What? Twitter has signed a deal with proprietor of T-Mobile brand Deutsche Telekom , that does not involve subsidizes data and will bring benefits for the microblogging platform in Germany.
Why it matters? T-Mobile user will get homescreen widget in 2014.
Twitter has signed its first strategic partnership that doesn’t involve subsidized data. It will surely be an improvement for the microblogging platform in Germany, where it is weak, but the benefits for Deutsche Telekom are still not clear.
Twitter has become a strategic partner of the German carrier group Deutsche Telekom, proprietor of the T-Mobile brand.
Twitter has partnered with other telcos before, but they tend to be in the developing world. What Twitter does is basically to subsidize data access that is used for its service, making it affordable for the average person to use.
Deutsche Telekom, meanwhile, has strategic partnerships with service providers such as Evernote and Spotify, but in those cases the idea is to give Deutsche Telekom subscribers free access to those apps’ premium tier. Twitter doesn’t have a premium tier.
What the partnership will entail is basically T-Mobile Android users getting A preloaded Twitter widget on their homescreen .This will unroll first in Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Greece and Croatia. In Germany, where T-Mobile is the country’s biggest mobile carrier, twitter platform has low penetration .So, it’s not hard to see how this is good for Twitter.
Less is the benefit for Deutsche Telekom. Being a widget hardly a premium service, it won’t be appealing for prospective customers though Twitter’s strong brand may prove attractive.
Deutsche Telekom may get certain new Twitter features before others.
The partnership will also help the carrier to better integrate Twitter into its marketing campaigns.
Source : Gigaom
