N96,
N78 and 6210, with other handsets being added soon.
The Widget Manager will allow users to download and use social music
website last.fm. It will let people "scrobble" their music, i.e. build
up a profile of your music tastes and then recommend other tracks you
may like.
Javier Foncillas, Head of Branded Content at Vodafone Group, said:
"Music continues to be a major passion for our customers and that’s why
Vodafone consistently delivers a superior music experience in a number
of different ways to ensure people get the music they want, how and
when they want it. With Last.fm, Vodafone continues to pioneer social
networking on mobiles, delivering a new, relevant and unique music
experience, to millions of customers, across our high speed, reliable
network."
Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said: "It’s really exciting to be
launching our scrobbling mobile phone application with Vodafone. We’re
working hard to ensure that the Last.fm experience is available
everywhere, from your desktop through hardware to phones, and this is
another big step towards that goal."
There are a variety of widgets available at launch and these include: Live Scores, Fresh Games, RSS
Reader, Weatherbug, Egg Timer, Train Times, Lottery, Sccope and Currency
Converter. Other widlets are pencilled in for February 2009.