France Telecom’s Orange, one of the biggest mobile phone operators in Europe, has partnered with Wikimedia to provide Wikipedia content through co-branded channels on Orange’s mobile phones and web sites. Through a revenue-sharing arrangement, the non-profit Wikimedia foundation will get a cut of some of the advertising dollars (or Euros) generated by its content.
Orange will create specific Wikipedia content channels on Orange’s web and mobile portals. Orange will also develop widgets to help customers access Wikipedia content directly from Orange’s portals. Initially, the Wikipedia content and widgets will only be provided to customers in France, Spain, the UK, and Poland but will be rolled out to the rest of Orange’s European footprint at a later point.
It seems like a good deal for Wikipedia. Orange’s reach is widespread-Orange has 122 million mobile customers, including 26.7 million users that use a broadband wireless connection. Orange says that two-thirds of mobile devices on the market in Europe are web enabled. Wikimedia has dabbled in the mobile space, creating a mobile formatted site. And there are a few iPhone Wiki apps (note, not made by Wikipedia) that let you browse Wikipedia, including ones made by WikiPock (which also donates a portion of its revenues to the Wikimedia Foundation), Powerset, WikiTap, and WikiMobile.
Makes a lot of sense. Now one can access the real deal Wikipedia via mobile anywhere. I never understood the business logic behind the so called Wikipedia search mobile applications. Why would anyone want to use them when they can access the real thing from Wikipedia itself?
it just makes it easy and faster to get the content. i use my wiki app on my iphone because it’s less of a hassle, even with the best mobile web browser, to navigate wikipedia.
it just makes it easy and faster to get the content. i use my wiki app on my iphone because it’s less of a hassle, even with the best mobile web browser, to navigate wikipedia.
TBH I didn´t know wikipedia had an “official” mobile page: I have always used wapedia.mobi and it works quite well. Would be nice if Wikitravel had a mobile page too though
http://m.wikipedia.org/
Who cares about Orange. Waste of blog space…
Actually, the link to the Wikipedia mobile site on the other article is no longer the official site. I was brought on board in the fall to be the official Wikipedia mobile developer and we have since launched http://m.wikipedia.org which is optimized for iPhone, Android, and Kindle. Blackberry and WinMo coming soon.