Orange partners Google to offer web apps on handsets

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Orange has agreed a deal with Google to include its apps on their new Signature range of mobile phones

Mobile telephone company Orange has partnered with Google to offer customers the US internet group's tools such as its search engine, maps and news aggregator.

The multi-year deal will make Google services available across Europe on a large range of its Orange Signature phones. The new services will include access to Google Search from the homescreen on Signature Android handsets, as well as other services such as Orange TV. In Britain and France, Google mobile search results will also include relevant content from Orange's own mobile portal.

Orange audience and advertising executive, Xavier Perret, said the services will be tailored to specific handsets and users in response to a trend of growing "complexification of mobile internet usage".

"The people who want Google will have direct access," he said. "We don't see it as just one device and one big service. We see it as being able to really make the difference with the right mix – depending on the segments of the market – between all these partners, especially web providers, Google being one of them, and the consumer expectations of how they want to use them."

He said Orange was concentrating on bundling the right applications with the right devices.

"We could do Google on a web browser like other operators have done in the past but that doesn't really provide a value. The value is having the right application with the right device and the deep integration into that device."

The partnership with Google taps in to strong demand from consumers for mobile devices that can access the internet, send emails and play music, as well as allow calling and texting. That consumer appetite was underlined by Apple's results this month showing it sold 7.4m iPhones in its latest quarter, taking the total since launch to just under 34m. Revenues from sales of the handsets, accessories and carrier agreements shot up 185% to $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the quarter.

Devices from the Orange Signature Android series hitting the market in coming weeks, such as the HTC Tattoo in the UK, will also feature an Orange email wizard, which lets users set up and use their chosen mobile email services, including Google Mail.

Google Mobile App will later be made available across a wider range of Orange Signature devices operating on Symbian S60, RIM (BlackBerry) and Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Orange said.

The company claimed its own data showed strong consumer appetite for simple internet search on mobiles. Mobile searches increased by 120% over the last 12 months, it claimed.

Source: Guardian. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters