Samsung Sees Telecoms Sales Soar

Samsung Electronics said it telecoms sales rose 43% year-on-year to 12.18 trillion Korean won (11.29 billion US dollars) in the second quarter, lifted by a sharp climb in handset shipments and average selling prices, plus better network sales. source: Samsung presentation

Sprint Leans on Prepaid Customers

Sprint, one of the leading U.S. telcos, said its revenues climbed 4% year-on-year in the second quarter to 8.3 billion US dollars. Sprint said the "improvement was primarily due to higher postpaid ARPU, growth in the number of net prepaid subscribers and higher wireless equipment revenues, partially offset by net losses of postpaid subscribers and lower wireline revenues."

Sprint said it lost approximately 101,000 net postpaid subscribers during the quarter, a net improvement of 127,000, or 56%, compared to the second quarter of 2010.

Sprint said its capex in the quarter was 640 million dollars, compared with 437 million dollars in the second quarter of 2010 as the company "invested primarily in data capacity as a result of increased data usage to maintain a competitive position in data service and overall network quality." source Sprint statement 

Alcatel-Lucent Takes Positive View

Alcatel-Lucent, the Paris-based telecoms equipment maker, said its revenues rose 10.4% year-on-year in the second quarter at constant currencies to 3.90 billion euros. The company said it is seeing: "Positive market trends around the world [and] massive adoption of new services and devices." source: Alcatel-Lucent presentation

France Telecom Ramps Up Capex

Dragged down by regulation, France Telecom said that its revenue fell 1.3% year-on-year, on a comparable basis, in the second quarter to 11.34 billion euros. Revenues were down 2.2% in France, but climbed 4.2% in Spain, driven by a rise in the company's mobile customer base and demand for broadband.

France Telecom said that its capital spending in the first half of 2011 was almost 11% higher than in the same period of 2010, as it seeks to improve its networks. source: France Telecom presentation

Ericsson Rides Mobile Broadband Growth

Ericsson said that its group sales, on a like-for-like basis, in the second quarter increased by 27% year-over-year to 54.8 billion Swedish krona (8.47 billion US dollars), driven by continued strong demand for mobile broadband.

Ericsson estimated the operator network equipment market, which it values at 95 billion US dollars in 2010, will show between 3% and 5% CAGR between 2010 and 2013, powered by between 6% and 8% CAGR in the mobile networks market. Ericsson said it grew its market share in the radio access segment during the first quarter 2011, both measured in terms of shipped volumes and value.

Ericsson estimated its addressable telecom services market, which it values at 96 billion to 101 billion dollars in 2010, will show between 6% and 8% CAGR between 2010 and 2013. That figure includes the telecom OSS/BSS market for software and systems integration, which Ericsson values at about 35 billion dollars in 2010.

Ericsson added that WCDMA/HSPA networks now cover around 40% of the world’s population, while LTE networks only cover a few percent.  Global fixed broadband subscriptions grew by 15 million new subscriptions to reach 537 million during the first quarter 2011, mainly boosted by strong growth in DSL in China, according to the Stockholm-based company. DSL represents more than 60% of all fixed broadband subscriptions, while Fiber-to-the-Building represents around 15%, Ericsson said. source: Ericsson statement

Vodafone Sees Steady Growth

Vodafone said that its group revenues rose 2.3% year-on-year on an organic basis to 11.66 billion British pounds (18.91 billion US dollars) in the quarter ending June 30th, boosted by a 24.5% rise in group data revenue.

However, the U.K.-based group said its service revenue in Europe declined by 1.3% on an organic basis, hit by cuts in regulated mobile termination rates and "macroeconomic challenges in southern Europe. Vodafone said its unit in Spain saw organic service revenue decline by 9.9%, "with price reductions adding to ongoing macroeconomic pressures."

In Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific, Vodafone's service revenue grew by 8.7% on an organic basis, fuelled by 16.8% growth in India. source: Vodafone statement

AT&T Rides Wireless Data Wave

AT&T, the largest telco in the U.S., said its revenues grew 2.2% year-on-year in the second quarter to 31.5 billion US dollars, thanks to "strong wireless growth, IP data and video and improved business wireline trends."

AT&T also said it now plans to spend 20 billion dollars on capex in 2011 to meet growing demand for wireless services. Its original guidance was for capex "in the low-to-mid 19 billion dollar range."
source: AT&T presentation

Verizon Revs Growth Engine

Verizon Communications, one of the largest telcos in the U.S., said that its revenue grew 6.3% year-on-year in the second quarter to 27.5 billion US dollars. Verizon said that its revenue from wireless data services climbed 22.2% and its revenue from services over its fibre network rose 20.7%.

