Europe Warms to Huawei Handsets

Huawei reported that sales at its Consumer Business Group, selling handsets and other mobile devices, exceeded 2 billion US dollars in Western Europe in 2015, an increase of 45% from the previous year. source: Telecompaper article

Apple Takes Even Larger Slice of Smartphone Profits

Source: Investment bank Canaccord Genuity via Statista

Ericsson Calls Trends in Connectivity

Ericsson Anticipates Modest Market Growth

Ericsson forecast that the bulk of its addressable market will grow by between 2% and 4% per annum between now and 2018. Within that market, telecoms operators' spending on networks and equipment will grow between 1% and 3% per annum, while their spending on related services and support solutions will rise faster, Ericsson added. It claims to be the market leader in mobile networks and global services. source: Ericsson presentations

Vodafone Predicts Further Performance Improvement

Vodafone Group reported a 2.3% organic year-on-year increase in revenue in the quarter ending September 30th with service revenue up 1.2%. The UK-based group also signalled that it will cut back capital spending in the fiscal year beginning April 2016 after its Project Spring investment programme is completed.

Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said: "Service revenue in Europe declined 1.3% in H1, reflecting continued competitive pressures in a number of markets. However, revenue trends continue to improve, with Q2 service revenue down 1.0%* (Q1: -1.5%), the fifth consecutive quarter of easing rates of decline... and Southern Europe in particular showed a strong rate of recovery"

Vodafone said the overall performance of the group in the first half of the current financial year has been in line with its expectations, and it expects revenue and profitability trends to improve in the second half. source: Vodafone presentation

Telefónica's Growth Accelerates

Telefónica reported a 4.8% organic year-on-year rise in revenues to 11.92 billion euros for the third quarter of 2015. It attributed the performance to recovery in Spain, strong growth in Hispanic America, rising data revenues and higher sales of digital services. For example, Telefónica said that "video revenue", driven by strong demand for pay TV, climbed almost 26% year-on-year to 652 million euros in the quarter.

César Alierta, Executive Chairman, said: “This acceleration in commercial activity was underpinned by the intense network modernisation effort implemented in recent years. Thus, Telefónica España continued to accelerate the FTTH rollout, with 13.4 million premises passed up to September. Meanwhile, Telefónica Brasil expanded its FTTx network to 16.6 million premises, and Telefónica Deutschland's LTE coverage reached 73% of the population. These are some examples of the network transformation, which is allowing us to increase our differentiation, strengthen our leadership in key markets and respond to increasing demand for data consumption. To this end, we have invested 7,101 million euros in the first nine months of the year." source: Telefónica presentation

North America Fuels Facebook Growth

Facebook reported a 41% year-on-year increase in revenue for the third quarter to 4.5 billion US dollars. That compares with revenue growth of 58% across the whole of 2014. In the third quarter, revenue growth was particularly strong in North America, which still accounts for half of Facebook's total revenues, at 49%. source: Facebook statement

New Services Bolster Growth for KDDI

KDDI, Japan's second largest telco, reported a 6% year-on-year rise in revenues for the six months to September 30th to 2.15 trillion yen (17.7 billion US dollars). Revenue in the personal services segment, which provides mobile and fixed-line communications services to individual customers, rose 7.2%, while revenue from "value services" climbed almost 12%. These value services include au Smart Pass, a content subscription service, and au Wallet, a prepaid digital money service that earns KDDI commission. source: KDDI statement

New US Customers Lift Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom reported a 2.2% year-on-year rise in revenue on an organic basis to 17.1 billion euros in the third quarter. Total revenue in Germany increased by 0.1% year-on-year to 5.6 billion euros in quarter, while total revenue in the US increased by 6.7% to 7.8 billion U.S. dollars, fuelled by an influx of 2.3 million customers in the quarter to take the total number to 61.2 million.

