Truecaller partners with Tata Docomo to offer service with no data charges

Swedish caller ID firm Truecaller on Thursday announced a partnership with Tata Docomo, the first with any Indian telecom operator.

Under the partnership, Tata Docomo customers will be able to access Truecaller service without having to pay mobile Internet charges.

The application accesses phone book of users with their permission to include their contact in its data base.

(Also see: Truecaller app update brings Live Caller ID to iPhone)

Whenever Truecaller user receives an incoming call, it shows the name of caller on the phone screen even if it is not saved in the mobile phone by checking it immediately from its database.

"India is important for Truecaller at present. Out of 55 million subscribers, about 30 million are in India. These stats talk about importance of our partnership with Tata Docomo," Truecaller's Vice President for Growth and Partnership, Asia, Kari Krishnamurthy told PTI.

"We only need access to contact list of users. However, an user can also unlist its number from our website if he or she doesn't want his or her mobile number to be searched by anonymous person," Krishnamurthy said.

Under the agreement, Tata Docomo customers will also get access to premium features of Truecaller free for 90 days.

These features include advertisement free experience, users will be able to see who's viewed their profile and even they can even see how many minutes ago someone saw it.

(Also see: Truecaller database allegedly hacked by Syrian Electronic Army)

"Besides this users will get 30 contact requests at the start of every month. With these requests users can contact other Truecaller users by looking for their name in the directory... which is they can search phone number by typing name," Krishnamurthy said.

He said that Truecaller is adding 6 lakh users a week in India and with this partnership Truecaller expects to increase growth rate.

Samsung and Amazon partner for 'Kindle for Samsung' ebook service

South Korean electronics giant Samsung in a deal with Amazon has launched a custom-built ebook service, called 'Kindle for Samsung', for its Galaxy devices. The service will offer bestselling books, newspapers and magazines with over 500,000 titles exclusive to the Kindle Store.

Initially the 'Kindle for Samsung' service is exclusively for the Samsung Galaxy S5 users, but the app is available to download via Samsung Apps for Galaxy devices running Android 4.0 or higher. Samsungsaid that the store will launch across 90 countries within this month.

Also as a part of the service, Samsung and Amazon will launch Samsung Book Deals, which will be available to all customers using the service. It will provide 12 free ebooks a year to all Galaxysmartphones and tablet users.

"We are delighted to be able to deepen our long-standing relationship with Amazon and offer Kindle for Samsung as the perfect app for reading on a smart device. With this service we demonstrate our commitment to creating and broadening key content partnerships that deliver rich and personalized experiences for our customers," said Lee Epting, Vice President, Samsung's Media Solution Center Europe.

"We're thrilled that Samsung has chosen Kindle as their eBook provider. With Kindle for Samsung, people around the world will have instant access to the best digital bookstore and reading experience, including more than half a million titles that are only available from the Kindle Store, and innovative features like Whispersync, Time to Read and much more," said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President, EU Kindle.

Previously in March, Samsung had launched a free music service for its Galaxy smartphone users, similar to services like Pandora, Spotify and Apple's iTunes. The service, dubbed "Milk Music", offers some 200 ad-free radio stations to US customers with Samsung Galaxy devices.

Milk Music is powered by the radio service Slacker. It has 200 genre-based and curated stations and over 13 million songs, and like other service will allow 6 song skips per hour per station.