SKT's App Store Generates 100 million Downloads

South Korean mobile operator SK Telecom said its customers have downloaded 100 million apps from its T-Store mobile application store, which has attracted 4.8 million registered users since its launch in September 2009, news agency Yonhap reports. The store offers about 76,000 apps for smartphones running Android or Windows Mobile, and some basic mobile phone models, according to the report. source: Telecompaper

Solid Start for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft said that mobile phone manufacturers sold more than 1.5 million handsets running its new Windows Phone 7 operating system in the six weeks after the software was launched. Microsoft said that sales met its expectations. source: Microsoft interview

RIM's Revenues Rocket 40%

RIM said that its revenue in the quarter ending November 27 rose 40% year-on-year to 5.49 billion US dollars, as smartphone shipments grew 40% to 14.2 million. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 82% for devices, 15% for service, and 3% for software and other revenue.

RIM forecast that its revenue for the quarter ending February 26, 2011 will in the range of 5.5 billion to 5.7 billion dollars, compared with 4.08 billion dollars in the same quarter a year ago. That would amount to a year-on-year rise of between 35% and 40%. source: RIM statement

The Rise of Android

source: Morgan Stanley presentation

U.S. Now Biggest Mobile Internet Market

source: Morgan Stanley presentation

China's 3G Users Rise Threefold

China had almost 39 million 3G users by the end of October, a threefold increase year-on-year, according to figures from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) cited in a Xinhua report.

China Mobile had 16.98 million 3G connections as of October 31, while China Unicom had 11.66 million 3G users. China Telecom, the country’s third largest operator, doesn't disclose its 3G user numbers every month but has said it had 9.15 million 3G users at the end of September. source: Mobile Business Briefing

Ovi Up to 3 Million Downloads a Day

Nokia said that its Ovi Store is now generating 3 million downloads and attracting more than 250,000 new consumers every day. The handset maker said that more than 400,000 new developers have joined Forum Nokia in the past 12 months and that there have been 1.5 million downloads of either the Nokia Qt Software Development Toolkit (SDK) or the Qt SDK. source: Nokia statement

BT Continues to Shrink

London-based telco BT said that its underlying revenue fell 3% year-on-year in the quarter ending September 30 to 4.98 billion pounds (8.04 billion US dollars), as revenue in its Global Services division declined 2% and revenue in its retail division fell 4%, dragged down by a 6% slump in consumer revenues. Revenues in BT's wholesale divison were down 5%, partly because of a regulatory charge.
 
BT said that its fibre network now passes three million premises and it is getting 4,000 orders a week for its fibre-based broadband service, BT Infinity, to which it has now connected 38,000 customers. BT also claimed half a million customers for its BT Vision, television service. source: BT presentation

Growth Accelerates for Telefonica

Pan-Europe and Latin-America telco Telefonica said its revenues rose 2.5% year-on-year on an organic basis in the first nine months of 2010 to 44.28 billion euros, compared with a rise of 2% in the first six months and just 0.9% in the first quarter.

Telefonica said that its Latin American operations contributed 2.7 pecentage points of the organic growth and its European operations, excluding Spain, contributed 0.9 percentage points, offset by a negative contribution of 1.4 percentage points from Telefonica Espana. The Madrid-based group said that its revenues from mobile data services rose 21% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2010 and now account for 26% of mobile service revenues. source: Telefonica presentation

Bharti Airtel Grows Bigger

India's largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel said  its revenues in South Asia rose 9.2% year-on-year in the quarter ending September 30 to 113.31 billion Indian rupees (2.56 billion US dollars), while its newly-acquired African operations generated 38.91 billion rupees in the quarter.

Bharti's customers in South Asia climbed 32% year-on-year to almost 148 million at the end of September, while the voice minutes on its networks in the region rose 36% year-on-year. But Bharti's average revenue-per-minute in India fell 21% year-on-year to 44.4 Indian paisas (1 US cent). Bharti said its average revenue-per-minute in Africa was 6.6 US cents in the quarter, down 9% quarter-on-quarter. source: Bharti Airtel statement 

Vodafone Aims for Annual Growth of up to 4%

Fuelled by a strong performance by its Asia-Pacific and Middle East operations, Vodafone said its organic service revenue rose 2.3% year-on-year in the quarter ending September 30. For the six months ending September 30, organic service revenue grew 1.7% to 21.23 billion British pounds (34 billion US dollars).

Going forward, Vodafone said it plans to focus on Europe, Africa and India, where it will exploit the "mobile data growth opportunity", pursue selective expansion in the enterprise market and growth opportunities in the machine-to-machine and financial services sectors. In Europe, it plans to continue its "capital efficient approach."

Vodafone said that "the execution of the updated strategy is targeted to achieve annual growth in organic service revenue of between 1% and 4% in the period to 31 March 2014. Over the same period we expect that EBITDA margins will stabilise, as we benefit from continued cost efficiency, regional scale and improving margins in a number of markets including India." source: Vodafone statement


 

China Telecom Leans on Mobile

China Telecom reported a 6.2% year-on-year rise in operating revenues in the third quarter to 55.73 billion Chinese yuan (8.33 billion US dollars), as its broadband customers rose 19% to 61 million and its mobile subscribers climbed 77% to 83 million (including 9.15 million 3G customers).

However, China Telecom's active wirelines fell from 194.4 million at the end of the third quarter of 2009 to 178.3 million as of September 30. source: China Telecom statistics

Domestic Mobile Drags Down Telecom Italia

Telecom Italia said its revenues fell 4.4% year-on-year on an organic basis in the third quarter to 6.68 billion euros, as the revenues of TIM (its domestic mobile business) sank 12.4%. Telecom Italia said: "The new marketing strategy introduced in Q4 2009 intended to make rates more competitive and to stimulate in particular traffic within the TIM client community have not yet produced an upturn in volumes sufficient to compensate for the lower prices." The decline in domestic revenues was partly compensated for by a 6.1% rise in organic revenues in Brazil. source: Telecom Italia statement

MTN Sees Subs Climb 4%

African and Middle East mobile operator group MTN said its subscribers increased by 4% in the third quarter to 134.47 million on September 30 compared with 129.21 million on June 30. MTN added that average revenue per a user (ARPU) remained relatively stable in local currency in the quarter compared to June 2010. The exceptions were a 7% fall in year-to-date ARPU in Rwanda, a 6% fall in Bissau and a 5% rise in Sudan. source: MTN statement

Wireless Gains Lift Alcatel-Lucent

Telecoms networks supplier Alcatel-Lucent reported 10.5% year-on-year growth in revenues to 4.07 billion euros in the third quarter of 2010, fuelled by a 24% increase in sales of wireless equipment to 1.07 billion euros and favourable currency movements. Services revenue climbed 9% to 948 million euros.

