Networks Sales Boost Ericsson

Ericsson said that its sales grew 5% year-on-year in the fourth quarter on a like-for-like basis to 66.9 billion Swedish krona (10.53 billion US dollars). The Stockholm based company said that its networks division increased sales 9% on a like-for-like basis, thanks primarily to "high year-end business activity in North America and Japan, primarily within mobile broadband infrastructure." source: Ericsson statement

Facebook Sees 40% Sales Uplift

Facebook said that it had 1.06 billion "monthly active users" at the end of 2012, up 25% year-on-year, including 680 million "mobile monthly active users." The social network said that mobile revenue represented approximately 23% of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from approximately 14% of advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2012.

Facebook's revenue for the fourth quarter was 1.59 billion US dollars, an increase of 40% year-on-year. Revenue from advertising was 1.33 billion dollars, representing 84% of total revenue and a 41% increase from the same quarter in 2011. Payments and other fees revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012 was $256 million.  source: Facebook statement

NTT DOCOMO Finds New Growth

NTT DOCOMO said its revenues rose 9% year-on-year in the quarter ending December 31st to 1.163 trillion Japanese yen (12.11 billion US dollars). Revenues were lifted by an increase in handset sales, packet data revenues fuelled by uptake of its LTE service and new business areas, such as digital commerce, media, content and financial services.

DOCOMO plans to upgrade its LTE services to offer downlink speeds of up to 112.5Mbps in 50 cities from June 2013 and expand its 75Mbps offering from 4,000 sites in March 2013 to 10,000 sites in June 2013. It also plans to roll out a new portfolio of advanced handsets with two models supporting downlink speeds of up to 112.5Mbps. source: NTT DOCOMO presentation

Strong Handset Sales Lift KDDI

Japanese telco KDDI revised up its forecasts for the year ending March 31, 2013, following a strong quarter ending December 31, 2012. It now forecasts that its operating revenue for the year will be 3.63 trillion Japanese yen, up from its earlier forecast of 3.58 trillion yen and representing a 1.6% year-on-year increase. 

KDDI said: "We have revised upward our forecasts for operating revenues, operating income and ordinary income, as revenues from terminal sales owing to sales of LTE-compatible handsets and data communications revenues in line with the shift to smartphones has exceeded our initial expectations." source: KDDI statement

AT&T To Lift Capex

AT&T said its revenues in the fourth quarter of 2012 rose 2.8% year-on-year to 32.6 billion US dollars, fuelled by wireless data growth of 14.7% to 6.8 billion US dollars. 

In 2013, AT&T plans to spend 21 billion US dollars on capex (up from 19.7 billion dollars in 2012), some of which will go towards expanding its LTE network to cover at least 250 million people. It is also aiming to deliver revenue growth of more than 2%. source: AT&T presentation

Samsung Predicts Slower Smartphone Growth

Samsung Electronics said it expects the recent growth in the smartphone market to slow in 2013 even as expansion in LTE coverage increases replacement demand in developed markets. In the tablet market, Samsung expects intensified competition amid "strong growth with emerging market expansion."

In the fourth quarter of 2012, sales in Samsung's IM (IT and mobile communications) division rose 51% year-on-year to 31.32 trillion Korean won (28.97 billion US dollars), fuelled by strong demand for its smartphones and tablets. source: Samsung presentation

Networks Division Shores Up Nokia

Nokia reported that its revenues fell 23% year-on-year in constant currencies to 8.04 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2012. Sales in its Devices and Services unit fell 40% to 3.85 billon euros, but sales in Nokia Siemens Networks rose 1% to 3.99 billion euros.

Device shipments were down 24% year-on-year to 86.3 million. Nokia said it expects "competitive industry dynamics [will continue] to negatively affect the Mobile Phones and Smart Devices business units" in the current quarter. source: Nokia statement 

Apple Expects Slowdown

Apple said its revenue increased 18% year-on-year in the quarter ending December 29, 2012 to 54.5 billion US dollars. Sales rose 67% in Greater China and 25% in Japan, but just 11% in Europe. Apple's iPhone revenues climbed 28% year-on-year and iPad revenues 22%, but Mac revenues were down 16%.

