Vodafone and Warner Bros. Online have singed a deal to bring Warner Bros. branded content to mobile phones. There are no details over what brands will be exploited as yet, but WB have announced that they will be initially providing games, screensavers, alerts and other mobile applications, including video content.
Amongst others, WB have such valuable global brands as The Matrix, Friends and Harry Potter.
Details are currently scarce, but the agreement covers some 16 countries. Aside from being a revenue-earner, WB are hoping that the deal will bring increased exposure to its brands and help promote upcoming projects.
It seems the announcement is following the growing trend of content providers teaming up with distributors to leverage their brands in other arenas – similar to has already been witnessed with brand owners licensing brands to video game publishers, magazine houses and toy manufacturers. Expect many more of this sort of deal in future.
The press release
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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