Strong Sales for Samsung

Samsung Electronics, one of the world's largest handset makers, said  its telecoms division's sales rose 19% year-on-year in the fourth quarter to 12.11 trillion Korean won (10.9 billion US dollars). Its handset shipments climbed 17% year-on-year to 80.7 million, boosted by rising sales of smartphones.

Samsung said it expects global demand for handsets to grow a "high single digit %" in 2011 and that its own shipments will grow faster than the market. source: Samsung presentation

Growth at AT&T Lags Verizon

AT&T, one of the U.S.'s largest telecoms companies, said its revenues grew 2.1% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 31.4 billion US dollars, fuelled by a 9.9% increase in wireless revenues.  Wireless data revenues climbed 27.4%.

AT&T said it added nearly 2 million "emerging devices" (eReaders, netbooks, tablets, digital photo frames, personal navigation devices, telematics, home security monitoring, smart grid devices etc.) to its network in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to almost 11 million.

For the full year 2010,  AT&T said its consolidated revenues totaled 124.3 billion dollars versus 122.5 billion in 2009, while capital expenditures, including capitalized interest, totaled 20.3 billion dollars versus 17.3 billion dollars in 2009, including a more than 50%  increase in wireless-related capital investment. In 2011, AT&T expects consolidated revenue growth. source: AT&T statement

Nokia Shores Up Sales

Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, said its fourth quarter 2010 net sales were flat year-on-year at 12.7 billion euros in constant currencies, despite a 36% increase in smartphone shipments to 28.3 million units and a rise in the average selling price of its devices to 69 euros from 64 euros a year earlier.

Nokia Siemens Networks contributed 4 billion euros in revenue (up 7% year-on-year at constant currencies), but overall devices and services sales fell 3% in constant currencies to 8.5 billion euros.
Nokia said its "preliminary estimated" mobile device market share was 31% in the fourth quarter of 2010, down from an estimated 35% in the fourth quarter of 2009 and up from an estimated 30% in the third quarter of 2010.

In the first quarter of 2011, Nokia expects devices and services net sales to be between 6.8 billion and 7.3 billion euros, compared with 6.66 billion euros in the first quarter of 2010, and Nokia Siemens Networks' net sales to be between 2.8 billion and 3.1 billion euros, compared with 2.72 billion euros a year earlier. source: Nokia statement

KDDI's Sales Slip Further

KDDI, Japan's second largest telecoms company, said that its operating revenues fell 1% year-on-year in the quarter ending December 31 to 853.4 billion yen (10.41 billion US dollars). It blamed falling voice revenues in its mobile business.  KDDI said that the Japanese economy is stagnating, after showing signs of recovery, and that competition in the telecoms market is entering a new phase with the ongoing convergence of fixed-line and mobile telecommunications and broadcasting. source: KDDI statement

Verizon Expects Growth to Accelerate

Verizon Communications, one of the U.S.'s largest telecoms companies, said its revenue, on a like-for-like basis, grew 2.3% year-on-year to 26.4 billion US dollars in the fourth quarter of 2010. The company said that wireless service revenue rose 7.7%, boosted by a 25.5% rise in wireless data revenue, while its revenue from fibre-based landline services climbed 26.8%.

Fran Shammo, Verizon's chief financial officer, said the company sees accelerated top-line revenue growth rates in the range of 4% to 8% in 2011. He said that "this outlook is based on the continued growth in strategic businesses -- aided by Verizon’s prior investments in technology; sales and recurring revenues from the newly announced Verizon iPhone and LTE wireless devices; continued growth in revenues from FiOS (fibre) and strategic business services; and a stable to improving economic environment."

With the introduction of the iPhone and LTE devices, Verizon said it sees smartphone penetration rates increasing from the current 26% to more than 50% by the end of 2011.

