Superstar celebrity and awesome-butt-haver Jennifer Lopez is very invested in bettering the lives of her fellows in the Latino community. To that end, she’s announced a partnership with Verizon Mobile to launch a new cell phone company called Viva Movil, which will cater exclusively to Spanish-speaking residents of the U.S. and — okay, wait, we’re sorry. J-Lo is launching a cell phone company? J-Lo. The wedding planner herself. That’s kind of ridiculous, right?
Lopez announced the partnership in a press release at CTIA 2013, an annual convention sponsored by and named after the largest trade association for wireless and Internet providers. Though she is the majority stakeholder and will act as a sort of creative officer for the company, Big Red, Brightstar, and Moorehead Communications have also signed on as financial partners.
As of now, Viva Movil’s newly launched website offers both individual and family plans similar to those of Verizon, as well as the latest phones such as the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4. The company also plans to introduce store locations with “kid friendly areas” and bilingual employees. There will also, of course, be exclusive J-Lo branded iPhone cases for sale in the near future.
Ridiculousness aside, it’s actually an incredibly savvy business move. The Latino community currently makes up 16.7% of the total U.S. population, and that percentage is only growing larger. Why shouldn’t people who speak Spanish as a first language in this country have the opportunity to complain about Verizon’s notoriously spotty 4G network as much as English-speaking people do?
(Viva Movil via World of Wonder)
- Google might be looking to get into deeper into the cell phone game, too
- Facebook tried that once! It didn’t work out
- The last time we covered a CTIA event, 4G was just becoming a thing
