The Vodafone People app for Android, being demonstrated at the Vodafone Stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will soon be available for Android users of any network provider in the 8 initial Vodafone 360 launch countries to download to their phones from Google Marketplace.

Users can then register with Vodafone 360 and begin taking advantage of Vodafone People, one of the suite of Vodafone 360 services, enabling them to automatically and wirelessly sync all their contacts from their phone and aggregate social network feeds, chat and email accounts into one single, connected address book.

Vodafone 360's ultimate goal is to be available as widely as possible, across multiple operating systems and devices and open to all customers, regardless of network operator.

"Introducing an app for Android phones is a significant step forward, and we expect to announce the inclusion of additional platforms and devices in the near future," commented Pieter Knook, Internet Services Director for Vodafone. "Today, the Vodafone People service is available on a hundred phones across five platforms, and to customers of any network. Registrations to the 360 service are increasing, running at a rate of four thousand a day in January," said Knook.

Nearly 300,000 Vodafone 360 H1 and Vodafone 360 M1 phones have been sold since the new Vodafone 360 service went on sale in November 2009. In Germany and the UK, the Vodafone 360 H1 and M1 devices were the best selling smartphones in the Christmas quarter.

Since November, two software upgrades have made improvements to the customer experience, along with the introduction of Hyves - the leading Dutch social networking site. Twitter and Germany's studiVZ will be integrated this summer.

"We said that the launch of Vodafone 360 was the first step in the next phase of our mobile internet journey, to provide a range of services that give customers a great mobile internet experience," said Knook. "The two Vodafone 360 service software drops have added several enhancements and have made a number of inroads into the specific feedback we have received from our customers. Further software upgrades in the coming months will continue to add new features and functionality to the service," he added.

In the first three months of service, over 7,000 apps have been made available for download from the Vodafone 360 Apps Shop across the launch markets. By March 2010 Vodafone expects to have shipped more than two million devices incorporating 50 different handsets capable of accessing the Vodafone 360 Apps Shop.