Not that some T-Mobile employees are averse to volunteering information, it turns out. Nor are those employees particularly loyal to the mothership. The German firm’s UK operation was named and shamed this week as the carrier at the centre of a data selling scandal. Names and numbers of T-Mobile subscribers nearing the end of their contracts were sold to external buyers, enabling a wave of cold calling from T-Mo’s competitors offering enticements to leave.

There’s no suggestion that T-Mobile itself has behaved indecently, and the firm is understood to have co-operated fully with the Information Commissioner’s Office, even keeping shtoom at its direction because of prosecutions that the ICO was planning. Once the news was out that one of the UK carriers had been breached, though, T-Mobile was outed by its competitors’ denials.

We don’t know exactly who bought the information and the deal – which the ICO said involved “substantial amounts of money” -  is somewhat shrouded in legal mists. It’s clearly against the law to sell the data, but is it just as naughty to buy it? Technically, yes. But, according to a legal contact of the Informer’s who is so close to this particular situation that they’ve actually started to smell of industrial espionage, the only requirement on the part of the buyer is that they ask the seller whether or not the data is offered for sale legitimately.

So, even if the buyer suspected the data might not be kosher, simply asking the question covers their back. It’s hardly a cast iron guarantee, is it. It would seem unfair if the buyer escaped censure but the ICO has not yet indicated whether it will go after the people that played the johns to T-Mo’s streetwalkers. What is clear is that the ICO wants to use the case to push for harsher sentencing for crimes of this nature even though the data sold in this case isn’t really that sensitive.

“We are considering the evidence with a view to prosecuting those responsible and I am keen to go much further and close down the entire unlawful industry in personal data. But, we will only be able to do this if blaggers and others who trade in personal data face the threat of a prison sentence,” said Christopher Graham, UK information commissioner.

Back home in Deutschland, the German incumbent is more concerned with the (re)merging of its mobile and landline businesses. The firm has found those customers who take both fixed and mobile service to be the most loyal, said chief executive Rene Obermann. Alas, only 20 per cent of Deutsche Telekom’s customer households have both services. If one per cent of the remainder were to take the service they don’t have (and DT has 29 million customer households in its home market), the carrier could boost its annual revenues by as much as €100m, he said.

A financial boost is something Middle East and African specialist Zain could use, after it reported a 53 per cent collapse in profit, year on year, for the third quarter. Zain opted to publicise results for the nine months to the end of September, however, which painted things in a rather more favourable light. The ol’ lipstick on a pig trick.

In this more positive light, customer growth year on year ran at 28 per cent, with the firm now counting almost 72 million subscribers among its base. Revenues increased by 24 per cent to $6.2bn and EBITDA by 37 per cent to $2.6bn. Even the nine-month strategy couldn’t hide the downward trend, though, with net profit – the only financial indicator that really matters in the end – down 17 per cent to $677m.

To make matters worse, the kybosh has been put on Zain’s merger deal with Palestinian operator Paltel, originally tabled in May this year. The deal would have seen Paltel merged with Zain Jordan in a share swap that gave Paltel 100 per cent of the new firm and Zain 56.53 per cent of Paltel.

Not now, though. The official statement from Zain’s chief comms officer, Ibrahim Adel, ran as follows: “Zain management confirms that the merger agreement between Zain and Paltel announced earlier this year will not take place, because Zain did not receive the required government approvals that were condition precedent to concluding the deal.” At the time of writing there’s no more detail, but keep an eye on telecoms.com – we’ll fill you in when we know more.

Rubbing it into Zain’s current woes is the rather better performance (in terms of improvement over time) of regional competitor, Egypt’s Orascom. Q3 net income was up six per cent year on year to $365m, which represented a 62 per cent increase sequentially. The company’s total subscribers hit 89 million at the end of September, an increase of 12.1 per cent over September 2008. Revenue was down year on year, though, by just under two per cent to $3.8bn.

If it ain’t broke, fix it – that’s the operational motto at Orascom, and the firm announced this week a shake-up of its management team. Chief operating officer Khaled Bichara graduates to the position of group chief executive officer. He’ll report directly to Naguib Sawiris, who will now take the position of executive chairman and will continue to direct the group’s growth and expansion strategy.

