Vodafone has told TechRadar that it plans to offer elements of its 360 service to other operating systems, which will include submitting its application portal for use on the iPhone.
Speaking to Bobby Rao, Marketing Director for Vodafone internet services, he confirmed to us that the network will be looking to get elements of the new 360 service onto other platforms, including the iPhone and Android.
"It's our plan to submit elements to the App Store, such as Maps, People and whatever else they choose to accept.
"The most seamless experience will be available on Vodafone handsets, but we want a broad variety of platforms, such as Android and others."
All about numbers
When quizzed about Vodafone's Shop application portal and how the network plans to make it a success in an ever more crowded market, Rao point to the subscriber base that it (along with partners China Mobile, Softbank and Verizon) has to work with:
"With Shop, we can get it onto a wide variety of handsets, and we can also embed 360 services. If you look at the iPhone [and iPod touch] there are maybe 30-40 million of these in the market.
"If you combine our subscriber base, we have around one billion subscribers, and we don't need a large portion of them to achieve a meaningful scale."
Rao also pointed out that other manufacturers already working with the network are keen to take 360 and Vodafone Shop on board:
"We already have agreements in place with several handset manufacturers [to offer 360 services], which are data compatible but not all on an open OS. Plus being able to access the Shop on things like S60 devices extends the reach [of the portal]."