In local currencies, revenue climbed 11% year-on-year in North America, 7% in Asia and was flat in Europe. Alcatel-Lucent said its sales of WCDMA equipment rose 33% year-on-year and claimed its share of the wireless networks market rose to 16.2% in the second quarter from 13.6% in the second quarter of 2009. It said it has seven contracts to supply LTE equipment. source: Alcatel-Lucent presentation.

Qualcomm Sees Growth Accelerate

Handset chip supplier Qualcomm said it expects its revenues in the quarter ending December 26th to rise between 14% and 25% year-on-year to between 3.05 billion and 3.35 billion US dollars. It also forecast that its revenues in the year ending September 26th, 2011 will climb to between 12.4 billion and 13 billion dollars compared with 10.98 billion dollars in the prior year.

Qualcomm's revenues in the quarter ending September 26th grew 10% year-on-year to 2.95 billion US dollars as its MSM (mobile station modem) shipments climbed 22% to 111 million. source: Qualcomm presentation 

Facebook Claims 200 Million Mobile Users

Facebook said there are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices and these people are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.

There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products, the company added. source: Facebook web site 

Fixed-Line Drags Down Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom's total revenue fell  2.1% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis in the third quarter of 2010 to 15.6 billion euros. Telecoms revenue in Germany fell by 2.4% year-on-year to 6.3 billion euros in the third quarter despite a 2.3% increase in revenues from its mobile communications business to 2.2 billion euros. Excluding the "one-time effect from the expiration of the national roaming agreement with O₂ at the end of 2009," dometic mobile revenues grew by 6.4 percent fuelled by fast growth in mobile data revenue, Deutsche Telekom said. Smartphones accounted for 53% of all handsets sold by T-Mobile Germany in the third quarter. Fixed-line sales declined 4.3% year-on-year.

T-Mobile USA's  revenue in the third quarter slipped 0.5% year-on-year to 5.4 billion U.S. dollars. In Deutsche Telekom's European operations (excluding Germany), total revenue declined by 19.5% to 4.1 billion euros compared with the third quarter of 2009. After elimination of T-Mobile UK's contribution, total revenue fell just 3.6%, Deutsche Telekom said. source: Deutsche Telekom statement

ZTE's Sales Slow Sharply

ZTE said last week that its total operating revenue rose just 1.3% year-on-year in the third quarter to 15.34 billion Chinese yuan (2.29 billion US dollars). In the first nine months of 2010, the Chinese telecoms equipment company's revenue grew 7.5%.

For the first nine months, ZTE reported a year-on-year decline of 2.6% in its revenue from the sales of carriers’ networks, as a decrease in revenue from wireless products was partly offset by an increase in revenue from wireline products. ZTE said revenue from devices grew year-on-year by 30.5%, fuelled by strong demand for 3G handsets and data card products. source: ZTE statement

iPhone Helps SoftBank Ride High

SoftBank last week reported a 12% year-on-year increase in sales to 764 billion Japanese yen (9.48 billion US dollars) in the quarter ending September 30. Aided by strong demand for the iPhone, which SoftBank has exclusively, the Japanese company said its mobile communications business added 901,000 new customers in the quarter compared with 360,700 in the same quarter in 2009.

Aiming to double its mobile base stations to 120,000, SoftBank plans to spend 400 billion yen on capex in the year to the end of March 2011 compared with 222.9 billion yen the previous year. SoftBank said that 54,000 customers had applied for femtocells by September 2010. source: SoftBank statements and presentations

Acquisitions Shore Up Sprint

Last week, Sprint reported a 1% year-on-year increase in revenues to 8.15 billion US dollars in the quarter ending September 30th thanks to "fourth quarter 2009 acquisitions (Virgin Mobile), equipment revenues, and prepaid Boost service revenues, partially offset by lower postpaid wireless service revenues and wireline revenues."

Sprint said capital expenditures were 462 million dollars in the quarter, compared to 431 million dollars in the third quarter of 2009. Sprint said it launched its WiMax service in 19 new cities during the quarter, including Boston, Orlando and Nashville, so it now covers 55 markets. Sprint said it expects WiMax coverage to reach up to 120 million people by the end of 2010, including a deployment in New York on Nov. 1. In December, Sprint plans to launch WiMAx services in Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco, among others.source: Sprint statement

LG Swamped by Rivals' Smartphones

LG Electronics said that its Mobile Communications Company's revenues decreased by 30% year-on-year to 3.22 trillion Korean won  (2.87 billion US dollars) in the third quarter, as a result of a decline in handset shipments across developed markets. LG said it shipped 28.4 million handsets in the quarter, a 10% year-over-year decline, as demand for smartphones increased.

However, the Korean handset maker said it expects the global introduction of the Optimus One smartphone and new Windows Phone 7 models to generate a positive response from consumers in the coming months. In the fourth quarter, LG said that it expects to see high single digit growth in handset shipments quarter-on-quarter. source: LG presentation

Asia Fuels Telenor Growth

Telenor said its revenues grew 6% year-on-year, on an organic basis, to 24.1 billion Norwegian krone (4.12 billion US dollars) in the third quarter of 2010, fuelled by strong growth in Asia, which more than offset declines in the Nordic region and eastern Europe.

Revenue generated by Telenor's established Asian operations climbed 13% year-on-year, while its new Indian operation generated sales of 214 million krone in the third quarter compared with just 56 million krone in the first quarter. Capex in the quarter was just 2.3 billion krone, compared with 4.43 billion krone in the third quarter of 2009 as Telenor cut back investment in India.

Improving its outlook for the full year, Telenor forecast that its revenues will grow 5% on an organic basis across 2010 and capex will come in at 12% of sales. source: Telenor presentation

América Móvil Keeps Growing

América Móvil, now incorporating Telmex, said its revenues in Mexico were up 2.9% year-on-year to 62.1 billion Mexican pesos (5.03 billion US dollars) in the third-quarter, fuelled by a 25.5% increase in wireless data revenues. But fixed line revenues in Mexico declined 3.1% as an increase in broadband service revenues failed to fully offset the decline in fixed-line voice revenues.
 
In Brazil, América Móvil's third quarter revenues increased 2.3% over the prior year to reach 5.3 billion Brazilian reals (3.12 billion US dollars), while in the U.S., revenues climbed 75% to 738 million US dollars as the company "moved upscale in the prepaid segment, which has resulted in its ARPU expanding by one third." source: América Móvil statement

Samsung Sees Smartphone Surge

Samsung reported a 16% year-on-year increase in telecoms revenue to 11.12 trillion won (9.92 billion US dollars) in the third quarter, as its handset shipments climbed 19% to 71.4 million handsets. The Seoul-based firm said the average sales price of its handsets increased 14% quarter-on-quarter as its flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S and the Wave, became "the primary drivers of continued sales growth amid a global demand recovery."