The German group said: "T-Mobile US continues to engage very successfully in new initiatives of the Uncarrier strategy while at the same time rapidly building out the network. The company achieved its annual target of population coverage of 300 million people with LTE technology in the third quarter, months earlier than planned." source: Deutsche Telekom statement

Television Buoys BT

BT, the UK-based telecoms group, reported flat revenue in the quarter ending September 30th at 4.5 billion UK pounds (6.9 billion US dollars).  A 5% fall in revenue in the Global Services division was offset by a 7% rise in consumer revenue, fuelled by strong demand for BT TV. source: BT statement

The Smart Life Lifts DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO, Japan's largest mobile operator, reported a 1.9% year-on-year rise in revenue for the six months ending September 30 to 2.22 trillion Japanese yen (18 billion US dollars), just ahead of rival KDDI. Its Smart Life business (its dmarket content portal, digital commerce, financial services and the like) posted a 18% increase in revenue, more than offsetting a decline of 1% in the core telecoms business. source: NTT DOCOMO presentation

New Smartphones Shore Up Samsung

Samsung Electronics reported a 8% year-on-year increase in sales in its IT and Mobile Communications division to 26.6 trillion Korean won (23.3 billion US dollars) in the third quarter. However, that figure is well below the 36.6 trillion won in revenues the division generated in the third quarter of 2013.

For the most recent quarter, Samsung reported strong growth in shipments of smartphones driven by new models, including the S6 Edge+, Note5, A8, and J5. But average selling prices were down due to increased sales of mid- to low-end products. source: Samsung presentation

4G Helps China Mobile Bounce Back

China Mobile reported operating revenues of 172 billion yuan (27 billion US dollars) for the third quarter, up almost 10% year-on-year. That is a marked improvement on the 5% growth in the first half. It had almost 248 million 4G customers at the end of the quarter, up from 41 million a year earlier, while mobile data traffic surged to 733.6 billion megabytes, up from 298.2 billion in the same quarter of 2014. source: China Mobile operating data

Samsung Successfully Defends Smartphone Share

Source: IDC statement

Huawei Storms Smartphone Market

Huawei said it shipped 27.4 million smartphones in the three months ending September 30th, representing a year-on-year increase of 63%. The Shenzhen-based equipment maker estimated that industry-wide smartphone shipments in 2015 will grow 9.3% year-on-year.

"This quarter’s results clearly showcase the continued success of our growth strategy,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer business group. “We are especially proud of the stellar growth we’ve seen outside of China and the increased demand for our mid-to-high end devices. At this rate, we are confident in our ability to reach our smartphone shipment target of 100 million units by year’s end.”

Huawei said its smartphone shipments to Europe and the Middle-East-and-Africa regions grew by 98% and 70% respectively year-on-year. The division also enjoyed considerable success in China during the quarter, reporting a year-on-year shipment increase of 81%. source: Huawei statement

Apple Expects Sharp Slowdown

After reporting a 22% year-on-year rise in revenue for the quarter ending September 26th, Apple forecast that its revenue would rise between 1% and 4% to between 75.5 billion and 77.5 billion US dollars in the current quarter. source: Apple statement

Ericsson's Network Sales Stumble

Ericsson reported a 9% year-on-year fall in revenues to 59.2 billion Swedish krona (7 billion US dollars) in the third quarter on an organic basis, as declines in North America, Japan, Russia and Brazil offset growth in India and South East Asia. Network sales were down 15% year-on-year on an organic basis, while services fell 2%. source: Ericsson presentation

AT&T's Mobile Revenues Squeezed

AT&T reported a year-on-year increase in third-quarter consolidated revenues of almost 19% to 39.1 billion US dollars, primarily due to the acquisition of DIRECTV. However, total revenues from "Consumer Mobility" customers were down 4.6% to 8.8 billion dollars, due to "the success of Mobile Share Value plans." AT&T also said it added a record 1.6 million connected devices, including
1 million connected cars. The company now has 5.8 million connected car subscribers. source: AT&T statement

Phone Sales Collapse for Microsoft

Microsoft reported a 2% year-on-year decline in revenue in the third quarter to 21.7 billion dollars,  blaming the changes in its phone business, which it is restructuring.  Revenue from sales of phone hardware fell 54% to 1.1 billion dollars, but Microsoft's Devices & Consumer Other segment saw revenue rise 33%. That segment includes advertising, Xbox Live transactional revenue and Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions. The Commercial Other segment, which includes Microsoft's Azure cloud business, lifted revenues 47% to 3.3 billion dollars. source: Microsoft presentation

Google Claims Six Apps Now Have One Billion Users

Alphabet Inc., the parent holding company of Google, announced that Google's revenues rose 21% year-on-year in the third quarter on a constant currency basis to 18.7 billion US dollars. It attributed the increase to "substantial growth in mobile search revenue, complemented by contributions from YouTube and programmatic advertising."

