There were 298 million broadband subscribers worldwide at end-March, according to data from Point Topic. Point Topic’s Research Director Katja Mueller says that number has probably surpassed 300 million now given prevailing growth rates. Eastern Europe was the only region to show growth of over 10 percent in Q1 2007, with Romania reaching over one million subscribers in Q1. The US remains the largest market, adding 2.9 million broadband subscribers to reach 60.4 million. China was in 2nd place, with 4.1 million fewer broadband subscribers than the US at end-March.
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Global mobile phone sales reached 257.4 million units in Q1 2007, up 14 percent from Q1 2006, driven by strong sales in the Asia-Pacific and Japan, according to figures from Gartner. Gartner expects full-year 2007 sales to reach 1.15 billion units, up 16 percent from 2006. Sales in the Asia-Pacific were up 40 percent year-on-year at 90.4 million units; with sales in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) up 6 percent to 43.9 million units; sales in Japan up 16.6 percent to 14.7 million units; sales in Latin America down 2.4 percent year-on-year to 24.6 million units; sales in North America up 2 percent to 41 million units; and sales in Western Europe up 4 percent to 42.9 million units. Nokia accounted for 35.7 percent of Q1 sales at 91.97 million units, versus 76.25 million units sold in Q1 2006; followed by Motorola with an 18.5 percent share or 47.55 million, versus 45.68 million; Samsung with a 12.5 percent share or 32.06 million, versus 28.13 million units; Sony Ericsson with an 8.4 percent share or 21.71 million, up from 13.15 million units; and LG with a 6.2 percent share or 15.97 million units, up from 14.55 million phones sold in Q1 2006.
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Converged Mobile Devices — including smartphones, PDA-style phones, and BlackBerrys — have become indispensable tools for mobile workers. An IDC study finds that although the majority of formal enterprise adoption to date has been within large enterprises, predominately in the U.S. and Canada, potential for strong growth exists among small businesses in all markets and enterprises throughout other regions of the worldFurthermore, individual business users are coming in through the backdoor of corporate networks with their own devices. IDC believes IT departments will move to remedy this and gain control of such actions. According to IDC’s latest mobile enterprise device usage forecast, worldwide shipments of corporate-liable mobile devices will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54% to reach more than 82 million units shipped in 2011.
IDC data shows that the U.S. market accounted for 42% of enterprise shipments of converged mobile devices (CMDs) in 2006 and growth will remain strong over the next five years. IDC predicts that Western Europe will become the second-most important market in terms of enterprise mobility. The majority of Asia/Pacific and other regions of the world, including Latin America and Eastern Europe, will also experience a shift towards greater enterprise adoption. On the other hand, Japan shows signs of marginal enterprise adoption over the forecast period according to IDC as its market remains almost entirely consumer-centric.
IDC believes that growing enterprise adoption worldwide will be driven by organizations realizing the advantage of connectivity options to reduce telecom spending and enhance mobile worker productivity. IDC believes corporate purchasing of CMDs will increase as investing in mobile and wireless solutions becomes high priority for IT. Thus, IDC foresees a greater need for IT departments to exercise more control over these same devices.
“One of the key drivers for the expected growth in enterprise adoption of CMDs lies in the power to use these devices, beyond basic telephony, to access corporate email, the Internet/Intranet, and securely link to corporate databases,” says Sean Ryan, research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Devices program. “As CMDs become more tightly coupled with enterprise networks, IT mobility initiatives will trend towards standardization, security, and control — resulting in enterprise procurement of such devices.”
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Vodafone Group announced that it has narrowed its net loss for the fiscal year, and that it is on track to achieve strong growth in emerging markets in the coming year. The projections are due in part to cost-cutting measures in its European business divisions, and strong growth in emerging markets, such as Turkey, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Vodafone announced mobile revenues increased by 6.3%, while total revenues increased 6% to $61.61 billion from $58.15 billion. The company also said it narrowed its operating loss to $3.09 billion from $27.9 billion.
CEO Arun Sarin said in a statement that the company had made progress to cut costs and stimulate growth, stating that overall growth prospects for the group remain strong, despite expectations that the “mature” European market will remain a challenge. “The last year has also seen a further reshaping of Vodafone’s portfolio, with our acquisitions in Turkey and India further increasing the group’s exposure to the exciting growth opportunities in emerging markets. We are well-placed to continue delivering on our strategy,” Sarin said.
