Vodafone 360 lands to replace Live

So after much anticipation, Vodafone 360 has landed! V360 integrates a host of social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, and includes a store of applications that will eventually be available to the company’s more than 315 million global customers.

It will replace the Vodafone Live suite of mobile internet services, which was heralded as the company’s most important launch ever when it was unveiled seven years ago but has been made to look “tired” by the recent proliferation of mobile applications and the success of devices such as the iPhone, Palm Pre and handsets using Google’s Android software.

This is an attempt by the world’s largest network to retain the direct connection between mobile phone operators and consumers, especially as nowadays consumers are downloading directly from device and OS App stores such as the Android Marketplace.

Mobile widgets, accompanied by the boom of touch screen handsets, is the hottest thing in mobile technology and has given handset manufacturers a way of making revenues from users above and beyond the initial sale of a handset. Nokia, with its Ovi store, RIM, with its Blackberry App World, and Samsung have all leapt into the applications market.

Vodafone is marking the launch with the release of the V360 H1 by Samsung, which sports a 3.5-inch multi-touch, high definition OLED screen, 720p video recording, 16GB memory, Wi-Fi and a 5-megapixel camera.

Check out a brief glimpse of V360 in action in the video below.