Finally, Vodafone had made a smart move intended to grab a share of the market pie, currently claimed by internet/mobile giants Google, Apple, and Nokia.

Vodafone has launched Vodafone 360, a suit for net services for mobiles and PCs, that lets users unite customer contacts with info from social networking portals such as Facebook. Vodafone 360 is expected to replace its earlier offering Vodafone Live.

Initially, Vodafone 360 will be launched in eight European countries. The suite is optimized for two handsets from Samsung, alongside four models of Nokia.

At the heart of the new service was the address book, which pulls together mobile, messaging and social networking contacts from social networking services like Facebook, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. Another notable feature of Vodafone 360 is that it is not limited to Vodafone customers alone. It can still be used even if customers defect to a new service provider later. At present, using Vodafone 360, users can access as many as 1000 applications, and the list is still growing.

Vodafone is one of the largest mobile networks with 315 million+ customers worldwide.