Telefónica announced the expansion of its global strategic relationship with Microsoft to focus on accelerating the creation of joint initiatives in the consumer market. The initiatives contemplate the development and commercialization of new proposals and solutions for the home, based on Telefónica's advanced network capabilities and its technological platforms in different markets. The agreement expands Telefónica's collaboration with Microsoft, which has focused primarily on confidential computing initiatives for the business and public sector segment, digital transformation and connectivity.
Chema Alonso (Chief Digital Officer of Telefónica) made this announcement during his speech at the Telefónica stand on the first day of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which opened today.
Another area of collaboration that companies are exploring is gaming, to increase existing collaboration in markets such as Spain, where the launch of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate was announced last year and the sale of Xbox consoles as part of the offer of Movistar Fusion. Telefónica will also assess the opportunities in this field in other markets in which the company is present.
Telefónica also wants to extend the use of Microsoft 365 to other markets where it is present, following the agreement reached last year with Vivo in Brazil , which became one of the first operators in South America to offer a monthly subscription to Microsoft 365. In addition, the new alliance plans to facilitate access to LinkedIn Learning content on the Telefónica Movistar Plus+ platform.
The expansion of the communication capabilities of Movistar Home with the integration of Microsoft Teams will be evaluated, turning the Telefónica device into the home communications center. This will allow users to connect to video conferences and make calls through Teams easily using the device screen and with voice commands with the help of Aura.
Another line of collaboration will be to provide Telefónica users with more secure and controlled access to data and to work on initiatives to increase the security of products and services supported by Telefónica's fourth platform and Microsoft data services. In addition, Telefónica intends to carry out joint commercial and marketing initiatives on Surface devices in Telefónica's markets in Europe.
Chema Alonso commented in his presentation: "We celebrate having reached a new level of collaboration in our strategic relationship with Microsoft to generate new opportunities and expand existing ones in the consumer, digital home and innovation space."
4th Platform, the basis of Telefónica's technological ecosystem
In 2017, Telefónica announced at MWC the creation of its 4th Platform, now renamed Telefónica Kernel, the digital ecosystem on which Telefónica's digital transformation is based and which provides the standardized and unified information necessary for the operation of applications, services, platforms and communication channels with the company's customers. Currently there are almost 600,000 million normalized records, records of all kinds to be used by AI algorithms. It also receives more than 1,500 million monthly requests for information.
During his presentation, Chema Alonso highlighted several initiatives that have been created on it and the excellent connectivity that Telefónica offers. The entire digital home ecosystem that the company has created is based on them, a broad ecosystem of devices (UHD decoder, Movistar Plus+ and Movistar Home Voice Control, ,) and services, not only communications (Zoom and Teams integrated into Movistar Home ), but also leading services to manage the line (My Movistar) connectivity control (Smart WiFi), cloud storage (Movistar Cloud), gaming (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) or music (MovistarMúsica), etc.
One of the keys to Telefónica's digital home is its Movistar Plus+ television platform, which has original productions and the best premium content, as well as the integration of partners such as Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video or DAZN, among others. Furthermore, Movistar Plus+ has transformed conventional TV into a large window of new digital experiences for customers and an innovative point of sale for companies thanks to Living Apps. These are applications for television with a great diversity of proposals in terms of Tv-Commerce with agreements, among others, with Amazon or Rakuten that have their own applications; edutainment with the Movistar Campus training proposal or the aforementioned upcoming application for Linkedin; social media with exclusive Living Apps from TikTok or Twitter; gaming , with a Fortnite Living App and video podcasts or podcasts with featured Living Apps such as iVoox, Podimo or Apps with their own exclusive content.
Future innovation in virtual spaces
Looking to the future and the technological tsunami that is coming, Chema Alonso presented some keys on which Telefónica is working in the field of innovation, virtual reality and the metaverse. One of them is the development of a virtual collaborative innovation laboratory aimed at Telefónica professionals, startups, entrepreneurs and other agents of the innovation ecosystem that will form part of the Telefónica Innovation and Talent Hub.
It will be a multipurpose space with rooms to work on project ideation sessions, presentations, collaborations of all kinds and where you can also make proposals to clients. It will also have virtual spaces that will recreate, for example, Telefónica's digital home and all its equipment to carry out tests and simulations. As is often the case in this type of innovation center in the physical world, this virtual laboratory would be completed with spaces for rest and disconnection with various recreational activities with a focus on gaming or the possibility of watching Movistar Plus+ programming.