The Korean company said the Galaxy S has been launched in 90 countries and has been selected by 210 carriers worldwide since its introduction in June. Samsung projects sales of 10 million Galaxy S units by the end of 2010. The company said the Samsung Wave, which uses Samsung's own bada platform, has also shipped more than two million units in 80 countries.

Samsung said its Galaxy Tab tablet, which runs Android, will be available on 140 carriers globally including all four major service providers in the United States. source: Samsung statement

DOCOMO Looks to LTE to Rescue Revenue

Despite a 3.1% increase in mobile subscribers to almost 57 million, NTT DOCOMO reported a 1.1% year-on-year decline in revenues to 1.049 trillion yen (13.04 billion US dollars) in the quarter ending September 30. Capital expenditure rose 3.6% year-on-year to 168.9 billion yen in the quarter ending September 30, as DOCOMO prepares to launch commercial LTE services in December. source: DOCOMO statement

France Telecom's Revenues Slip Again

France Telecom said that its revenues fell 0.6% year-on-year on a comparable basis to 11.63 billion euros in the third quarter. The Paris-based company said that, excluding the impact of regulatory measures (-198 million euros), third quarter revenues rose 1.1% year-on-year, after rising 0.3% in the second quarter and falling 0.3% in the first quarter.

France Telecom expects its revenues, excluding the impact of regulation (estimated at less than one billion euros), to grow slightly in 2010. It also forecast that capex will remain at about 12% of revenues for the full year of 2010. source: France Telecom statement

AT&T Touts Embedded and WiFi Growth

AT&T said last week that more than 8.5 million "emerging devices" are now connected to the AT&T network, up from about 4 million a year ago. Of the 1.6 million emerging devices added in the third-quarter of 2010, AT&T said 1.2 million were tablets, netbooks and laptops.  AT&T added that it has now certified more than 910 specialty devices, such as eReaders, netbooks, digital photo frames, personal navigation devices, home security monitoring and smart grid devices, for use on its wireless network.

AT&T also said last week that in the third quarter, there were 106.9 million connections on its U.S. Wi-Fi network, up 320% from the third-quarter of 2009.  "Wi-Fi is seeing tremendous growth from the rapid consumer adoption of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones and devices and the increasing number of major business locations offering Wi-Fi access for their customers," AT&T said. "AT&T operates the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network with more than 23,000 hotspots nationwide." source: AT&T statements

Organic Growth for TeliaSonera

TeliaSonera said that its net sales, in local currencies and excluding acquisitions, in the third quarter increased 4.3% to 26.75 billion Swedish krona (3.97 billion US dollars).

Lars Nyberg, CEO, said: "Both Mobility Services and Eurasia are seeing accelerated growth compared to previous quarters, the former driven by mobile data and equipment sales and the latter by macroeconomic recovery and higher mobile penetration."

TeliaSonera said that its capital expenditures will be driven by continued investments in broadband and mobile capacity as well as in network expansion in Eurasia and it expects a capex-to-sales ratio of around 13.5% in 2010, compared with 12.8% in 2009. source: TeliaSonera statement

Ericsson Hit by Component Shortages

Ericsson said its sales in the third quarter for comparable units, adjusted for currency movements, fell 5% year-over-year to 47.5 billion Swedish krona (7.17 billion US dollars). Ericsson said component shortages cost it between 2 billion and 3 billion krona in sales in the quarter.

Ericsson said the global mobile infrastructure market continued to decline in the first half of 2010, although at a slower pace than in 2009, measured in US dollars. But the Stockholm-based company noted that, in the second quarter, operator revenues had increased for three consecutive quarters and "the fundamentals for longer-term positive development for the industry remain solid."

Ericsson estimated that WCDMA networks now cover around 35% of the world’s population and that almost all of these networks have also launched HSPA. Ericsson said that, on average, mobile data revenues, including SMS, now constitute almost 30% of total service revenues, up from 26% a year ago.

Ericsson estimated that global mobile subscriptions increased by 176 million in the third quarter, reaching 5.1 billion, with GSM/GPRS/EDGE accounting for 127 million of the net additions.

Ericsson said that fixed broadband subscriptions reached nearly 487 million during the second quarter of 2010, with China accounting for 24% of subscriptions, or 115 million, and the United States, 83 million. source: Ericsson statement

Verizon Sees Strong Smartphone Sales

Verizon Communications said that its consolidated revenue, on a like-for-like basis, rose 2.1% year-on-year in the third quarter to 26.5 billion US dollars, fuelled by a 7.7% increase in wireless service revenues and a 29.3% increase in revenues from its fibre-to-the-premises services.

Wireless data revenues were up 26.3% year-on-year, as smartphone penetration among Verizon Wireless' postpad customers climbed to 23% from 14% in the third quarter of 2009.

Verion said that  its capital expenditures totaled 11.8 billion dollars through the first three quarters of 2010, down 4.9% year-on-year. Verizon expects that total capital spending for 2010 will be at the low end of, or slightly below, the company's targeted range of 16.8 billion to 17.2 billion dollars. source: Verizon statement

China Mobile Growth Slows Slightly

Driven by growth in its customer base, voice usage and value-added services, China Mobile said its revenue in the first nine months of 2010 rose 7.8% year-on-year to 352.64 billion yuan. In the third quarter, revenue was up 7.7% to 122.83 billion yuan (18.43 billion US dollars).

China Mobile said: "The increasing penetration rates of mobile telecommunications and the changes in competition environment of the telecommunications industry have posed challenges to the Group." source: China Mobile statement

iPhone Shipments Almost Double

Apple said it sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter ending September 25, representing 91% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.05 million iPods during the quarter, representing an 11% unit decline, and 4.19 million iPads. Apple also said it sold 3.89 million Macs in the quarter, a 27% unit increase over the year-ago quarter. source: Apple statement

Mobile Broadband Boosts AT&T

AT&T said that its revenues from continuing operations rose 2.8% year-on-year to 31.6 billion US dollars in the third quarter, fuelled by 10.5% growth in wireless service revenues.

"This was a terrific mobile broadband quarter,” said CEO Randall Stephenson. “A record number of customers signed new two-year contracts and integrated device sales outpaced our previous best by a wide margin."

The telco added that wireless data revenues increased 30.5%, from the year-earlier quarter, to 4.8 billion dollars.  Total text messages carried on the AT&T network increased about 34 percent to 161 billion and multimedia messages more than doubled to 2.8 billion.