As of this morning, Vodafone’s shares were up 4.4%, hitting a 5-year high.
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Vodafone Group posted a narrower full-year loss on Tuesday and forecast strong growth in emerging markets, pushing its shares to five-year highs.
Vodafone said it had a net loss of 5.43 billion pounds ($10.77 billion) in the year to March 31, down from 21.9 billion pounds a year earlier, as it cut costs in western Europe and saw strong growth in emerging markets such as Turkey, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Revenues increased 6% to 31.1 billion pounds ($61.7 billion) from 29.4 billion pounds a year earlier.
The company said that tough competition in mature European markets like Britain and Germany would continue to drive down profit margins in those markets.
“In Europe we are driving voice and data growth but these drivers are being offset by price pressures and regulatory conditions,” said CEO Arun Sarin.
The European Union has decided to cap mobile phone roaming charges, which Vodafone estimates will cost it about 200 million pounds ($400 million) to 250 million pounds ($500 million) next year.
However, Sarin said he expects to see strong expansion in high-growth, emerging markets, such as Turkey and India, where the company has recently made acquisitions.
Sarin added that Vodafone had made solid progress on its efforts to cut costs and stimulate growth.
The company forecast an adjusted operating profit in the coming year in the range of 9.3 billion pounds ($18.4 billion) to 9.8 billion pounds ($19.4 billion).
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Verizon Business audio-conferencing services now are available in significantly more locations globally, under an expansion of country and local city access points
announced Wednesday (May 30).
A leading provider of audio, Web and video-conferencing services,
Verizon Business has added country access points in Latin America and
Eastern Europe, complementing city access points recently rolled out in
France and the United Kingdom. Multinational corporations using Verizon
Business’ global conferencing facilities in more major global business
centers are therefore able to realize cost efficiencies by accessing audio
meetings through local dial-in numbers.
In addition, Verizon Business has also announced direct IP Access to
its Instant Meeting audio conferencing services for Verizon Private IP
customers. These customers already benefit from access to Verizon Video
Conferencing. With IP Access to Audio Instant Meeting, customers with a
Verizon Private IP network in place can now further leverage their existing
IP infrastructure to enhance their global collaboration capabilities. By
utilizing existing corporate bandwidth to support their conferencing needs,
customers are able to minimize the need for additional PSTN access charges.
For multinational companies with widely geographically dispersed
workforces, this can offer a significant cost benefit.
Verizon Business’ audio conferencing services, built on the company’s
expansive global IP network, offer customers a high-quality, simple means
of collaborating around the world. Customer calls are routed through local
access points to provide customers with a cost-effective means of improving
communication and productivity in globally dispersed teams. Millions of
audio conference meetings are currently held per month using Verizon
Business solutions.
The countries added in this access point expansion are Chile, Colombia,
Mexico, Panama, Slovakia, Uruguay and Venezuela. Local city access numbers
have been established in Marseilles and Lyon in France in addition to
Paris, and Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester in the United
Kingdom in addition to London. Verizon Business therefore now provides its
substantial base of global subscribers with access to 74 points of access
from which to join a conference call. All access points are available to
customers with an existing global access subscription to Verizon audio
conferencing solutions.
“For any multinational corporation, the ability to collaborate cost
effectively across globally dispersed operations is key,” said Roberta
Mackintosh, director, international products, Verizon Business. “Our audio
conferencing solution, part of our integrated conferencing portfolio, is
already part of everyday business life for many global companies. By
expanding local access points, we are ensuring that we continue to support
our customers’ productivity and cost efficiency objectives as they support
their own customers around the world.”
Verizon Business sponsored a Frost & Sullivan study in 2006, “Meetings
Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance,”
that determined that collaboration is a key driver of business performance.
The study — which defined collaboration as an interaction between culture
and technology such as audio and net conferencing, e-mail and instant
messaging — also found that professionals around the world see their
collaborative efforts as highly productive and believe that collaboration
through communications technologies can provide a competitive advantage.
Full details of the paper can be found at
newscenter.verizon.com/kit/collaboration.
Mackintosh continued: “The ‘Meetings Around the World’ study
demonstrated the benefits companies can achieve through collaboration
solutions. As integrated IP communications moves up the agenda for our
global customers, we will continue to harness the latest collaborative
technology to enhance teamwork and break down geographical boundaries.”