Sawiris still has the hump at Canada’s objections to Orascom opening up shop in North America. Orascom has an investment in AWS spectrum licensee Wind Mobile Canada, previously known as Globalive Wireless, which the Canadian regulator has said is not eligible to operate in Canada.

The CRTC objects to launch of Wind, saying that it is in breach of foreign ownership rules, a move which may put the brakes on Wind’s proposed launch of early December.

Let’s have a look at some handset news now and there are suggestions in the industry that Motorola’s new Droid handset could give the firm’s malingering handset unit a much needed boost. A new mobile application analytics firm called Flurry released an estimate this week that Verizon Wireless may have shifted a quarter of a million Droids during the phone’s first week of availability. The Droid launched on November 6^th.

Flurry monitors usage of over 10,000 applications on the iPhone and Android platforms and claims to track apps two thirds of unique iPhone and Android handsets in the market, including over 15,000 million user sessions per day.

To estimate first week sales totals for the myTouch 3G (HTC Magic), Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system, and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset.

Apple sold approximately 1.6 million 3GS units over its first week of sales, the device was simultaneously launched across eight countries, while the Droid launched only in the US.

Moreover, the iPhone commanded an installed base of over 25 million at the time the 3GS launched, including six million first generation iPhone users who were expected to upgrade to the 3GS. Taking this into account, Droid sales of 250,000 units during its first week from a standing start and in just one country, look like a strong result for Motorola and Verizon.

Flurry’s statistics also show that the average Android session length is four minutes versus two minutes for iPhone apps, leading one wag to speculate on telecoms.com that Android phones may just be much slower.

Meanwhile the Open Handset Alliance this week released the source code for version 2.0 of the Android platform, which is what’s running on the Droid. Version 2.0 is has been dubbed Éclair, leading the Informer to worry that the OHA might be running out of cakes to name its software after. They’ve had Cupcake, they’ve had Donut. What have we got left? Android Danish? Android Puff? Android Battenberg? Android Chocolate Cornflake Bites?

Anyway, Éclair includes new features such as support for multiple accounts, quick access to contact information, support for Exchange, search functionality for SMS, flash support for the camera, digital zoom, support for a virtual keyboard, with an improved keyboard layout, support for double tap zoom and a refreshed interface for the web browser along with support for HTML5 .

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza was telling the Informer this week that, while the firm believes Android could have a strong future, the platform is still lacking a decent central marketing strategy. Android owner Google, she said, has shown little interest in trying to push the Android brand’s awareness, preferring to leave the publicity generation to the handset vendors and operators. They, of course, have conflicted interests and, says Cozza, may not be motivated to do the job.

Google’s got its own conflicts, though, this week releasing preview code for its new platform Chrome to developers ahead of the platform’s official launch in 2010.

Chrome OS is all about the web and all applications running on the platform will be web apps, with the entire experience taking place within the browser. “This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs,” Google said. This approach should also make things more secure, Google argues, because every application will be sandboxed. And speed is also of the essence, with Google specifying hardware components the OS will run on, such as solid state memory only.

When it was announced, Sundar Pichai, VP of product management at Google, described Chrome OS a lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. The OS is designed to be fast and lightweight and get users onto the web in a few seconds where most of the user experience takes place, with a minimal user interface.

Google has already won support for Chrome OS from a handful of key players in the netbook and mobile computing spaces, including Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

Take care

The Informer

Zain, Paltel merger off

After months of courting, the proposed merger between emerging markets telecoms giant Zain and Palestinian operator Paltel is off.

Zain announced plans in May to take an equity shareholding of 56.53 per cent in Paltel, a publicly listed carrier, in exchange for Paltel acquiring 100 per cent of Zain Jordan.

The proposed merger would have given Paltel shareholders 41.43 per cent of the merged entity. However the deal has been called off “because Zain did not receive the required government approvals that were condition precedent to concluding the deal”.

The combination of Zain Jordan and Paltel would have produced a business group which could have generated over $1bn in revenues and $300m in net income in 2009, the companies said at the time.