“Our Q3 results show the strength of Google's business, particularly in mobile search. With six products now having more than 1 billion users globally,” said Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet and Google, referring to Google search, YouTube, Android, Google Maps, Google Play and Google Chrome. However, Google's "cost per click" - the average revenue it earns each time a user clicks on an advert - fell 11% year-on-year, reflecting the fact that advertisers tend to pay less for clicks on mobile devices than for clicks on PCs.  source: Google statement

Orange Finally Racks up Revenue Rise

Orange reported a 0.5% year-on-year increase in revenues on a comparable basis in the third quarter to 10.3 billion euros - the first such rise since 2009. The top line was boosted by a 8.5% rise in mobile equipment revenues, a 2.9% increase in fixed broadband revenues and a 1.2% rise in mobile services revenues. source: Orange presentation 

Verizon Pushes Mobile Video & IoT

Verizon reported a 5% increase in total operating revenue to 33.2 billion US dollars for the third quarter. Excluding AOL, which was not part of Verizon a year ago, top-line growth was 3.1%, driven by customer and usage growth in both wireless services and fios - Verizon's bundled Internet access, telephone, and television service that operates over a fiber network.

Verizon also talked up the potential of the Internet of Things and mobile video to lift the top line: "New revenue streams from the Internet of Things continue to emerge and grow, with revenues of 175 million dollars in the quarter and about 495 million dollars year-to-date," Fran Shammo, Verizon CFO, told analysts. "In terms of our mobile video strategy, earlier this month, we were the first to market with the commercial launch of go90, a differentiated, mobile-first, social entertainment platform. Go90 includes a broad selection of premium content and social engagement features and the capability for sharing and conversation around the content. The initial feedback has been strong with increasing engagement without significant promotion, and we have received positive industry recognition."  source: Verizon statement

Growth Eludes América Móvil

América Móvil reported a 0.6% year-on-year fall in service revenues in the third quarter at constant exchange rates, a figure that was almost identical to the one reported for the second quarter. Group revenues in the quarter were 223.6 billion pesos (13.6 billion US dollars).

The Mexico-based group said voice revenues—both mobile and fixed—continued to decline in relation to service revenues. However, data revenue growth accelerated in the third quarter, rising 10.7% and 7% on mobile and fixed platforms, respectively. source: América Móvil statement

Ratings Agency Predicts Revenue Growth in EMEA

Credit ratings agency Moody’s said it has stabilised its outlook for Europe, Middle East and African telecoms companies on the expectation of 1-2% revenue growth for the sector into 2017.  “Increasing demand for broadband, improved consumer spending and a change in focus from price competition to service quality, leading to price increases will underpin European telecommunications service providers return to revenue growth in 2016,” said Carlos Winzer, a Moody’s Analyst and author of the report.

Moody’s expects increased capex spending by some companies, such as Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Orange, to differentiate their offering will offset any increase in free cash flow resulting from higher revenues and improved margins. However, other companies, such as Vodafone Group and TeliaSonera, are nearing the end of their capex cycle, Moody's added. source: Moody's statement

Google reports 1.4 billion Android Users

Google said that 400 million users have started using the Android OS since May 2014, bringing the total of active users to 1.4 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.  Most of the recent growth has been in emerging economies, such as Indonesia and Vietnam.  About 30,000 new Chromebooks are being activated each day, mostly in US schools, Google added. Source: Wall Street Journal article

Apple Offloads 13 Million iPhones in a Weekend

Apple said it sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, a new record, in the three days after launch. However, the models have had broader availability than their predecessors. From September 25th, they were available in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK and the US. Apple has said the new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year. Source: Apple statement

Verizon Sees Meaningful Internet of Things in 2017

Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications CEO, told investors that Verizon had earned about 320 million US dollars of revenue from the Internet of Things in the first half of 2015. “But we are generating by far the largest amount of revenue from Internet of Things of any company in the US,” he claimed. "I think it will be a meaningful line item on the budgets and our results for investors to look at in 2017.” source: Mobile World Live article

Android Cedes Market Share in Europe & China

In the smartphone market, Android, the leading operating system, has lost ground to both iOS and Windows in Europe in the past year, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. However, Android has gained share in the U.S., the research firm added. “27% of smartphone buyers across Europe left Android for iOS versus 9% in the US,” said Dominic Sunnebo, business unit director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Europe.