With more than 30 years’ experience delivering conferencing services,
Verizon Business is a pioneer in the conferencing industry. The company
offers the convenience of one-stop shopping and a wide range of global
customised products and services, including audio, video and net conference
services, IP- based services and some of the most advanced meeting tools
available today.
About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a
leading provider of advanced communications and information technology (IT)
solutions to large business and government customers worldwide. Combining
unsurpassed global network reach with advanced technology and professional
service capabilities, Verizon Business delivers innovative and seamless
business solutions to customers around the world.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Mobile operators have barely rolled out their new third-generation wireless networks, and they’re already talking about the fourth generation. As next-generation cellular technologies — including those of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) project, whose mission is to guide the evolution of GSM cellular networks — have trouble getting off the ground, the industry has been turning its attention toward the WiMax packet-based technology.
“If the 3GSM show is any indication, then I think we will be hearing a lot about WiMax at CTIA,” said Mohammad Shakouri, vice president of marketing for the WiMax Forum, referring to the 3GSM World Congress trade show held in February in Barcelona. “The technology is getting close to commercialisation, and there has been a lot of buzz the past several months.”
WiMax, which is similar to another packet-based wireless technology, Wi-Fi, already has the foundation for a strong ecosystem thanks to support from handset and infrastructure makers including Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, as well as from chipmaker Intel.
These companies are all expected to have WiMax products in the market sometime this year, and some will be shown off at CTIA. Samsung, for example, is expected to have on hand some of its already-announced WiMax-ready gear, including a handset, ultra-mobile PC and a new USB dongle that offers wireless broadband for laptops.
The WiMax Forum, the industry group that promotes the technology, has almost completed the necessary certification requirements for new products, another major step that could help push deployment. According to Shakouri, products using the 2.3GHz spectrum, which is used primarily in South Korea, will be certified by mid-year. Products using the 3.5GHz will be certified in the third quarter, and products using the 2.5GHz spectrum, which is used mostly in the US, will have certification available by the end of the year.
WiMax, whose transmission distances range from a few hundred feet in densely populated areas to more than a mile in suburban areas, can support peak data speeds of 20 megabits per second, although average-user data rates fall between 2Mbps and 8Mbps. Data rates for the next-stage 3G cellular service — sometimes called 3.5G — are about 3Mbps.
1.Asian markets lead the way
Momentum among carriers is already building. In Japan more WiMax-compatible spectrum will be allocated by the government later this year. Korea Telecom in South Korea is already committed to launching its WiMax service this year. There are also plans to launch WiMax services in India, Malaysia and Pakistan, as well as in parts of Eastern Europe, Shakouri said. And the government in Taiwan is spending $1bn (£510m) to encourage the manufacture and development of 2.5GHz WiMax products and applications.
In the US, Sprint, the number-three carrier, has already said it plans to spend $3bn in the next two years to build a WiMax network, which is expected to be able to provide service to 100 million people by the end of 2008. Sprint is using its existing 2.5GHz spectrum, half of which it acquired from its merger with Nextel, to deliver the new service.
On Monday, Sprint announced several new cities that will be part of the WiMax network, It also named which of its named infrastructure partners would be developing which markets. Motorola will be developing Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis, and Grand Rapids, Mich. Samsung will develop Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I. And Nokia will develop Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
Sprint had previously announced that Chicago and Baltimore/Washington DC would be the first two markets to get the service, by the end of 2007. And Nokia had also previously named it would develop four markets, in Texas, for deployment in early 2008: Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio.
Currently, the only other operator in the US using WiMax is a start-up called Clearwire, which was founded by mobile-industry billionaire Craig McCaw. Today it delivers WiMax broadband services to fixed locations, but eventually the company will offer mobile service as well. Clearwire, which raised $900m in venture backing this summer, went public earlier this month.