In the second quarter, Verizon  introduced three new LTE devices: the Droid Charge by Samsung, Revolution by LG and the MiFi 4510L Mobile Hotspot by Novatel Wireless, while the LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is set to launch by the end of July. Verizon said it sold 1.2 million LTE smartphones and Internet data devices during the second quarter. source: Verizon statement

Nokia Suffers Sharp Fall in Handset Sales

Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, said its sales fell 7% year-on-year in constant currencies to 9.28 billion euros in the second quarter of 2011, as its "smart devices" sales fell 32% to 2.37 billion euros and its mobile phone sales fell 20% to 2.55 billion euros. Nokia blamed the declines on competitive pressures and an inventory build-up in China and Europe.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said: "During this time of transition, we expect competitive pressures to continue.  However, we have a clear strategy to address the concerns about our product competitiveness."

Nokia Siemens Networks' sales climbed 21% in constant currencies to 3.64 billion euros boosted by a stronger infrastructure market in most regions and the acquisition of some assets from Motorola.   Excluding the acquired Motorola networks assets, Nokia Siemens Networks' net sales would have increased 13% year-on-year. source: Nokia statement

Apple Sees Dramatic Sales Surge

Apple said that its revenues rose 82% year-on-year in the quarter ending June 25 to 28.57 billion US dollars, boosted by a 150% increase in revenues from sales of iPhones and related products to 13.31 billion dollars and a 179% increase in sales of iPads and related products to 6.05 billion dollars.

Apple said it expects to earn revenue of about 25 billion dollars in the current quarter, which would represent a year-on-year increase of 23%. source: Apple statement

Google Returns to Rapid Growth

Google, the Internet advertising giant, reported revenues of 9.03 billion US dollars for the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 32% compared to the second quarter of 2010.

Google's new CEO Larry Page said more than 10 million people have joined the Google+ social networking service since it launched a limited, invitation-only trial earlier this month, according to Mobile Business Briefing.  The news service also reported that Google revealed that 550,000 phones a day are now being activated on Android (up from 400,000 a day in May), with more than 135 million total Android device activations to date. source: Mobile Business Briefing

Sony-Ericsson Rocked by Earthquake

Sony-Ericsson said that its sales fell 32% year-on-year to 1.19 billion euros in the second quarter of 2011, as handset shipments fell to 7.6 million units from 11 million in the same period of 2010.

Bert Nordberg, CEO of Sony Ericsson said, “Sony Ericsson’s second quarter profitability was affected by the March 11 earthquake in Japan. We estimate that the impact of earthquake-related supply chain constraints on our portfolio was close to 1.5 million units, with most of the effect in the early part of the quarter. Our shift to Android-based smartphones continues with smartphone sales accounting for more than 70% of our total sales during the quarter. We have shipped more than 16 million Xperia smartphones to date."

Sony Ericsson estimated that its share of the global Android smartphone market during the quarter was approximately 11% by volume and 11% by value. source: Sony-Ericsson statement

Snapshot of Android Fragmentation

Source: Android Developers web site

Apple App Downloads Accelerate

Apple said that its customers have downloaded around 5 billion apps so far this year, according to Reuters, compared with 10 billion across the previous two-and-a-half years. Apple said it has paid developers more than 2.5 billion US dollars through its App Store, which currently contains around 425,000 apps for iPads, iPhones and iPod touches. source: Reuters article

LG Slashes Handset Sales Targets

LG Electronics cut its 2011 smartphone sales forecast to 24 million handsets from a previous target of more than 30 million, while reducing its overall handset sales target by a quarter to 114 million units from 150 million, according to Reuters. In the first half, LG of South Korea sold almost 50 million mobile phones, including slightly more than 10 million smartphones, compared with almost 58 million in the first half of 2010. source: Reuters article

HTC's Revenues Double

HTC, a leading supplier of smartphones, said its revenues in the second quarter 2011 rose 104% to 124.4 billion Taiwanese dollars (4.31 billion US dollars). source: HTC statement

Samsung Ships 3 Million Galaxy S II Smartphones

Samsung Electronics said it has now shipped three million of its Galaxy S II smartphones into the channel. The handset, which runs Android and is Samsung's most advanced smartphone, was announced in February 2011. source: Samsung statement

Telefonica Sees Sales Growth Slow

Telefonica said that its revenues rose 0.9% year-on-year in organic terms to 30.89 billion euros in the first half of 2011, down from 1.4% in the first quarter. Revenues in Latin America rose 5.6% offsetting a 6.1% fall in Spain.

César Alierta, Executive Chairman, said:  "The outstanding performance in Brazil consolidates our leadership in a market which will soon become Telefónica's main source of revenue, and where the integration of the fixed and mobile businesses will allow the Company to capture synergies of 3,700-4,600 million euros, a significantly larger amount than initially forecasted." source: Telefonica statement