Can you remember what you were doing ten years ago this week? Were you sitting in a hot tub sipping champagne, surrounded by beautiful people? Were you kitting out your office with high end leather chairs, beer fridges and an expensive games room? Were you dreaming up a talking sock puppet mascot? Were you taking out an enormous mortgage? Were you hatching plans for a new dotcom launch that would make you a millionaire and enable all of the above?
Swedish vendor Ericsson turned in a gloomy set of results on Monday, with figures weighed on by heavy restructuring costs and the less than stellar performance of its joint venture businesses.
The economic downturn has hit handset replacement volumes hard, reducing sales to single digit growth for the first time since 2001. At the same time, competition has intensified throughout the handset value chain as players at every stage strive to increase value for their customers and the end user.
The past year has been particularly challenging for Europe’s mobile operators, in light of the economic downturn and the growing impact of regulatory measures. These factors and heightened competition in the industry have caused operators to focus on costs and operational efficiency.
As the rest of the world struggled in the grip of the economic crisis, the Middle East has remained a bastion of growth. Even as Dubai welcomes the telecoms industry’s biggest and brightest players, the dust was already settling on a financial setback which shook the local market only days before.
It’s not often we write about German vendor Siemens anymore, given its departure from the telecoms space. But the firm is still paying for its joint venture with Nokia, on Thursday announcing an impairment charge of €1.634bn on its partnership in Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).
The impact of the economic downturn and accompanying shift in consumer behaviour, coupled with intense competition has forced mobile operators across Europe to change their strategies, with many reducing capital expenditure and others introducing discounted pricing models.
Infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) said Tuesday that almost 6,000 staff face the axe as it seeks to reduce annualised operating expenses and production overheads by €500m by the end of 2011.
Incoming Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg on Monday nominated his successor to take the position of chief financial officer.
The latest bout of financial results give an interesting view on where the power is in the mobile industry. While the traditional telco firms continue to take a battering in the economic storm, everything is coming up roses for Apple and Google.
UK consumers rank their communications services among the most important elements of their lives, refusing to sacrifice them during times of economic constraint, according to a new report from UK watchdog Ofcom.
Despite the worldwide credit crunch and consumer belt tightening, the demand for mobile data services has never been so high.
Monster handset and equipment vendor Nokia continued the gloomy economic theme on Thursday, as second quarter net profit slid to €287m, from €1bn in the same period last year.
Brendan O’ Mahony, chief executive of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) talks about key issues affecting telecommunications workers.
On Tuesday, European heavyweight carrier Vodafone reported a 54.4 per cent drop in profit for the year ended March 31. Income fell to just over £3bn for the year, down from £6.7bn in the previous year.
UK incumbent carrier BT is to slash around 15,000 jobs as it struggles to offset weaknesses in its Global Services division.
European heavyweight carrier Telefonica delivered a solid set of financials on Wednesday, recording a 9.8 per cent increase in net profit for the first quarter to Eur1.69bn.
The long-awaited 3G capex boom in China is like a warm fire on a cold night for mobile networks vendors, many of which are struggling with everything from slack sales and falling margins to lingering integration problems.
Nordic operator Telenor on Tuesday reported that net profit for the first quarter fell to NOK1.62bn (Eur185m) in 2009, compared to NOK4.57bn in the same period in 2008.
Kuwait-based carrier Zain announced a cost cutting plan this week, which it claims will propel the company toward its target of being a top ten operator by 2011.
Consolidation, convergence and competitionCalls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.
It is testament to Telstra’s aggressive approach to mobile broadband that an operator in a country of just over 23 million people should rank in the top ten operators worldwide in terms of LTE subscriber numbers. Mike Wright, Telstra’s executive director for networks and access technologies talks to Telecoms.com about the firm’s plans for further enhancing its LTE operation with fresh spectrum and LTE-Advanced capabilities.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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With summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.