Late last week, Hutchison 3G Austria (3) finally announced the acquisition of Orange Austria in a deal valued at around €1.3bn. The market share of the newly-enlarged operator will reach around 22 per cent of total customers. This is more than double the market share of any other subsidiary of the 3 Group in Europe, but still places the operator a distant third to T-Mobile (~32 per cent) and Telekom Austria (~46 per cent) in a market that has effectively been reduced to just three players. The market had already been whittled down from five players to four in 2006 when T-Mobile Austria acquired tele.ring.
As the industry awaits Facebook’s IPO, Telecoms.com takes a look at what the social networking site going public will mean for the telecoms industry. The social networking site revealed in its documents that it currently has 823m unique users per month, according to its December 2011 figures, and half of that figure – around 430m – are using the site from a mobile device, which is larger than the global Android install base.
Today’s news – that the BBC’s iPlayer, its market-shaping catch-up service, will now be available on TV to subscribers of Sky – is not without irony, given the steady stream of anti-BBC spin we’ve heard from the pay-TV operator (and its newspaper siblings) over the years. Neutral observers of the two UK media giants are more used to seeing them slug it out, like Waldorf and Stadtler, only without the affection.
Nokia’s set of recent results for 4Q11 show some of its worst results ever for a final quarter. While total volume shipments were down eight per cent year-on-year, probably in line with expectations, surprisingly volume sales for smart devices were down a massive 31 per cent – and this during a quarter when Nokia launched its eagerly-awaited Microsoft Windows Lumia smartphones.
Ericsson is rumored to be in talks to acquire the Canadian wifi vendor BelAir, potentially giving the Swedish vendor an edge on wifi and small cells. If true, it’s a bold move by Ericsson who does not have significant expertise in wifi access but has been developing gateways that interface between cellular and wifi networks.
Carphone Warehouse announced its third-quarter results on Tuesday, stating a strong 15 per cent growth in noncellular sales, based mostly on significant demand for tablets. Although the company also highlighted positive postpaid-smartphone sales, its revenues fell 4.7 per cent, mainly because of a weak quarter in the low-end prepaid market.
For the last few months, North American business news channels have been buzzing with rumors declaring that an acquisition of Research In Motion is just around the corner. The list of potential suitors allegedly includes such technology heavyweights as Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung, though none of these options offers the prospect of an easy post-acquisition reorganization or integration of product/service portfolios.
Content is king: the most over-used, hackneyed and clichéd phrase in this industry? Probably. The biggest truth in said industry? Absolutely.
2012 promises to be an exciting year in the OSS and BSS sectors as the industry moves into the next phase of support software deployment. Despite the economic gloom which still hangs over many of the world’s major economies, there is room for optimism in most of the geographical regions as operators in the mature markets begin to explore the possibilities of policy-based on-line charging (OLC)
The embedding of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications technology within commercial vehicles for the purpose of allowing fleet tracking is already a mature market in the enterprise services sector. The value proposition for fleet owners in terms of the implications for their internal operations as well as for the services that they can offer to their own customers as is clear.
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