One
of the first deals bundling a mobile phone with
media downloads was launched by Samsung and GETMO
Arabia at the opening day of the Gitex
Technology Week conference yesterday.
GETMO Arabia – a digital download portal and
joint venture between the Abu Dhabi Media
Company (ADMC) and the Bertelsmann subsidiary Arvato
Middle East Sales – has formed a partnership
with Samsung to bundle its content with the
mobile phone maker’s devices, the two companies
announced.
The announcement comes a day after the portal,
launched in the business-to-business community
in May, began offering its downloads of music,
movies, games, videos, screensavers and
ringtones to the public.
“The idea is to bundle with every Samsung phone
a GETMO card,” said Claudius Boller, the vice
president of business development for GETMO
Arabia. These cards are also now available at
Jumbo Electronics.
The first Samsung phone to be packaged with
GETMO content will be unveiled at the Gitex
conference today, said Neeraj Seth, the
marketing manager for mobile phones of Samsung
Middle East and Africa.
“Samsung will be bundling a couple of phones,
not specific to one particular model, but it
will certainly include all the music phones that
Samsung has,” he said.
The phones selected for the tie-up will vary by
region, he said. The deal covers Samsung phones
in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. In the
initial offering, users will have the option to
download 20 songs from a list of the most
popular songs on the site, which is refreshed
often, he said.
Ricky Ghai, the executive director of ADMC’s
digital media group – the owner and publisher of
The National – said the deal was the first of
its kind for GETMO Arabia. “Samsung is really
endorsing GETMO as a credible portal, which is
what we needed.”
He said the deal was different from Nokia’s
recent attempt to tap into the digital services
market through its Ovi brand, unveiled in June,
because GETMO’s portal was “agnostic” when it
came to devices, while Nokia’s was specific to
its phone.
This openness to an array of devices, including
MP3 players, personal computers and mobile
phones, also sets GETMO apart from Apple’s
iTunes, the online music store to which it is
most frequently compared.
Like most online music stores, the iTunes Music
Store is not available in the Middle East. “The
success of GETMO really depends on the consumer,
because there hasn’t been an offering like this
in the Middle East, where a single portal is the
destination for all content,” Mr Ghai said.
Since the launch of the GETMO Arabia concept
last spring, the company has been testing the
mechanics of the portal, streamlining
registration procedures and signing deals with
music labels and other media companies to
broaden its offerings.
Today, subscribers can download content from
labels such as Sony Music Entertainment,
Universal Music, Mazzika, Melody Music and
Hungama.
More tie-ups are expected soon. “We are having
discussions with Rotana,” said Mr Boller.
All content on the site is copyrighted, giving
subscribers an opportunity to download legally
in a region known as a primary battleground in
the fight against piracy.
“I think that it has changed the consciousness
of people,” Mr Ghai said. “The tendency to take
pirate media is very high, but I think over a
very short period of time there will be an
adoption that people will take.”
GETMO also differs from many existing online
music stores in that it is designed to be
partially supported by advertising, which will
lower the cost of the media to the consumer.
