Orange Austria, owned by France Telecom, is to be acquired by Hong Kong’s Hutchison, which competes with Orange through its 3 Austria operation. The deal, worth €1.3bn, consolidates the third and fourth players in the Austrian market.
Nordic operator TeliaSonera has announced that it is to increase its ownership in GSM Kazakhstan, which operates under the brand Kcell, and lead an IPO for the carrier in 2012. Kcell is the clear leader in the central Asian market, with 10.1 million customers at the end of 3Q11, according to Informa’s WCIS Plus service.
The owners of handset joint venture Sony Ericsson are to part company, with Japanese electronics firm Sony acquiring the 50 per cent share of the JV held by Sweden’s Ericsson for €1.05bn. The announcement comes ten years after the formation of Sony Ericsson, which saw two struggling handset units combined in the hope of marrying Sony’s consumer electronics expertise and Ericsson’s telecoms experience.
US carrier AT&T’s earnings for the third quarter of 2011 have fallen slightly short of Wall Street expectations as revenues hit $31.5bn, down $103m – or 0.3 per cent – on the same period a year earlier.
US President Barack Obama has received a letter from 15 lawmakers calling for his administration to approve the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. The letter, put forward by member of congress Heath Shuler and 14 other Democrats, said that the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA would help solve America’s jobs crisis by reducing unemployment, encourage private investment and promote new and innovative technologies that will drive job creation.
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US operator Sprint Nextel has brought a lawsuit against AT&T, seeking to block its rival’s proposed $39bn acquisition of T-Mobile’s US operation. The suit follows a civil antritrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice, which claimed the deal was anticompetitive.
Internet telephony player Skype, recently acquired by Microsoft, is doing some shopping of its own, entering into an agreement to acquire mobile group messaging provider GroupMe. Founded in 2010 in New York, GroupMe allows users to group text, conference call, and share pictures and location data.
Software and PC giant HP has unexpectedly killed off its poorly performing webOS mobile devices and announced its exit from the hardware space altogether. Instead the firm will focus on software and services with an eye on cloud computing through the $10bn acquisition of Autonomy.
International carrier Vodafone has sold 5.5 per cent of Indian operation Vodafone Essar to Indian medical services provider Piramal Healthcare for $640m. Vodafone is required to divest the stake to bring it back below the 74 percent ownership threshold, which is the Indian limit for foreign investment within a company. In July Vodafone acquired Essar’s holding in the operation, taking it beyond that threshold.
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Silicon vendor Texas Instruments (TI) has announced that it is to acquire fellow semiconductor player National Semiconductor in an all-cash deal that values National at $6.5bn. TI said the deal had the unanimous approval of the boards of both companies and is expected to close in the final quarter of the year.
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