“The U.S. market continued to be dominated by two players, Apple and Samsung, who together accounted for 64% of all smartphones sold,” added Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Our data also shows that these two vendors sold nine of the top ten best-selling smartphones in the three months ending July 2015 – with LG making a cameo appearance in the ranking.” source: Kantar Worldpanel 

China Telecom Flatlines

China Telecom reported flat service revenues for the first half of 2015, but total revenues slipped 0.6% year-on-year to 165 billion Chinese yuan (26 billion US dollars) on lower equipment sales. Although mobile voice revenue fell 17% year-on-year, mobile data revenue climbed 17%.

China Telecom also said it  increased its roster of 4G base stations by 140,000 to 320,000. source: China Telecom presentation

Mobile Sales Slide at China Unicom

China Unicom reported a 3.3% fall in operating revenues to 144.7 billion Chinese yuan (22.6 billion US dollars) in the first half of 2015. Mobile service revenues fell almost 10% year-on-year, following a slide in the number of mobile subscribers and a decline in average revenue per user. source: China Unicom presentation

OTT Services Crimp China Mobile

Buoyed by handset sales, China Mobile reported a 5% year-on-year rise in revenue to 340.7 billion Chinese yuan (53.4 billion US dollars) for the first half of 2015, but telecommunications service revenue rose only 0.5%. With China Mobile facing growing competition from over-the-top players, revenue from applications and information services grew just 9% to 34.6 billion yuan, while SMS and MMS revenue fell 12% to 16 billion yuan. source: China Mobile statement

Alibaba Sees Sales Slowdown

Alibaba, China's leading digital commerce broker, reported a 36% year-on-year rise in revenues to 20.25 billion Chinese yuan (3.27 billion US dollars) for the quarter ending June 30 (excluding the impact of its suspended online lottery business and the transfer of a loan business to Ant Financial). That represents a marked slowdown on the 45% growth it achieved in the year to March 31.

Alibaba said the gross merchandise value (GMV) transacted on its China retail marketplaces in the quarter ended June 30, 2015 was 673 billion yuan (109 billion dollars), an increase of 34% year-on-year.

Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba Group, said: “We are excited about our top strategic priorities, including internationalization, winning in mobile, expanding our ecosystem from cities to villages, and investing in core technologies that will propel our cloud computing business.” source: Alibaba statement

Tencent's Growth Rate Falls Back

Leading Chinese Internet company Tencent reported a 19% year-on-year rise in revenues to 23.43 billion Chinese yuan (3.8 billion US dollars) in the second quarter of 2015. Revenues rose 22% in the first quarter and 31% in 2014.

Still, Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, said: “During the second quarter of 2015, we sustained our leadership across our social, games and media platforms, while achieving another quarter of solid financial results. Operationally, we made notable progress across our portfolio of mobile utilities, with our mobile security solution, browser and app store moving into industry leadership positions. Strategically, we cultivated rapid growth of our mobile payment solutions, and built up a growing subscriber base for our premium reading, music and video services. We also reported rapid growth in online advertising revenue, benefiting from expanded social performance advertising and video advertising.” source: Tencent statement

Another Sales Surge at Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom reported a 5.7% year-on-year increase in revenues on an organic basis to 17.4 billion euros. In Germany, revenue was up 2.1% and in the U.S., sales were up 13.7%, as T-Mobile USA added 2.1 million new customers.

The group is responding by increasing spending. Investments in terms of cash capex, before mobile spectrum expenses, increased by 17% year-on-year to 2.6 billion euros in the second quarter of 2015, Deutsche Telekom reported. source: Deutsche Telekom statement

Telefónica Heralds New Growth Cycle

Telefónica reported year-on-year organic growth of 4.4% in its revenues in the second quarter of 2015 to 11.88 billion euros, compared with 3.3% in the first quarter. The group's top line was boosted by 10% revenue growth in T. Hispanoamérica (Spanish speaking Latin America) and 5% in Brazil

The Madrid-based telco said that a rise in the number of customers paying for additional data beyond their tariff plan had contributed one percentage point to organic growth in the quarter. It added that 30% of its customers are using up their bundle of data, of which more than 40% pay for additional data.

César Alierta, Executive Chairman, said: "Particularly noteworthy, for example, is the significant year-on-year growth of 66% in video traffic, 52% in mobile data traffic and the 60% higher data usage of an LTE customer vs. a 3G customer. The strength of the evolution of the business in the first half of the year, coupled with our positioning in order to capture growth opportunities in the coming quarters, have led us to revise our objectives upwards for 2015.” source: Telefónica statement

Orange Almost Back to Stability

Orange reported its revenues fell 0.2% year-on-year on an organic basis in the second quarter of 2015, a marked improvement on the 0.9% fall in the previous quarter.  In its home market, France, revenues were down 0.8% year-on-year.

