Vivendi expects its new Internet music, ringtone and videogames provider Zaoza to attract 500,000 subscribers by the end of the year, the French telecoms and media group said.
The portal, which commercially launched yesterday (Feb. 20), offers a selected list of exclusive content for mobile phones and computers for 3 euros ($4.42) a month.
“This is the only project Vivendi has started which is outside its traditional five areas of business,” Vivendi Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy told a news conference.
Vivendi owns the world’s biggest record company Universal Music and controls France’s number two mobile phone operator SFR and Maroc Telecom, as well as pay-TV group Canal Plus.
Over the past four years, Vivendi has turned round its previously lossmaking games unit partly thanks to the success of the online video game World of Warcraft.
In December last year, the group boosted its presence in the video games market by merging its games division with U.S.-based Activision and gaining a controlling stake in the combined group called Activision Blizzard.
Levy said Zaoza expected to launch a site in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and beyond but did not give a precise calendar. The group said it had just spent a “little over 10 million euros” on the new portal.
