Zapak has partnered with Hong Kong based 6Games to bring latter’s social games to the Indian market. Zapak will bring all 6waves’ games, including Mall World which has attracted over 5 million users globally, to the Indian users.
RCom: Universal Music Partnership
Reliance Communications on Wednesday announced a strategic tie up with Universal Music to offer music services for its CDMA and GSM mobile operations on its upcoming 3G platform. As part of the partnership, RCom will offer music services such as ringtones, caller ringback tones, full tracks and mobile web radio streaming services to its 110 million mobile customers, the company said in a statement [source].
Essentially, this is a distribution deal that will allow Universal music to distribute its 300,000 songs (across 3, 500 artists) to RCOm’s high speed 3G network (whenever that gets launched).
Network18 and A&E Television form a JV – AETN-18 India
Network18 and A&E Television have formed a joint venture, AETN-18 India that will roll out of channels including History, Bio and other popular AETN channels in India.
AETN-18 is one of the fastest growing pay television companies in the US. It operates two of the top five Pay TV networks – History and A&E, and a women’s network, named Lifetime.
The JV between Network18 Group (51 per cent) and AETN (49 per cent) will be owned by AETN and ‘New TV18’ eventually (the broadcasting business company post-recently announced restructuring). – source
Mobile Payment Industry in Emerging Markets
As per consultancy Arthur D. Little, the number of users accessing mobile payment systems in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) emerging markets will surge by almost a million per week to hit 290 million by 2015.
The firm predicts traditional banks will take the lead in Brazil and India, while in Russia MNO’s will likely start offering mobile utility bill payment services China is likely to use SMS infrastructure to develop m-payment systems, the consultancy forecasts [source].
