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Amit Mitra

Mumbai, Dec. 18 Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Channel has entered India through the mobile portal route.

Fox News has tied up with Star India to provide news content from its channel to subscribers of Star’s mobile portal and mobile commerce service, named Plus. Star has a customer base of about one lakh mobile users for its mobile service.

Mr Vipp Jaswal, Head (International Affairs) of Fox News Channel, told Business Line that through the Star tie-up, the US-headquartered channel will provide news content covering the US economy, current affairs and entertainment, including Hollywood news. Later, Fox will increase its role in the tie-up by providing video clips.

“We can enhance our content depending on the infrastructure available,” he said.

Having recently launched the platform to provide a one-point gateway to a bouquet of mobile services, Star India has also tied up with handset maker Sony Ericsson to bring its mobile content services to users of this brand of handsets.

Under the partnership, the mobile service launched by Star’s mobile entertainment division will be exclusively pre-embedded in a range of Sony Ericsson phones in India.

“The first batch of the new phones recently arrived in India from Sony Ericsson’s factory.

“The service will be embedded across some 15 models of Sony Ericsson. We expect this development to significantly broaden our mobile services customer base,” Mr Viren Popli, Senior Vice-President (Mobile Entertainment) of Star India, said.

Plus also provides mobile banking services through HDFC Bank, travel booking and information on lifestyle products.

It was earlier this year that Star launched the Plus service that was designed for consumers to catch up on TV, search for information, shop and bank while on the move through their GPRS mobile phones.

The company now plans to develop this service into a full-fledged m-commerce solution.

“The potential in the m-commerce space is tremendous. We plan to add new services such as auction, e-commerce, insurance services and mobile ticketing in the future. And later, it can be used for user-generated networking,” Mr Popli said.

India is estimated to have 250 mobile phone users, out of which at least 10 per cent are mobile Internet users. And it is this group that Star is targeting for its mobile services.

Star has tied up with different brands to develop Plus. For example, it is partnering with HDFC for banking and related services, MakeMyTrip, TravelGuru and Yatra for travel and ticketing, Infomedia Group for Yellow Pages information, Universal Music for music content, Overdrive for information on cars, AVMAX for audiophiles, Chip for computing information and the latest with Fox News.

Mr Popli said the tie-up with Fox News will give Plus subscribers access to news in the US, especially developments related to the forthcoming Presidential elections and corporate happenings.

Star intends to use the service to create a new medium for advertisement at a later date. The waiting period during downloads into the mobile set could be used for advertisement, which will provide another revenue stream from Plus.

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Fox News to provide content for Star’s mobile service

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