Orange ‘SPV’ brand lives?
Earlier this week we attended the HTC Touch launch/press conference where Yves Maitre, Vice President of Orange Group, dropped a bombshell and announced that Orange were killing off the SPV brand and that the HTC Touch would be the first Windows Mobiles device on the Orange network to be HTC rather than SPV branded.
You can even see the announcement in THIS VIDEO (Yves Maitre comes on about 28 minutes in) and hear the confirmation for yourself.
Imagine our surprise then when this email popped into our inbox this morning:
Matt,
Thanks for your enquiry about the Orange SPV brand, please see below for a response.
Orange has no plans to drop the SPV brand in any of our markets. SPV devices, as part of our Signature Series, are a very important part of our device portfolio and have a lot of valued added Orange features. We will continue to launch SPV devices, as part of the Signature Series, some of which will be from HTC.
As HTC are increasing the number of devices they launch we have decided that not all of them will be Signature Series and therefore not always SPV. For this reason we are launching the HTC Touch under the HTC brand. The Orange mark will still appear on the HTC Touch, as it does on lots of other devices.
Longer term, we are planning to only use the Orange mark on Signature devices. Our aim is for the Orange mark to stand for an assured quality level plus value added features and for the Signature Series – which comprises devices from many manufacturers – to be a higher level of quality still.
Obviously this is a direct contradiction of Yves statement, what’s even more odd is that I didn’t actually make an enquiry with Orange! I gather, looking at some of the other WM sites this morning, that I am not the only one to be confused by such and email.
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, SPV, Orange]
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