AT&T said it spent 5.5 billion dollars on capital expenditure, involving a nearly 64% year-on-year increase in wireless-related capital investment, "as AT&T aggressively deploys next-generation wireless broadband networks." source: AT&T statement

Nokia Sees Flattish Fourth Quarter Ahead

Blaming industry-wide component shortages, particularly in the low end of the market, Nokia said its net sales declined 1% year-on-year, in constant currencies, in the third quarter of 2010 to 10.3 billion euros. Nokia added that it now expects its mobile device volume market share to be slightly down in 2010, compared to 2009.

Nokia said its shipments of smartphones and mobile computers rose 61% year-on-year to 26.5 million units in the third quarter, while sales at Nokia Siemens Networks were flat year-on-year at 2.9 billion euros in constant currencies.

In the fourth quarter, Nokia expects net sales in its Devices & Services division to be between 8.2 billion and 8.7 billion euros compared with 8.18 billion euros in the same period of 2009.

Nokia expects Nokia Siemens Networks’ net sales to be between 3.4 billion and 3.8 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with 3.63 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2009. source: Nokia statement

Google Earning One Billion Dollars from Mobile

In its third-quarter conference call, Google said people who are accessing its products and services through their mobile phones are now adding the equivalent of 1 billion US dollars a year to the company's revenue.

Google also said that its mobile search queries have grown fivefold over the past "couple of years", but it acknowledged that the cost per click it can charge for advertising on mobile phones is a "good bit lower" than on PCs because people are less likely to complete a transaction.

Google added that it is "monetising" over two billion YouTube views each week, up 50% year-on-year, but declined to say whether YouTube is yet profitable. The search giant also said that total YouTube views average two billion a day.

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, said on the call that the success of Android, Google's smartphone operating system, has been well past what he "had ever hoped for." He added that people who use Android search twice as much as other mobile phone users. source: recording of Google earnings call

Sony Ericsson Flatlines

Sony Ericsson said it shipped 10.4 million handsets in the third quarter, a decrease of 26% year-on-year, but its average selling price rose 34% year-on-year to 154 euros. As a result, sales for the quarter were 1.6 billion euros, which Sony Ericsson described as "essentially flat year-on-year and a 9% decrease sequentially."

Sony Ericsson added that its market share, in unit terms, in the third quarter remained flat sequentially at approximately 4%, but it estimated its market share in revenue terms to be approximately 6%. source: Sony-Ericsson statement

Android Helps HTC Double Revenues

HTC, a maker of Android and Windows-based smartphones, said its revenues in the third-quarter of 2010 were up almost 124% year-on-year to 75.85 billion Taiwanese dollars (2.46 billion US dollars). source: HTC statement

Sales of Intel's Atom Chips Slip

Intel said its Atom microprocessor and chipset revenue in the third quarter was 396 million US dollars, down 4% from the second quarter and down almost 5% from 415 million dollars in the third quarter of 2009. Intel's Atom range of products is aimed at netbooks, tablet computers and smartphones. source: Intel statement

Japan Still Most Advanced Mobile Market

source: comScore statement

Samsung Sells Five Million Galaxy Smartphones

Samsung Electronics Co said on Wednesday that it has sold more than five million Galaxy S smartphones since the June launch, putting it on target to sell 25 million smartphones in 2010. source: Reuters

Nokia Outlines Ovi Momentum

Nokia said its Ovi app store is now seeing 2.3 million downloads a day (up from one million in February 2010) and there are now 140 million active users of Nokia services worldwide. Nokia added that 17 million Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat accounts have been created, while Nokia Messaging currently delivers push email and instant messaging to an active user base of 4 million people. source: Nokia statement

AT&T Sees Record Smartphone Sales

Boosted by strong sales of iPhones, Samsung handsets and Blackberries, AT&T is on course to sell a record number of integrated devices (smartphones) in one quarter, according to Randall Stephenson, the US telecoms giant's CEO, who also said there are now half a million Apple iPads connected to AT&T's network.

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, Stephenson also said there has been "terrific uptake" of its new $15 a month, low-usage data tariffs. He added that AT&T's network supply chain is "stressed right now" and is constraining its capex spending, noting that its current annual capex budget of between 18 billion and 19 billion US dollars is "full capacity level for us." source: AT&T recording

RIM Sees Growth Accelerating

Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, said that its revenue rose 31% year-on-year in the quarter ending August 28th to 4.62 billion US dollars as its smartphone shipments rose more than 45% to 12.1 million. The Ontario-based  company said the revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 79% for devices, 17% for service, 1% for software and 3% for other revenue.

RIM said it has now shipped approximately 115 million BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry subscriber account base has grown approximately 56% year-on-year to more than 50 million.

RIM expects its revenue for the quarter ending November 27, 2010 to be in the range of 5.30 billion to 5.55 billion US dollars, which would represent year-on-year revenue growth of between 35% and 42%. source: RIM statement

Nokia Services Show Momentum in Emerging Markets

Nokia said its Ovi Mail service now has more than 14 million "email activations" and, in the past six months, 60% of new Ovi Mail accounts have been from Southeast Asia Pacific and Africa..

Nokia also said it has become the "single largest source of digital music revenue in markets including Brazil, Mexico and India, when Nokia digital billings for 2009 are compared against IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) estimates".

The Finland-based company's Ovi Life Tools service is now available in India, Indonesia and China, and has more than 4.7 million users. Nokia has also joined forces with YES BANK and Obopay, to roll out a mobile money service in Pune, India, called Mobile Money Services by YES BANK. Nokia says the next step for an India-wide rollout is the city of Chandigarh. source: Nokia statement

Mobile Internet used by one-in-three Vodafone customers

Vodafone's CEO Vittorio Colao said that 50% of the group’s mobile networks, which span much of Europe and India, now delivers theoretical peak download speeds of 14.4 Mbps, with uplinks of 2 Mbps, according to Mobile Business Briefing. He added that one third of Vodafone's total customer base browses the mobile Internet, a quarter play games, 20% use email, 15% use social networking service, and 11% make use of maps. source: Mobile Business Briefing

Gartner Sees Rise and Rise of Android

source: Gartner statement

Orange Aims for 10 Million M2M Connections

Orange Business Services, a unit of France Telecom, has set itself the following objectives:

Generating 500 million euros from cloud computing by 2015.

Selling 10 million SIM cards by 2015 in the machine-to-machine (M2M) market.

Becoming number one for videoconferencing in France and one of the top three worldwide.

Generating one billion euros in revenues in emerging countries (presumably by 2015).
source: France Telecom statement

Step-up in Growth for VimpelCom

VimpelCom said that its revenues in Russia grew 4.4% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2010 to 61.7 billion Russian roubles (2.01 billion US dollars), fuelled by a 5.3% rise in mobile revenues to 51.8 billion roubles.  In the first quarter, revenues in Russia grew just 2% year-on-year.

