Orange aims to become virtual personal assistant for life

Orange aims to transform itself from a mobile phone company into a "virtual personal assistant for life" as it prepares to float on the Paris and London stock exchanges.

The flotation of 15% of Orange will value the business at around 70 bn euros (£50 bn). Proceeds will be used by France Telecom to refinance its acquisition of the mobile phone firm from Vodafone, which was completed last August.

Orange's deputy chief executive Graham Howe said: "Our Orangeprint for the future sees the progressive development of Orange from being a mobile phone company ultimately to being your virtual personal assistant for life.

"Our OrangeWorld services are at the heart of this. They are planned to extend, to become increasingly voice-activated and to link human-to-human, machine-to-machine and human-to-machine communications.

"This means continued considerable growth in the usage and diversity of Wirefree communications with the development of new services and new revenue streams."

OrangeWorld services are being developed for home, health, car, music and entertainment, banking, shopping and travel. Initial services in some of these categories have already been introduced, including videophones and voice recognition personal assistant services.

Orange's former chief executive Hans Snook, who is now special adviser to the company's board, said: "The potential for Wirefree communications is to enable you not just to talk to whomever you want, but also to receive and organise whatever you want and do so whenever you want, wherever you are."

An information and advertising campaign promoting the flotation started today, with the hope of sparking interest in the sale among the general public. People wanting to snap up shares can do so by telephoning Orange's share information office on 0800 085 8888 or through its internet site www.orangeshareoffer.com.

Orange now has operating interests in some 19 countries in Europe and beyond, covering approximately 480 million people. In addition, it has recently been awarded a UMTS licence in Sweden. Its controlled customer base is around 30 million.

The company says mobile services are now entering the data, internet and information phase. It says the embedding of wireless devices in infrastructure, machines, appliances and home and office systems is also creating new telemetry and telematic applications.