Orange Group CEO Stéphane Richard said: “We are particularly pleased with these results which mark a return to revenue growth in the second quarter, excluding regulation, for the first time since 2011... We delivered a very good commercial performance especially in France, Belgium, Romania and throughout the Africa and Middle East region. .. we now have more than 12 million 4G customers in Europe and have doubled our level of acquisition of fixed broadband customers in France thanks to fibre." source: Orange statement

Revenue Bounces Up for Baidu

China's leading search service Baidu reported a 38% year-on-year increase in revenues for the second quarter of 2015 to 16.6 billion Chinese yuan (2.67 billion US dollars).  In the first quarter, revenues were up 34% year-on-year.

Baidu reported 590,000 active marketing customers in the second quarter, an increase of 21% year-on-year, while revenue per customer for the quarter rose 13% to 27,400 yuan (4,419 dollars). Baidu said it had 304 million active mobile map users in June 2015, an increase of 48% year-on-year.  source: Baidu statement

Emerging Markets Bolster Vodafone

Vodafone reported a 0.8% year-on-year increase in service revenue to 9.2 billion UK pounds on an organic basis in the first quarter, as a 6.1% increase in Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific offset a 1.5% decline in Europe.  Group revenue rose 3.3% on an organic basis to 10.1 billion UK pounds (15.7 billion US dollars), boosted by strong equipment sales.

Vodafone said: "In Europe, organic service revenue has continued to recover, declining 1.5% (Q4: -2.6%), supported by more stable pricing environments in many markets and an improved commercial performance, as well as a positive impact from the inclusion of KDG and Ono in organic growth rates." source: Vodafone statement

Sales of Handsets Shore Up AT&T

AT&T reported year-on-year revenue growth of 1.4% for the second quarter of 2015 to 33 billion US dollars.  Wireless revenues rose by 2.1%, boosted by 14% growth in equipment revenues.

AT&T reported 2.1 million additional connections in its wireless business, including 410,000 postpaid connections, 331,000 prepaid connections and 1 million connected cars. source: AT&T presentation

Qualcomm Warns of Further Weakness

Qualcomm said its revenues in the quarter ending June 28, 2015, fell 14% year-on-year to 5.8 billion US dollars. The chip maker said that Qualcomm licensees shipped 60.4 billion dollars of devices in the quarter, below its original forecast of between 61 billion and 67 billion dollars.

It warned that sales in the current quarter will be between 4.7 billion and 5.7 billion dollars, compared with 6.7 billion dollars in the same period in 2014. That would represent a year-on-year decline of up to 30%. source: Qualcomm presentation

Verizon Outgrows AT&T (Again)

Verizon reported year-on-year revenue growth of 2.4% for the second quarter of 2015 to 32.2 billion US dollars, marginally behind main rival AT&T (33 billion dollars). Verizon said wireless service revenue grew 2.3%, as connections rose 4.7%. Wireline revenue was down 2.2%. source: Verizon presentation

Apple Flags Forthcoming Slowdown

Apple forecast that its revenue in the current quarter (ending September 27th) will be between 49 billion and 51 billion US dollars, up from 42.1 billion dollars a year ago. That would represent an increase of between 16% and 21%. In the quarter ending June 27th, sales were up 33% year-on-year to 49.6 billion dollars, fuelled by a 59% rise in iPhone revenues. However, iPad revenues were down 23% year-on-year.

“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The excitement for Apple Music has been incredible, and we’re looking forward to releasing iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2 to customers in the fall.” source: Apple statement

Huawei Enjoys Stronger Quarter than Ericsson

Ericsson said its sales, adjusted for comparable units and currency, in the second quarter fell 6% year-on-year to 60.7 billion Swedish krona (7.1 billion US dollars), hit by less capacity business in North America. Ericsson added that its reported IPR revenues were slightly down year-on-year despite a positive currency effect... primarily due to an ongoing dispute with a major customer. source: Ericsson presentation

Meanwhile, Huawei reported a 30% year-on-year increase in revenues to 175.9 billion Chinese yuan (20.4 billion US dollars) for the first six months of 2015.  "Investment continued to pour into 4G network construction in China," noted Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou.  "In addition, the growth in global data traffic drives investment in network capacity expansion, while carriers' digital transformation pushes up investment in the ICT industry. These factors helped us maintain steady growth in the carrier business." source: Huawei statement

Google Perks Up Slightly

Google reported an 18% year-on-year increase in revenues for the second quarter (in constant currencies) to 17.73 billion US dollars, slightly better than the 17% achieved in the first quarter. The number of paid clicks on adverts brokered by Google rose 18% year-on-year, but the average cost of these clicks to Google's customers fell 11%.