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Telegeography writes….German incumbent Deutsche Telekom (DT) has reported its results for 1Q2007. Revenue grew 4.1% compared to 1Q2006 to EUR15.5 billion (USD21 billion) driven by strong growth from its international operations. At EUR7.7 billion, international revenue was 15.5% higher than in the same quarter of 2006. DT now generates roughly half of its revenue outside Germany. Domestic revenues fell by 5.1% year-on-year to EUR 7.8 billion due to sustained competitive pressure and regulatory constraints. Broadband and fixed line EBITDA fell by 17.9% year-on-year, while mobile EBITDA by 11.4%. Group EBITDA dropped by 5.8% to EUR4.7 billion in the first quarter. Net profit dropped by 57.9% from EUR1.09 billion in the first quarter of 2006 to EUR459 million in the first quarter of this year. For the 2007 financial year, Deutsche Telekom expects moderate growth in net revenue and adjusted EBITDA of around EUR19 billion.
DT’s total fixed lines fell by 5.8% to 38.3 million on 31 March 2007 compared to 40.6 million on 31 March 2006. 32.6 million of these were in Germany (down 6.1%), 5.69 million in Eastern Europe (down 3.5%) and 3.16 million were dial-up internet subscribers (down 22.7%). The number of broadband customers grew by 35.7% to 12.73 million on 31 March of which 11.06 million were in Germany, growing 29.3%. T-Mobile International had 109.2 million customers on 31 March 2007, 10.1% more than the 99.19 million recorded on 31 March 2006. The number of European mobile customers increased by 8.8% to 83.16 million, while T-Mobile USA saw its customer base reach 26.02 million on 31 March 2007.
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Deutsche Telekom’s revenue for the first quarter of this year grew 4.1 percent year-on-year to EUR 15.5 billion driven by strong growth from its international operations. At EUR 7.7 billion, international revenue was 15.5 percent higher than in the same quarter of 2006. This means that Deutsche Telekom generates roughly half of its revenue outside Germany. Revenues in Germany dropped by 5.1 percent from the previous year to EUR 7.8 billion due to sustained competitive pressure and regulatory constraints. Contributing to this were developments in Broadband/Fixed Network, where domestic revenue was EUR 318 million lower than that of the same quarter the previous year. Mobile Communications in particular generated strong growth with revenue of EUR 8.4 billion, more than half of the Group’s net revenue, growing 10.9 percent.
EBITDA showed contrasting trends. While at Broadband/Fixed Network, where German business is predominant, recorded an overall drop of 17.9 percent in adjusted EBITDA from the previous year, adjusted EBITDA in Mobile Communications rose by 11.4 percent. At Group level, adjusted EBITDA dropped by 5.8 percent to EUR 4.7 billion during the first quarter. The net profit dropped by 57.9 percent from EUR 1.09 billion in the first quarter of 2006 to EUR 459 million in the first quarter of this year. For the 2007 financial year, Deutsche Telekom expects moderate growth in net revenue and adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 19 billion.
The number of fixed lines dropped by 5.8 percent to 38.3 million users on 31 March compared with 40.6 million on 31 March 2006. Included in the number of fixed lines are 32.6 million in Germany (down 6.1%), 5.69 million in Eastern Europe (down 3.5%) and 3.16 million dial-up customers (down 22.7%). The number of broadband customers grew by 35.7 percent to 12.73 million on 31 March of which 11.06 million lines in Germany, growing 29.3 percent. T-Mobile International had 109.2 million customers on 31 March, 10.1 percent more than 99.19 million on 31 March 2006. The number of European mobile customers increased by 8.8 percent to 83.16 million, while T-Mobile USA saw its customer base grow by 14.5 percent to 26.02 million on 31 March.
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SDA-India writes…Nokia is planning to set up a mobile phone manufacturing facility in Romania. Nokis said it would spend USD 60 million on the plant, which will come up in the county of Cluj in Romania, one of the former communist countries in Eastern Europe.
which will be the company’s 11th mobile device production facility globally.
Nokia selected Cluj as the location for the plant because of the availability of skilled labour, good inbound and outbound logistics connections, its overall efficiency, and the long industrial tradition in the area, the company said.
Nokia’s new facility in Cluj is located about 400 kilometers northwest of Romania’s capital Bucharest. The construction work at Cluj will start in spring 2007 and production is expected to begin in the first half of 2008. Nokia foresees ramping up the factory gradually and will recruit approximately 500 employees there by the end of 2007. As part of the plans, Nokia is looking to establish an industrial village in the area, enabling a number of key suppliers and partners to locate their operations there, the company added.
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Broadband subscribers reach 298 mln in Q1 - Point Topic
