[3GScottishUser]

Vodafone has launched a suite of net services for mobile and PCs, aimed at grabbing a slice of a market currently dominated by Apple, Google and Nokia.

Vodafone 360, as it is known, unites customer's contacts with information from social networks such as Facebook.

It replaces the company's previous web offering, Vodafone Live!

It will initially be launched in eight European countries and has been optimised for two new handsets from manufacturer Samsung.

Four more handsets from Nokia will be preloaded with a version of the service.

"This is Vodafone getting deeply involved in handsets," Ian Fogg, an analyst at Forrester Research told BBC News.

He said that users with a Vodafone branded handset would get the "full fat" version of the new service, whilst others would get a trimmed-down offering.

'Natural evolution'

At "the heart" of the new service was the address book he said, which pulls together mobile, messaging and social networking contacts from services such as Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk.

"They are making it easy to communicate across the internet," said Mr Fogg.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8272841.stm

http://www.vodafone360.com/en/web/home/index

[Ben]

Similar to those skype phone type things from 3 UK then, really - all about creating a more centralised, joined up contacts repository.

It makes a lot of sense, too, especially for those whose primary store of contacts is Facebook.