By the end of June, VimpelCom said it had almost 2.5 million broadband connections in Russia, up from 1.66 million a year earlier. Of these, 1.3 million were mobile broadband, up from 763,000 a year earlier. source: VimpelCom presentation

3G Shows Promise for China Unicom

China Unicom said that its operating revenue in the first half of 2010 rose 7.6% year-on-year to 82.11 billion yuan (12.07 billion US dollars), lifted by a 17.7% rise in mobile revenues. China Unicom said its 3G service revenue rose to 3.975 billion yuan in the first half from 769 million yuan in the whole of 2009.

China Unicom said it now has 153,000 3G base stations and 306,000 2G base stations, while the capacity of its core network is now 6,337 Gbps. The Chinese operator added that it spent 33.2 billion yuan (40% of sales) on capex in the first half of 2010 out of its annual budget of 73.7 billion yuan. source: China Unicom presentation

China Telecom Ups Broadband Capex

China Telecom said its operating revenue rose 4.9% year-on-year in the first half of 2010 to 107.55 billion Chinese yuan (15.8 billion US dollars), as its mobile subscribers leapt 18% to 74.5 million and its wireless broadband subscribers climbed almost 5% to 58 million.

China Telecom said it had "invigorated its "terminal supply chain" and now has 700 CDMA handsets models "in supply", including more than 100 3G handset models.

To boost its broadband coverage, China Telecom has increased its capex budget for 2010 by 5 billion yuan to 44 billion yuan. It now plans to spend a further 50 billion yuan on capex in 2011. source: China Telecom presentation

MTN Sees Double-Digit Organic Growth

Pan-Africa and Middle East mobile operator MTN said, in constant currencies, its group revenues rose 12.9% year-on-year in the first half of 2010, as group subscribers climbed 11.4% to 129.2 million. Hit by adverse currency movements, reported revenue fell 2.2% to to 55.99 billion rand (7.62 billion US dollars).

Group revenue from data services, excluding SMS, rose 46% measured in rand, but MTN cut capex by 45% year-on-year to 8.5 billion rand. source: MTN presentation

Rapid Growth for China Mobile's App Store

China Mobile said its operating revenues rose 7.9% year-on-year to 229.8 billion Chinese yuan (33.84 billion US dollars) in the first half of 2010, lifted by a 13.4% rise in revenues from value-added services and a 12.4% rise in subscribers to 554 million. Its 3G customer base climbed past 10 million.

China Mobile said its Mobile Market app store, launched in August 2009, "has achieved rapid growth, with over 50,000 registered developers, 20,000 applications available, and over 25 million application downloads by the end of June 2010." The Beijing-based operator said it now has more than 5 million M2M (machine-to-machine) customers, representing an annual growth rate of more than 60%.

In the first half, the company's capex fell slightly to 61.5 billion yuan. China Mobile said it now has 505,000 GSM base stations and its "base station optic fiber access rate reached 96%". At the end of June, its 3G network (TD-SCDMA) had 115,000 operational base stations, covering 238 cities. source: China Mobile statement

Cisco's Growth Accelerates Sharply

Cisco said that its net sales rose 27% year-on-year in the quarter ending July 31 to 10.8 billion US dollars, propelled by 27% growth in its "advanced technologies" sales and 27% growth in "switching revenue". In the year ending July 31, Cisco's revenues rose 11% to 40 billion dollars.

However, the company cautioned: "We are seeing a large number of “mixed signals” in both the market and from our customers’ expectations…we think that the words “unusual uncertainty” are an accurate description of what is occurring." source: Cisco presentation

Mobile Data Traffic Up Threefold

Ericsson said that its measurement of actual traffic in networks around the world shows that global mobile data traffic has nearly tripled in the past year, growing more than 10 times as fast as voice. However, mobile broadband still accounts for only 10% of total mobile subscriptions worldwide, the Stockholm-based company added.

According to Ericsson, "global measured mobile data traffic" was nearly 225,000 terabytes per month during the second quarter of 2010. Ericsson also said it has now delivered two million base stations (out of an industry-wide installed base of five million). source: Ericsson statement

Bharti Begins African Adventure

Bharti Airtel, India's leading mobile operator, said its revenues in the quarter ending June 30 rose 17% year-on-year to 2.63 billion US dollars, boosted by 23 days of revenues from its newly-acquired operations in Africa. Lifted by a 36% rise in customers to 141 million, the company said that its revenues in India and South Asia were 2.42 billion dollars, a rise of 8.2% year-on-year.

Following the acquisition of most of Zain's African operations, Bharti said it had almost 119,000 network sites at the end of the quarter compared with less than 108,000 at the end of March, while its number of employees jumped from about 18,000 to almost 25,000. source: Bharti statements

About 40% of Skype Calls are Video

Skype said its 124 million "connected users" placed 95 billion calling minutes over Skype in the first half of 2010, approximately 40% of which were video. source: Skype statement

Dow Jones Newswires reported that in the second quarter, Skype's average paying users increased 23% year-on-year to 8.1 million and, in the first half, its revenue rose 25% year-on-year to 406 million US dollars. source: Total Telecom/Dow Jones 

Telecom Italia Slows Sales Slide

Hit by declining sales in the Italian market, Telecom Italia said that its revenues fell 5.3% year-on-year, on an organic basis, to 6.81 billion euros in the second quarter. But in its Brazilian unit, sales rose 2.1% in the first half of 2010 on an organic basis.

Telecom Italia said it is seeing a "steady and continued recovery" in organic service revenues, which declined 3.4% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2010, following a decline of 4.1% in the first quarter and 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The Rome-based operator forecast that its organic revenues will fall by between 2% and 3% in 2010, while capex for the full year is set to come in at 4.3 billion euros, compared with 4.54 billion in 2009. source: Telecom Italia statement

Growth at Hutchison's 3 Group

Hutchison Whampoa said that revenue at its 3 Group, which comprises its 3G mobile operations in Europe and Australia, rose 7% in local currencies to 29.859 billion Hong Kong dollars (3.85 billion US dollars) in the first half of 2010.

Hutchison said the group’s registered 3G customer base increased 6% during the first half of the year, reaching 27.8 million customers, including over 5 million mobile broadband access customers, a 16% increase during the first half of the year. source: Hutchison Whampoa statement

NTT's Sales Slide Slightly

NTT, Japan's largest telecoms company, said that its revenues fell 0.2% year-on-year in the quarter ending June 30th to 2.499 trillion yen (29 billion US dollars). Increases in revenues from IP communications services were offset by declines in voice-related service revenues.

NTT said it fibre-to-the-home business should become profitable in the year ending March 31, 2012. source: NTT presentation

Deutsche Telekom's Sales Slip Further

Deutsche Telekom said that its net revenue in the second quarter fell 1.8% year-on-year to 15.53 billion euros on an organic basis, excluding the impact of currency movements and the contribution of T-Mobile UK, which has been spun off into a joint venture with Orange UK.