Apple said it expects revenue in the current quarter to be between 41 billion and 43 billion US dollars. That would represent an increase of between 5% and 10% year-on-year. source: Apple statement

Google Sees Strong Growth in Advertising Revenues

Google said the revenues from its core Google business (advertising and other) rose 22% year-on-year in the fourth quarter to 12.91 billion US dollars. "Other" revenues, which probably related to sales of software, cloud computing services and storage, more than doubled to 829 million dollars. Source: Google statement

Revenue Growth Accelerates at Verizon

Verizon Communications said its revenue rose 5.7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 30 billion US dollars. For 2012 as a whole, revenue was up 4.5% to 115.8 billion dollars.

Verizon said that almost 50% of its total data traffic is now on its 4G LTE network, which now covers 89% of the US population. The carrier now has 21.6 million LTE devices connected to its network. In 2012, capex stood at 16.2 billion dollars - the same as in 2011. source: Verizon presentation

6.1

Huawei Expects Faster Growth in 2013

Telecoms equipment maker Huawei said it expects its overall revenue to grow between 10% and 12% in 2013. In 2012, global sales revenues rose 8% to 220.2 billion Chinese yuan (35.38 billion US dollars). Huawei added that it invested 29.9 billion yuan in R& D in 2012, accounting for more than 13% of the year's revenue.

Huawei said its Carrier Network business group generated revenues of 160.3 billion yuan in 2012, while its Consumer business group recorded robust sales revenue of 48.4 billion yuan, "with sales continuing to grow in developed markets including Europe and Japan." Huawei's Enterprise business group generated revenue of 11.5 billion yuan. source: Huawei statement

Nokia's Asha Range Helps it Beat Expectations

Nokia estimated that its "Devices & Services net sales" in the fourth quarter of 2012 were approximately 3.9 billion euros, compared with almost 6 billion euros in the same quarter of 2011. That represents a decline of about 35%. Nokia said it shipped 86.3 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with 113.5 million a year earlier.

Nokia's "smart devices" sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 were 1.2 billion euros, down 56% year-on-year. Its mobile phone sales were 2.5 billion euros, down 18% year-on-year. Nokia said it sold 15.9 million smartphones, composed of 9.3 million Asha "full touch smartphones", 4.4 million Lumia (Windows OS) smartphones and 2.2 million Symbian smartphones. Confusingly, the Asha smartphones count as mobile phone sales, rather than smart devices sales.

Nokia estimated that Nokia Siemens Networks net sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 were approximately 4.0 billion euros, up from 3.82 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said: "We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in devices & services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks. We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter." source: Nokia statement

Mobile Broadband Connections Hit 1.6 Billion

There are now 1.6 billion mobile broadband connections globally - one quarter of total mobile connections, according to Wireless Intelligence. source: Wireless Intelligence statement

Google Demos Driverless Cars to VIPs

A Fortune article on Larry Page opens with an anecdote showing the progress of driverless car technology. It reads: "When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Only this was no ordinary car. The Lexus SUV drove itself thanks to a slew of high-tech tools, including radars, sensors, and a laser scanner that takes more than 1.5 million measurements every second. For about 20 minutes, while navigating I-280 and the area's busy State Route 85, the car cruised on autopilot, making quick course corrections, slowing down here when traffic loomed ahead, speeding up there to get out of the blind spot of a neighboring vehicle. "It was pretty incredible," says Sorrell." source: Fortune article

Huawei Expects to Report Strong Revenue Growth

Leading telecoms equipment maker Huawei expects to report an increase in revenue of more than 10% to more than 35 billion US dollars for 2012. Guo Ping, Huawei's "rotating and acting CEO" said: "We have deployed over 130 LTE and over 70 EPC (evolved packet core) commercial networks worldwide, ranking number one globally in these two fields." However, he also noted: "There was a time when rapid growth was Huawei's priority and strong execution was Huawei's distinctive feature. These characteristics have contributed to our fast development, and at the same time created the lingering issue of extensive management at Huawei. As business growth becomes steady and moderate, we have to ensure reasonable profits to support our continuous strategic investment." source: Huawei statement