"Our strong Q2 results reflect continued growth across the breadth of our products, most notably core search, where mobile stood out, as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising”, said Ruth Porat, CFO of Google.  Google's "other revenues", generated primarily from sales through its Play app store, rose 17% year-on-year on a reported basis, despite adverse currency movements. source: Google statement

My report on Google's Big, Big data Battle for STL Partners is available here.

Netflix Forecasts 30% Growth

Netflix forecast that it will generate revenue of 1.59 billion US dollars in the third quarter, which would be a year-on-year increase of more than 30%. In the second quarter, revenues rose 29% to 1.48 billion dollars.

"We added a Q2 record 3.3 million new streaming members, compared to 1.7 million in the previous year quarter," Netflix said. "We are making great progress shifting to exclusive content and expanding our original content, which differentiates our service, drives enjoyment for existing members and helps motivate consumers to join Netflix."

"We compete with linear TV, PPV, video piracy, other Internet networks, video gaming and many other sources of entertainment. The recent Sandvine results from North America show that, looking at just the Internet networks segment, we continue to improve faster than others. Note that this data measures peak megabits, not peak viewing hours, so YouTube, for example, with more modest average video quality, is underrepresented in terms of hours." source: Netflix statement

Global Device Market Shrinks

Worldwide shipments of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) will reach 2.5 billion units in 2015, a 1.5% increase from 2014 and lower than the previous quarter's forecast of 2.8% growth, according to research firm Gartner. "This was partly due to a continued slowdown in PC purchases in Western Europe, Russia and Japan in particular, largely due to price increases resulting from local currency devaluation against the dollar," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. 

End-user spending on devices will total 606 billion US dollars in 2015 and will show, for the first time since 2010, a decline in current U.S. dollars, Gartner added. source: Gartner statement

Separately, Samsung Electronics estimated that its revenue in the second quarter was down about 8% year-on-year to 48 trillion Korean won (43 billion US dollars): source: Mobile World Live article.

Xiaomi Reports 33% Growth

Much-hyped and unusually innovative Chinese handset vendor Xiaomi tweeted that it sold 34.7 million smartphones in the first half of 2015, up 33% year-on-year. By way of comparison, Apple sold more than 61 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2015. source: Xiaomi tweet

Vodafone Outbids Rivals in Germany

Telcos in Germany have bid a total of just over 5 billion euros to acquire new spectrum. Vodafone Germany bid about 2.1 billion euros, gaining more spectrum in the 1800MHz band than its rivals, while Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica Deutschland committed 1.8 billion and 1.2 billion euros respectively. source: Mobile World Live article

Vodafone Returns to Growth (Just)

Vodafone reported a 0.1% year-on-year organic rise in service revenues in the quarter ending March 31. In Europe organic service revenue fell more than 2%, offset by a 6% rise in AMAP (Asia, Middle East, Africa and Pacific) organic service revenue "led by strong customer growth and rising data penetration." For the year to March 31, group revenue declined almost 1% on an organic basis to 42.2 billion British pounds (62.6 billion US dollars).

Vittorio Colao, Group CEO, commented: “It has been a year of continued progress, culminating with a return to organic growth in Q4. We have seen increasing signs of stabilisation in many of our European markets, supported by improvements in our commercial execution and very strong demand for data." Source: Vodafone statement

For more analysis of Vodafone's financial performance and how it compares with its peers, see the report on Europe's big five telcos.

Telefónica Sees New Growth Cycle

Madrid-based telco Telefónica reported organic revenue growth of more than 3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2015 to 11.54 billion euros, on the back of improved performance in Spain, Brazil and Germany

César Alierta, Executive Chairman, said: "These figures reflect the solid beginning of this new cycle and are leveraged on the improved organic evolution of the business. This growth is also reflected across the board as all business units, except for Spain, posted increases in accesses, revenues and OIBDA. Moreover, Spain has already begun its return to growth after reporting in the quarter a year-on-year increase in accesses, which will gradually translate into growth in financials." source: Telefónica statement