Global sales of mobile phones declined on a qurterly basis for the first time in nearly three years, according to research firm Gartner this week. The two per cent year-on-year drop between the first quarters of 2012 and 2011 marks the first time the market has weakened since the second quarter of 2009.
The thought of Apple becoming an MVNO and offering its customers IP voice and messaging services as a cheap alternative to conventional voice and SMS is one that keeps many mobile operator CEOs awake at night. It is not just the loss of voice and SMS revenues that alarms operators. It is the risk that the operator would lose so much of its retail business. Network operators would become invisible to many of their (previous) customers.
Despite operator frustrations at the huge markups they have to pay on iPhone devices, Apple’s momentum has not been suppressed and it has once again posted sharp year-on-year increases in revenue and profit in its latest quarterly earnings.
The CEOs of Apple and Samsung, Tim Cook and Choi Gee-sung, have agreed to hold settlement talks to try to resolve a patent lawsuit over smartphone and tablet technology, according to a court filing. Meanwhile, Twitter has announced that it will begin a policy of not using patents as a tool to impede the innovation of others.
Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft has begun to bear fruit as sales of its devices running on the WP7 platform have outstripped Nokia’s Symbian handsets in Great Britain. The Lumia 800 handset accounted for 87 per cent of WP7 sales in the market, according to latest data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, while Germany remains the strongest market for WP7, with market share for the OS now up to 3.1 per cent.
Apple plans to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share and has already authorised a $10bn share repurchase programme.
Operators are looking for an alternative to Apple as the “leading brand in terms of entertainment today” and Sony “has the assets” to position it as such as the battle for consumer loyalty moves to the living room. That’s the view of Sony’s head of mobile in the UK and Ireland as the Japanese vendor makes a renewed assault on the mobile space – the first time Sony has been in the handset market as a solo brand for ten years.
It was all about the numbers this week as the great and the good of the industry played show and tell with their bank statements. There weren’t many in the market revelling in unreservedly good news on the financial front but, true to form, Apple had another bonanza to report.
Apple has surpassed Wall Street’s expectations after doubling sales its sales figures for iPhones, iPads and Macs for the first quarter of 2012. The company posted revenue of $46.33bn, with a net profit of $13.06bn for the quarter, which ended December 31, 2011. The net profit figure exceeded rival Google’s entire revenue for the same period, in which the search giant recorded sales of just over $10bn.
The latest patent battle between smartphone players has seen Apple lose an interim ruling in the US, after the firm attempted to sue Motorola Mobility for infringing three of its patents. It has also publicly identified nearly all of its suppliers and invited an outside workplace conditions group to inspect them.
A step in the right direction but does it go far enough?
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Over The Top providers have become the staple wildcard in almost any sector set on a collision path with mobile. By and large they are very good at what they do: connecting a user with their chosen content or service by whatever means available.
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