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At Ovum meanwhile, the number crunchers were not to be out-gloomed. Shipments in 2009 will be down globally by about 9.1 per cent, the firm said, as the downturn continues to grip like a pitbull. All regions are likely to suffer the effects of the credit crunch, and even those in emerging markets will be hit to some extent, said Ovum, which has spied some blue sky on the distant horizon. The firm anticipates that shipments will start to recover from 2010 onwards, although it will take until 2012 before global volumes are back to the level seen in 2008.

Both analyst houses reported an upturn in high end handset sales, though, with Gartner clocking a 12.7 per cent year on year increase for Q1 smartphone shipments to 36.4 million units. Market share for this sector of the handset market grew to 13.5 per cent from 11 per cent in Q108. Gartner said strong performance by Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple showed that services and applications are now instrumental to the success of the smartphone space.

Ovum noted, meanwhile, that the credit crunch has hit the handset market squarely in the midriff, polarising demand at the low- and high end extremes.

In the overall global market, Nokia is still the Daddy, but its share dropped to 36.2 per cent from 39.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 by Gartner’s reckoning. Samsung retained second place and improved its market share to 19.1 per cent with sales totalling 51.4 million units. LG was in third with 9.9 per cent market share and there was some rare good news for Motorola, which after dropping to the fifth position in the fourth quarter of 2008, overtook Sony Ericsson to regain fourth place with 6.2 per cent share. Sony Ericsson – which is widely believed to be about to unveil its first Android handset – brought up the rear of the leading pack with 5.4 per cent of the market.

Nokia announced further job cuts this week, with 490 heads rolling as part of its ongoing weight loss programme. 170 bods from the logistics, production management and production support are being disappeared, while another voluntary redundancy programme had been announced that will last for the duration of June. This offer will be made available to 320 staffers at the manufactory in Salo, Finland.

Vodafone has been warming to a similar theme this week, announcing the acceleration of its own cost cutting programme in the wake of a dramatic drop in profits. It’s never good news when your net income halves, but at least in Vodafone’s case it still managed to bank more than £3bn for the financial year that ended March 31^st. It’s not as rosy as the £6.7bn it trousered the previous year but, in this climate – hell, in any climate – £3bn is a fair old wad.

Nonetheless, the firm is under pressure to improve its numbers and so it pledged on releasing its figures to kick its cuts up a gear. Vodafone announced a £1bn cost saving programme late last year and has now said it will deliver 65 per cent of that target within the next year.

Chief executive Vittorio Colao said that, in the more mature European and Central European operations, voice and messaging revenue declined due to lower growth in usage and continued price declines, while roaming revenue fell due to lower business and leisure travel. But the African and Indian markets remained robust driven by continued but lower GDP growth and increasing penetration.

European organic service revenues declined 1.7 per cent reflecting the economy and a strongly competitive environment. Impairment charges increased to £5.9bn, primarily in respect of Spain, which saw service revenue decline by 4.9 per cent on an organic basis, with an 8.6 per cent decline in the fourth quarter.

IDC research director, John Delaney, said that Vodafone is now reaping the fruits of some contentious decisions taken by its management in recent years. “Having resisted investor pressure to divest its stake in Verizon Wireless, Vodafone now benefits from the strong revenue and profit growth reported by the US operator following its acquisition of Alltel – and all in dollars too. Also benefiting the top line is Vodafone’s decision, three years ago, to extend its interests in emerging markets as a key objective of the operator’s corporate strategy.”

However, Delaney believes that the European mobile operators, Vodafone included, have more trouble ahead of them on the revenue front. “Today, the pain is in Spain – but it will be felt more widely over the coming year. The recession is set to hit people in the pocket throughout Europe, for at least the remainder of 2009,” the analyst said.

The group’s customer base has also exceeded the 300 million mark, with its proportionate customer base standing at 303 million at end March.

There may be pain in Spain, but for Zain there’s a gain. Shame it’s not in Bahrain. Instead it’s in Palestine, where the firm has taken a controlling stake in local operator Paltel. While Zain gets 56.53 per cent of Paltel, the Palestinian player gets 100 per cent of Zain Jordan. The mobile operation in Palestine, which currently operates under the Jawwal brand, will be rebranded to Zain by the end of 2009, and will also join Zain’s One Network roaming platform as the 19th participating country.

