Major U.S. carriers T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T have announced today the launch of Isis, a joint venture that will give customers a chance to pay for services and products via their phones.
The payment network will use Discover Financial Services (DFS).
“This is an unprecedented partnership, one that’s necessary,” says Michael Abbott, who will run the venture.
The initiative is open and Abbot says that Barclays’ Barclaycard will be the first issuer.
“Barclaycard will have the first mover advantage as an issuer of multiple mobile payment products. It gives us great access to [the telcos'] 200 million customer base,” added Amer Sajed, CEO of Barclaycard US.
Visa and Mastercard are not expected to sign up for the venture, however, as both are starting their own systems.
Result for: joint venture
Billboard is reporting this week that UMG (Universal Music Group) has pulled its artist’s music videos from MTV.com, due to a breakdown in negotiations over licensing fees.
UMG has long licensed music directly to MTV but it now does all its direct licensing through Vevo, the joint venture site which includes Sony Music, YouTube and AT&T as stakeholders.
MTV’s deal with UMG has now expired and Vevo was in negotiations with MTV before the talks broke down. The deal is only for online properties and also includes the sites for VH1 and CMT.
The popular TV network had this to say on the matter:
“For almost 30 years, we have enjoyed long and colorful partnerships with all the music labels, including UMG and their talented roster of artists on MTV, VH1 and CMT. As the industry evolves, we continue to seek out new and innovative ways to connect artists with their fans that are mutually beneficial to everyone. However, during our recent discussions with Vevo, we were unable to reach a fair and equitable agreement for rights to stream UMG artists’ music video content. As a result, UMG has elected to pull their music videos from our web sites. We are disappointed by this move and sincerely hope that UMG will work with us toward a fair resolution and allow their artists to once again connect with the millions of music fans who visit MTV.com, VH1.com and CMT.com every month.”
UMG struck back with the following:
“MTVN has been unwilling to negotiate a fair syndication deal with Vevo to carry our artists’ videos and consequently our videos will not be shown on their online properties. We believe that using Vevo as our online music video syndication platform is the best way to maximize revenue for our artists, our songwriters and ourselves, while bringing our videos to the widest possible audience. In less than 8 months since its launch, Vevo has already become the web’s #1 rated video network with over 49 million unique visitors monthly, dramatically eclipsing those on MTV’s online properties, while attracting scores of major advertisers and tens of millions in advertising dollars. As a result, our artists are enjoying tremendous exposure on Vevo on YouTube and Vevo.com, and will enjoy even more as Vevo continues to complete syndication deals supplementing the existing arrangements with leading destinations as AOL and CBS Interactive.”
Result for: joint venture
Toshiba and SanDisk have announced a new joint venture to create an advanced NAND flash memory chip factory in Japan, as a way to keep ahead of strong growth in the market for the chips.
For their part, SanDisk will “pay for part of the production equipment at the factory,” which will be overall run by Toshiba.
Both companies will share output from the factory. The companies have worked very closely together in the past in similar agreements, including NAND flash plants.
“Construction of the new fab reflects expectations for increasing demand for NAND flash memory for existing and emerging applications, such as smartphones and solid-state drives,” reads a joint statement.
The factory will be called Fab 5 and is already in construction.
It is unclear how much the companies are investing to create the factory.