In its home market of Germany, Deutsche Telekom said its revenues fell 0.4% year-on-year to 6.2 billion euros, while revenue elsewhere in Europe decreased 3.6% to 4.03 billion euros in the second quarter. In the US, service revenues fell 1.1% to 4.61 billion US dollars. source: Deutsche Telekom presentation

Broadband Bolsters Oi

Oi of Brazil said its consolidated net revenue rose 1.3% year-on-year in the second-quarter to 7.39 billion Brazilian reals (4.22 billion US dollars), shored up by rising sales of mobile broadband services.

Oi said it now has 4.31 million fixed broadband customers, up 5.9% year-on-year, and 556,000 mobile broadband customers, up 70% year-on-year. Of the 556,000 mobile broadband customers, 82,000 are using a mobile phone and 474,000 a USB modem.

Oi's capex in the second quarter was 446 million reals, down almost 53% year-on-year.  source: Oi statement

SoftBank Cranks Up Capex

Japanese mobile operator SoftBank said that its net sales increased by 5% year-on-year in the quarter ending June 30th to 700.8 billion yen (8.11 billion US dollars), boosted by a 8% rise in mobile communications revenues.

Aiming to double its number of base stations in Japan to 120,000, SoftBank said that it plans to spend 400 billion yen on capex in the year ending March 31st 2011, up from 222.9 billion yen in the previous year. source: SoftBank presentation

Optics Pulls Down Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent said its revenues fell 6.9% year on year on a like-for-like basis in the second quarter to 3.81 billion euros, as modest growth in its IP and applications businesses failed to fully offset double-digit declines in optics and wireline units.

Alcatel-Lucent said it continues to expect nominal growth (defined as between 0% and 5%) for the telecommunications equipment and related services market in 2010. source: Alcatel-Lucent presentation

Samsung Hit by Handset Price Competition

Despite a 22% increase in handset shipments to 63.8 million, Samsung Electronics said that sales in its mobile telecoms division fell 5% year-on-year in the second quarter to 8.45 trillion Korean won (7.12 billion US dollars). Samsung said that the average selling price of its handsets fell due to "intensified price competition and product mix adjustment." source: Samsung presentation

NTT DOCOMO Ekes Out Some Growth

NTT DOCOMO said that its operating revenues in the quarter ending June 30th rose 0.4%  year-on-year to 1.09 trillion Japanese yen (12.6 billion US dollars) - the first increase in three years. Cellular service revenues actually fell 2% to 864 billion yen, but the Japanese operator sold 6% more handsets that in the same quarter of 2009.

DOCOMO said the growth of its ARPU from packet data services is accelerating thanks to an aggressive promotion. It added that it now has 5 million users for its i-concier service, which provides subscribers with real-time information about travel, weather and local amenities. By August 2010, the operator plans to roll out a system that will enable small businesses to easily deliver content through the service. source: NTT DOCOMO presentation

Motorola's Handset Sales Down

Sales in Motorola's handset division fell 6% year-on-year to 1.72 billion US dollars in the second quarter of 2009 as unit shipments fell from 14.8 million to 8.3 million. But smartphone shipments totalled 2.7 million compared with zero a year earlier.

At a group level, Motorola's sales slipped slightly to 5.41 billion dollars in the quarter, bolstered by rising revenues in its enterprise mobility solutions division. source: Motorola presentation

Regulation Restrains France Telecom

Dragged down by adverse regulation, France Telecom said its revenues fell 1.7% year-on-year, on a comparable basis, in the second quarter to 11.19 billion euros. Falling revenues in Europe were partially offset by growth in France Telecom's Middle East and African operations.

France Telecom reiterated its forecast that the underlying trend in its revenues in 2010 will be flat, but expected regulatory measures will cost the company almost 1 billion euros in sales. It also forecast that 2010 capex will come in at around 12% of revenue. source: France Telecom presentation

Telefonica's Growth Accelerates

Telefonica achieved organic year-on-year growth in revenues of aproximately 3% in the second quarter of 2010 to 15.12 billion euros, as the Madrid-based group's mobile base rose almost 10% in the year to the end of June to 211 million connections. Mobile broadband connections were up almost 85% year-on-year to 17 million.

Telefonica said its Spanish business saw a 3.4% decrease in revenues, in comparable terms, in the first half of the year, while its Latin American business registered organic growth of 6.2% and Telefónica Europe’s year-on-year revenue growth was 6.5% in organic terms and excluding regulatory effects, with "healthy growth in the UK and German markets."

Teleconica said first-half capex (excluding spectrum acquisitions) totalled 2.92 billion euros (+0.9% year-on-year in organic terms and +5.1% in reported terms). source: Telefonica statement

LG's Handset Sales Suffer Sharp Fall

Hit by falling handset prices, LG Electronics said revenues in its mobile communications division fell 29.5% year-on-year to 3,619 billion Korean won (3.02 billion US dollars) in the second quarter of 2010. LG said its handset shipments rose 2% year-on-year to 30.6 million units.  The Korean company expects new models, including smartphones, to lift its revenues in its home market and in North America in the third-quarter. source: LG Electronics presentation

Fixed-Line Sales Lift KDDI

Boosted by rising sales in its fixed-line division, Japanese operator KDDI said that its operating revenues rose 1.4% year-on-year to 866 billion yen (10.01 billion US dollars) in the quarter ending June 30th, 2010. Rising mobile data revenues were offset by falling mobile voice revenues leaving the mobile business growing 0.1% year-on-year.

Aiming to cut capital spending by 5% in the year to March 31, 2011, KDDI cut capex by 18% year-on-year to 110.4 billion yen in the quarter ending June 30th. source: KDDI presentation

Comcast Ramps Up Revenues

Lifted by double-digit increases in high-speed Internet and voice revenues, Comcast said that its total revenues rose 6.1% year-on-year in the second quarter to 9.53 billion US dollars. Capital expenditure was flat at 1.1 billion dollars and the cable company forecast that total capex in 2010 will be lower than in 2009. source: Comcast presentation

Sprint Shrinks Only Slightly

Sprint Nextel said that its operating revenues fell 1% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2010 to 8.03 billion US dollars, as its wireline and postpaid wireless service revenues declined. It said the impact of these declines was partially offset by the impact of fourth quarter 2009 acquisitions, prepaid Boost service revenues and total equipment revenues.

Sprint said it gained approximately 111,000 net subscribers in the second quarter, taking its total base to 48.2 million. Sprint's capital expenditures were 437 million dollars in the quarter, compared to 321 million dollars in the second quarter of 2009.. source: Sprint Nextel statement

KPN Squeezed at Home

With its traditional telephony business in Holland under continued pressure from competition and regulation, KPN said that its group revenues fell 1.7% year-on-year in the second quarter to 3.35 billion euros. Boosted by growth in Germany, revenues in KPN's mobile businesses outside Holland rose 1.4% year-on-year.