Meanwhile, over in Saudi Arabia, Zain’s been trialling HSPA+.

In other expansive news, Russian player Vimpelcom has – quite literally – made a beeline for Cambodia this week. Vimpelcom, which operates under the Beeline brand, launched mobile services in the South-east Asian market this week through its subsidiary Sotelco. The Russian player bagged a 90 per cent stake in Sotelco’s parent Atlas last summer, with the remaining ten per cent held by a local player.

During the first stage of the project, Beeline services will be available in the 11 largest provinces of Cambodia, covering 37 per cent of the country’s population. By the end of 2009, the company plans to provide coverage to territories that are home to more than two thirds of the country’s population.

In less successful M&A news, Egyptian carrier Orascom has spurned the advances of France Telecom once again, which is trying to table a satisfactory figure for the purchase of minor holdings in local mobile player Mobinil. The Egyptian regulator recently ruled that France Telecom should make an offer to buy all shares in Mobinil as part of its purchase of Orascom’s stake in ECMS, a holding company that owns 51 per cent of Mobinil.

The deal had been sweetened by France Telecom after its last attempt to carry out this move was scuppered by the Egyptian Capital Market Authority (CMA), which sided with Orascom and said the initial offer was not good enough. No details were given on how France Telecom increased its offer, but Orascom released a statement rejecting the deal.

Meanwhile reports have emerged from North Korea that a limited mobile service has been launched there on the network that is owned jointly by Orascom and the North Korean state.

“Here comes the Sun” George Harrison once sang, although he probably wasn’t making a prediction about the dawn of mobile application stores some 40 years hence. This week software firm Sun Microsystems unveiled plans for its own app store, saying it’s targeting some one billion users with Java enabled devices, covering mobile phones and PCs. And guess what: it’s called the Java Store.

“Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism,” said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO Sun. “Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search). As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience.”

Them’s fightin’ words for the likes of Apple which, according to Strategy Analytics this week, took 12 per cent of the mobile application market in 2008. But, said SA, the Store’s value as a share of the market is less than its volume, given that there are so many free apps available.

While the original App Store’s favourable revenue share for developers has created a tremendous buzz and fostered innovation, resulting in a high volume of downloaded applications, the analyst said, competition between developers has become fierce as a result and the majority of applications are available for free or very low cost.

The price of success, eh?

Take care

The Informer

Zain merges Jordan operation with Paltel

Emerging markets telecoms giant Zain is to take a majority interest in Palestinian operator Paltel in a share swap deal which will merge Paltel with Zain Jordan.

Zain will take an equity shareholding of 56.53 per cent in Paltel, a publicly listed carrier, in exchange for Paltel owning 100 per cent of Zain Jordan.

The merger will give the current Paltel shareholders 41.43 per cent of the merged entity.

The mobile operation in Palestine, which currently operates under the Jawwal brand, will be rebranded to Zain by the end of 2009, and will also join Zain’s One Network roaming platform as the 19th participating country.

The combination of both Zain Jordan and Paltel will produce a business group which will generate over $1bn in revenues and $300m in net income in 2009, the companies said.

Paltel has a customer base of 1.5 million active mobile customers and over 363,000 fixed line customers, as well as 78,000 ADSL customers as of March 31, 2009, which will join Zain Jordan’s 2.35 million active mobile customers.

This week Kuwaiti headquartered carrier Zain has been negotiating the purchase of a stake in Palestinian carrier Palestine Telecommunication Company (PalTel). Paltel operates in the conflict-ridden West Bank and Gaza strip, where a fragile ceasefire is currently in place.

Zain CEO Dr. Saad H. Al Barrak was in closed door meetings in the final week of last month, according to a Zain spokesman and a deal was imminent. It was not clear at the time of going to press whether or not Zain was angling for a majority stake in the carrier, which is its preferred method of expansion.

Zain operates in 22 countries throughout Africa and the Middle East and is one of the rising stars of the international operator community. The firm has repeatedly voiced its intention to become one of the top ten global mobile operators and has indicated its desire to expand into Western markets when it has built sufficient scale in its regional business.