Verizon said it had a total of 94.1 million customers at the end of the fourth quarter, plus a further 8.1 million  machine-to-machine and telematics connections. Verizon Wireless customers sent or received more than 180 billion text messages in the quarter, together with nearly 4.5 billion picture/video messages and completed more than 20 million music and video downloads from Verizon Wireless. The equivalent figures for the fourth quarter of 2009 were 162 billion text messages, more than 4 billion picture/video messages and more than 38 million music and video downloads.

In 2010, Verizon's capital expenditure totalled 16.5 billion dollars compared with 16.9 billion dollars the previous year. The company expects capex to be flat or slightly down in 2011. source: Verizon statements

Ericsson Posts Strong Sales

Ericsson, the world's leading supplier of mobile networks, said its sales in the fourth quarter rose 7% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to 62.8 billion Swedish krona (9.58 billion US dollars). Ericsson said sales of mobile broadband equipment, including radio, backhaul and evolved packet core, increased in the quarter, driven by strong demand in the US and Japan, in particular.

Ericsson said that global mobile broadband subscriptions increased 30% in 2010, driven by strong sales of smartphones, and it forecast that mobile data traffic will almost double annually over the coming years. The Swedish company added that, on average, smartphones generate approximately 10 times more traffic compared to feature phones, while a mobile PC user generates 100 times more traffic than a feature phone use.

Ericsson also said that global mobile penetration is now 76% and total mobile subscriptions have reached 5.3 billion. It added that global fixed broadband subscriptions grew by 17 million to reach 504 million during the third quarter of 2010, mainly boosted by strong growth in DSL in China.

Ericsson said WCDMA networks cover more than 35% of the world’s population and almost all of these networks have also launched HSPA. source: Ericsson statement

Apple Sees Stellar Growth

Apple said this week that it sold 16.24 million iPhones, representing 86% year-on-year growth, during the quarter ending December 25, 2010, as well as 4.13 million Mac computers, a 23% year-on-year increase. During the quarter, Apple also sold 19.45 million iPods, representing a 7% unit decline from the year-ago quarter, and 7.33 million iPads.

Apple posted 26.74 billion dollars in revenue for the quarter, up 71% year-on-year.  It forecast that revenue in the next fiscal quarter will be 22 billion dollars, which would represent growth of 63% year-on-year. source: Apple statement

Sony-Ericsson Claims 5% Market Share

Sony Ericsson said its net sales fell 13% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 1.53 billion euros and 7% in the full year to 6.29 billion euros. The joint-venture said it shipped 11.2 million handsets during the fourth quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 23%, as it streamlined its portfolio to focus on higher-end smartphones running Android.

Sony-Ericsson estimated that industry handset shipments in the full year 2010 increased slightly in volume to almost 1.2 billion units. It also said its market share for the fourth quarter was approximately 3% in units and approximately 5% in value and its market share for the full year 2010 was approximately 4% in units and approximately 6% in value. Sony Ericsson forecasts modest growth in units in the global handset market for 2011. source: Ericsson statement

One Billion Mobile Broadband Connections in 2011?

Ericsson forecast that there will be one billion mobile broadband subscriptions (HSPA, CDMA EV-DO or LTE) connections by the end of 2011. The network equipment supplier said the number of mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide passed 500 million during 2010.

By 2015, Ericsson believes mobile broadband subscriptions will top 3.8 billion, with 95% of these connected to HSPA, CDMA and LTE networks. source: Ericsson statement

HTC Sees Sales Soar

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC said that its revenues grew 153% year-on-year to 104 billion Taiwanese dollars (3.5 billion US dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2010.  Total consolidated revenues for 2010 were up almost 93% to 278.76 billion Taiwanese dollars. source: HTC statement

ZTE Charts Device Growth

ZTE said its unit sales of devices increased nearly 50% to 90 million units in 2010. The Chinese company expects to sell 120 million units in 2011. source: Telecompaper

Samsung Galaxy Tops 10 Million

Samsung Electronics said it has sold 10 million of its Galaxy S smartphones, which run the Android operating system and have a Super Amoled display, since the model was launched in June 2010. source: Telecompaper article.