KPN's group capex in the second quarter was 380 million euros - down 1.6% on the second quarter of 2009. KPN reiterated its forecast that 2010 revenues will be in line with 2009 sales of 13.5 billion euros, excluding the impact of disposals. source: KPN presentation

Double Digit Growth for América Móvil

Pan-Americas mobile operator América Móvil said its second quarter revenues were up 11.9% year-on-year to 100.9 billion pesos (7.94 billion US dollars), buoyed by a rise in data revenues of 41.6%. The Mexico City-based operator added 4.9 million new wireless subscribers in the quarter to finish June with 211.3 million wireless customers in the Americas, 11.0% more than at the end of June 2009. source: América Móvil statement

Verizon's Sales Slip Slightly

Dragged down by a 3.3% fall in wireline revenues, Verizon Communications said its total operating revenues were 26.8 billion US dollars in the second-quarter of 2010, a decrease of 0.3% compared with the second quarter of 2009. Wireless data revenues increased to 34.5% of all wireless service revenues, up from 29.3% in the second quarter 2009.

Verizon said its wireless division had 92.1 million customers at the end of the quarter, after adding 1.4 million total net customers in the quarter and removing a net 2.1 million customers in connection with divestitures and conforming adjustments related to the Alltel acquisition. Verizon Wireless also said it had 7.7 million “other connections” at the end of the quarter -- such as machine-to-machine, eReaders and telematics, bringing total wireless connections to 99.7 million.

Verizon's capital expenditures totaled 4.2 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2010, down 3.6% from the second quarter of 2009. However, the U.S. operator said full-year 2010 guidance for capital expenditures remains at 16.8 billion to 17.2 billion dollars. source: Verizon statement

iPhone Helps AT&T Eke Out Growth

Lifted by 10% growth in wireless service revenue, AT&T said that its revenues grew 0.6% year-on-year in the second quarter to 30.8 billion US dollars. The U.S. operator added 1.6 million wireless customers in the quarter, taking the total to more than 90 million.

AT&T said it activated 3.2 million iPhones in the quarter, the most quarterly iPhone activations ever. It added that approximately 27% of those activations were for customers who were new to AT&T.

The company said that capital expenditures in the quarter totaled 4.71 billion dollars (up 22% year-on-year), including a nearly 60% increase in wireless-related capital investment versus the year-earlier quarter, as "AT&T aggressively deploys next-generation wireless broadband networks." source: AT&T statement

Vodafone Begins Growing Again

Vodafone said that its service revenues grew 1.1% year-on-year on an organic basis in the quarter ending June 30 to 10.6 billion British pounds (16.23 billion US dollars) driven by a 25% increase in data revenue to 1.2 billion pounds and 14% growth in revenues in India and 24% growth in Turkey. Vodafone cut capital spending by almost 12% year-on-year to 1 billion pounds. source: Vodafone presentation

Ericsson Hit By Component Shortages

Ericsson said that its sales declined 15% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to 48 billion Swedish krona (6.57 billion US dollars) in the second quarter, as the market for voice-related equipment, such as 2G access and circuit switched core, continued to decline. But the Stockholm-based company estimates that "continued industry component shortages and supply chain bottlenecks"  had a negative impact on sales in the quarter of between 3 and 4 billion krona.
 
Ericsson said that mobile broadband networks are being built-out across the world, but HSPA still only covers 25% of the global population. Ericsson's measurements in live networks found that global mobile data traffic almost doubled between the first quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.
 
Ericsson estimated that global mobile subscriptions increased by 190 million in the second quarter with GSM/GPRS/EDGE accounting for 125 million of these new subscriptions and WCDMA for 40 million.Ericsson estimates there are now 245 million HSPA connections worldwide, compared with 474 million fixed broadband connections at the end of the first quarter. Ericsson said three countries, China, US and Japan, account for almost 50% of global fixed broadband subscriptions. source: Ericsson statement

Vodacom Growth Curbed by Regulation

Vodacom, one of Africa's leading mobile operators, said that its group revenue increased 3% year-on-year in constant currencies to 14.03 billion South African rand (1.88 billion US dollars), boosted by a 43% increase in data revenue. Vodacom said its growth was curbed by a reduction in regulated mobile termination rates in South Africa, which cut its revenue by approximately 393 million rand in the quarter. source: Vodacom statement

Qualcomm Expects Return to Growth

Citing healthy growth in sales of CDMA-based devices, wireless chip maker Qualcomm said it now expects its revenues to be between 2.67 billion and 2.93 US billion dollars in the quarter ending September 27th, which would amount to a year-on-year rise of up to 9% on a like-for-like basis - better than the company had forecast earlier. In the quarter ending June 27th, Qualcomm's revenues fell 2% year-on-year to 2.71 billion dollars. source: Qualcomm statement

Falling Prices Hold Back Nokia

Nokia said its revenues fell 4% year-on-year at constant currencies to 10 billion euros in the second-quarter of 2010, as sales in its Nokia Siemens Networks division fell 11% at constant currencies. Nokia said its unit shipments of devices climbed 8% year-on-year to 111.1 million units in the quarter, but the average selling price slipped to 61 euros compared with 64 euros in the second quarter of 2009.

Nokia said the average selling price of its converged mobile devices (smartphones and mobile computers) fell 21% year-on-year to 143 euros, but unit shipments rose 42% year-on-year to 24 million. Nokia expects its Devices & Services net sales to be between 6.7 billion and 7.2 billion euros in the third quarter of 2010, compared with 6.9 billion euros in the third quarter of 2009.

“We are [...] encouraged by the solid second quarter performance of our Mobile Phones business, helped by an improving line-up of affordable models," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's CEO: "We believe that the Nokia N8, the first of our Symbian^3 devices, will have a user experience superior to that of any smartphone Nokia has created. The Nokia N8 will be followed soon thereafter by further Symbian^3 smartphones that we are confident will give the platform broader appeal and reach, and kick-start Nokia’s fightback at the higher end of the market.” source: Nokia statement

Asia Drives Growth at Telenor

Lifted by 13% organic revenue growth in its Asian operations, Telenor said that its revenues grew 4.7% year-on-year in the second-quarter on an organic basis to 25.18 Norwegian krone (4.03 billion US dollars). Capex was down very slightly to 2.98 krone.

