Mobile phones Swiss knives of digital age-Vivendi Reuters
Monday, April 17, 2006; 2:56 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041700741_pf.html PARIS (Reuters) - Mobile phones are the Swiss knives of the digital age, but French regulators are holding back functions such as television, the head of Vivendi Universal was quoted as saying on Monday. Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman of the French telecoms and media group, told Le Parisen newspaper in an interview that its mobile phone arm SFR already had 30,000 subscribers to its television service and could overtake Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes as the leading mobile music download site in France by year end. "The mobile phone is the Swiss knife of the digital age. It is appreciated for its user friendliness and interactivity," Levy was quoted as saying. New functions have developed as download speeds increase and memory capacity grows, but if regulators did not respond, France risked losing ground to other countries in developing new services, he said. "At the moment, one frequency is blocked by each (mobile television) communication toward a subscriber. We need to move to having one frequency per television channel, which would be more efficient and reduce prices," he said in the interview, issued ahead of publication in the newspaper's Tuesday edition. "We hope the state simplifies things as quickly as possible. France is in danger of losing ground to its neighbors, especially Germany," he added. The market could take off in 2007 if decisions were taken quickly, he said. He also predicted that games played on mobile phones could, in time, represent 20 percent of total turnover of the company's Vivendi Universal Games division. The games division accounted for 641 million euros of the group's 19.439 billion euros ($23.52 billion) of revenues in 2005. SFR generated 8.687 billion euros in revenues. "One mobile user in four plays (games) on his mobile. In three or four years, the games market will represent more than 4 million players for SFR," he said. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
