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