Telenor said that it now expects organic revenues to grow between 3% and 5% in 2010 and capex to be between 12% and 13% of sales, compared with its previous forecast of between 13% and 14%. source: Telenor presentation

Apple Ups the Ante

Brushing off the iPhone 4's reception problems, Apple reported record revenues of 15.7 billion US dollars in the quarter ending June 26th, up 61% on the same quarter a year earlier. Apple expects revenue in the current quarter to be about 18 billion dollars, up 82% year-on-year.

In the quarter ending June 26th, Apple sold 3.47 million Macs, 33% up year-on-year, 8.4 million iPhones, representing 61% growth, 9.41 million iPods, a decline of 8%, and 3.27 million iPads.

“It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We have amazing new products still to come this year.” source: Apple statement

TeliaSonera Bouyed by Eurasia and Mobile Data

Boosted by double-digit revenue growth in Eurasia, TeliaSonera said that its net sales in local currencies and excluding acquisitions rose 3.3% in the second quarter to 26.96 billion Swedish krona (3.66 billion US dollars). TeliaSonera said its sales were also lifted by data growth in the Nordic mobile markets and it expects total mobile data volumes in Sweden to double in 2010.

TeliaSonera forecast that its net sales will grow approximately 3% in local currencies in 2010 and its capex will be between 14% and 15% of sales, compared with 12.8% in 2009. source: TeliaSonera presentation

China's 3G Subs Reach 25 Million

China had approximately 25 million 3G users at the end of June out of a total mobile user base of 800 million, according to the Chinese government. China also has 300 million fixed-line users and the country will invest about 120 billion Chinese yuan (17.73 billion U.S. dollars) in 3G this year, the government said. source: Xinhua article

Sony-Ericsson Lifted by Smartphones and Currency Movements

Handset maker Sony-Ericsson said its second-quarter sales were 1.76 billion euros, up 4% year-on-year, even though shipments fell 20% year-on-year to 11 million. Its average selling price rose 31% year-on-year to 160 euros due to stronger sales of smartphones, as well as favourable currency movements. source: Ericsson statement

Bullish Intel Ups Capital Spending

Intel said that it generated 413 million US dollars from sales of its Atom microarchitecture, which is designed for mobile devices, in the second quarter, 16% more than in the first quarter thanks to "strong sales of its next generation dual-core" Atom processors. Intel said it now expects capital spending to be 5.2 billion US dollars in 2010, compared with its earlier forecast of 4.8 billion and 4.5 billion in 2009. source: Intel statement

Growth Picks Up for Chunghwa

Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan unveiled figures showing its second-quarter revenues grew 2.6% year-on-year to 46.25 billion Taiwanese dollars (1.44 billion US dollars). In the first quarter, revenues grew by 1% year-on-year. source: Chunghwa spreadsheet

Samsung Sales Soar

Samsung Electronics said it expects to post revenues of about 37 trillion Korean won (30.28 billion US dollars) for the second quarter of 2010, up 14% on the 32.51 trillon won it posted in the same quarter in 2009. The Korean company didn't give an explanation for the sales rise. source: Samsung statement

HTC Hits New Heights

HTC Corporation, a leading maker of Android-based smartphones, said its total revenues in the  second quarter of 2010 were 60.53 billion Taiwanese dollars (1.88 billion US dollars), representing 58% year-on-year growth. HTC said its "2Q earnings result is better than original 2Q guidance, both June and 2Q revenues continuously hit record highs, showing good execution of brand strategy and grow scale strategy." source: HTC statement

Bharti Aims to Lift Africa Sales 40%

Following its recent acquisition of Zain's African assets, Bharti Airtel is aiming to increase its subscribers in Africa to 100 million before the end of 2012, from 42 million today, and its annual revenue there to 5 billion US dollars from 3.6 billion now, according to an interview with Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, published in the Financial Times.

Mittal is quoted as saying: “The next wave is Africa. Minerals and metals, resources – everybody is investing, China’s rushing in there, now Europe is rushing there. You are going to see a lot of action in Africa. It is to my mind the continent of hope.” source: Financial Times

Apple Fans Flock to iPhone 4

Apple said it sold more than 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in the first three days after the handset was launched.  “This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

iPhone 4 is available in the US for 199 US dollars for the 16GB model and 299 dollars for the 32GB model with a two-year AT&T contract. It is also available in the UK, France, Germany and Japan and Apple says the handset will be available in an additional 18 countries by the end of July—Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. source: Apple statement

Investment bank Piper Jaffray estimates that 77 percent of those who purchased the iPhone 4 were upgrading from a previous iPhone model, according to Mobile Business Briefing.

RIM Forecasts Faster Growth

Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, said that it expects revenue in the quarter ending August 28 to be between 4.4 and 4.6 billion US dollars, which would be an increase of between 25% and 30% from the equivalent quarter in 2009.

RIM said that revenues in the quarter ending May 29 grew 24% year-on-year to 4.24 billion dollars, as unit shipments of Blackberries rose 43% to 11.2 million. RIM said that 79% of its revenues in the quarter came from device sales, 16% from services and 2% from software. RIM said it added 4.9 million net new BlackBerry subscriber accounts in the quarter taking its total base to 46 million. source: RIM statement

Nokia Struggles to Get Back to Growth

Nokia said this week that it expects net sales in its devices and services division to be at the lower end of, or slightly below, its previous forecast of 6.7 billion to 7.2 billion euros in the second quarter. Nokia said that the competitive environment, particularly at the high-end of the market, and currency movements meant its average selling price and shipments will both be lower than it had expected.

If Nokia's devices and services sales are 6.7 billion euros in the quarter, that would be an increase of just 2% on the division's sales in the second quarter of 2009.

Nokia said it now expects its share of the global mobile device market, by value, to be slightly lower in 2010, than in 2009. The Finland-based company continues to expect industry mobile device volumes to be up approximately 10% in 2010 and its market share by volume to be flat compared with 2009. source: Nokia statement

Kick-starting Industry Growth - Tuning into the future of telecoms

Television is becoming increasingly fundamental to the future of the telecoms industry, according to senior executives gathered in London this week for an A.T. Kearney telecoms and media conference.

“TV is the element around which you bundle the rest and anchor the bundle,” said Michael Hecker, Chief Strategy Officer of multinational telecoms company MTS. “That is why Google is going into television. One of the biggest challenges is for [telecoms] operators not to lose the TV battle.” Bundling television and telecoms into one package will keep customers from switching to other telecoms providers, Hecker added, noting that the churn rate among MTS’s “a couple of million TV customers” is extremely low.

BT, the UK-based telecoms group, has also put television at the forefront of its strategy, Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT’s Retail division, told the conference. Although Patterson said that BT Vision, its on-demand television service, has so far only attracted half a million customers, the typical customer is accessing it forty times a month, rivalling the UK’s major free-to-air networks BBC1 and ITV1. Over time, BT intends to deliver high-definition and, eventually, 3D television-on-demand. To read more: click here