Samsung to launch the Galaxy S3 on May 3 (South Korea)
South Korean manufacturer has confirmed that it will be releasing the Samsung Galaxy S3 on May 3. The smartphone was announced by the company at the Mobile World Congress 2012 held in Barcelona and is expected to be promoted as the official smartphone of the 2012 Olympic Games, as per reports.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 will be launched simultaneously in New York, Seoul and Dubai. As per rumours doing the rounds regarding the successor of the Galaxy S2, the S3 is expected to be powered by Google Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and a quad-core 1.5 GHz Exynos processor.
Further the phone is said to have a 4.65” AMOLED SuperPlus HD display, with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The S3 would boast of a 1 GB RAM with 32 GB storage capacity. There are two cameras in the phone, a 2 megapixels camera in front and a 8 megapixel rear camera offering HD recording. Reports reveal that the phone will be compatible with the LTE network as well.
The launch of the new Samsung Galaxy S3 will be held at Earl’s Court in London, on May 3.
Mediate introduces MT6236 platform (Taiwan)
MediaTek, Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company has introduced its new MT6236 platform. MT6236 targets the feature-rich multimedia market and supports high-end graphic displays; web browsing and full-finger touch functionality.
It features 5 megapixel camera, mobile TV, HVGA display, integrated Bluetooth, and full HTML browser. The MT6236 platform is pre-integrated with MediaTek’s software solution to reduce the design cycle time. MediaTelk also announced that it has opened an office in Dubai.
With the new office, MediaTek hopes to strengthen its regional connections and to grow its business by over 20% in the region.
Vivendi to expand network in Middle East (France)
Vivendi is currently in discussions with telecommunications companies and banks in the Middle East to expand its operations in the region, after opening an office recently in Dubai.
According to Jean-Bernard Levy, Vivendi’s chairman, they are working with partners that have not been disclosed. It’s a young office and they hope to announce more partnerships within weeks and months. They are working to make it happen.
The group, which among many assets owns Universal Music and a majority stake in French pay-TV company Canal+, also holds a 53% share in Maroc Telecom in Morocco. In 2010, Vivendi also signed a content deal with Qatar’s Qtel through Universal Music.
The company has a solid path to growth in the MENA region, Mr Levy added, confirming the music video website Vevo will launch in the Middle East by the end of June and the UK within weeks, as joint venture between Vivendi, Abu Dhabi Media and Sony Music.
Vevo has so far been limited to North American consumers, who are able to choose from 26,300 music videos uploaded by major artists so far. Unique viewers to the site which launched in December 2009 – had reached 43.7 million as of June 2010.
Mr Levy stated that it has been a tremendous success and this will help consumers from the Middle East to access thousands of videos and music content.
BroadHop and Saudi Telecom Present on Unique Policy 2.0 Service Deployment at Management World Middle East
BroadHop, Inc., the leader in next generation policy control platforms for telecom operators and Saudi Telecom Company (STC), the leading Middle East telecommunications operator, will present a real world success story on how implementing a Policy 2.0-based value added service improves customer experience, reduces churn and increases loyalty, at this year’s TM Forum Management World Middle East held March 22-23, 2011 at the Hilton Jumeirah, Dubai.
Ahmed Alshaia, Section Head, Data and Broadband VAS, STC and Kishen Mangat, Vice President of Solutions and Co-founder, BroadHop, Inc., will present on Wednesday, March 23 at 9:25 a.m. as part of the Customer Experience track. Session attendees will hear about STC’s unique and highly personalized ‘Prayer Time’ service and how BroadHop’s Quantum Network Suite – enables the delivery of more innovative services and capabilities, including real time parental control, granular content filtering, and flexible pricing.
As a key operator in the region, STC offers a diversified set of network access capabilities to its customers via xDSL, FTTx, WiMAX and GPRS/3G and upcoming LTE services. By using Policy 2.0, STC has been able to monetize subscriber traffic streams, enhance the subscriber user experience, offer personalized services as well as control the explosion of bandwidth growth within its network. Mr. Kishen Mangat and Mr. Ahmed Alshaia will cover the key areas of how Policy 2.0 addresses today’s operator needs including:
- Service velocity
- Complexity in delivering innovative services
- Back end monetization gap
- Integration challenges
- Scalability & Performance — enabling service complexity, while protecting the control plane
Du to select LTE providers for network launch (UAE)
Du is reportedly in the process of choosing the provider of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.
According to Hatem Bamatraf, the Dubai-based firm’s Senior Vice President for network development, they have agreed with a number of suppliers to do testing and… test under a number of scenarios.
Finnish vendor Nokia Siemens Networks, Sweden’s Ericsson and Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE have reportedly been shortlisted to supply the equipment for Du’s 4G rollout.
Bamatraf added that he expects the technology to be commercially available sometime this year, but could not specify a particular date. He did reveal that it would be mainly available in certain ‘hotspots’ throughout the UAE: they don’t expect to go 100% across the country, like the 3G [network]… There will be areas such as the TECOM areas or Jumeirah or the shopping malls that will have it. You won’t need it along the roads because you won’t need to use such fast data while you’re driving.
UAE defer prepaid iPhone 4 sales
The UAE based mobile network operator, Du has deferred sales of Apple’s iPhone 4 to prepaid tariff customers following an increase in people unlocking the handsets then selling them on the black-market.
The phones are subsidized by the company but can be sold with market-ups of 50-80% by black market dealers if they unlock or jailbreak the handsets.
According to Du’s COO, Farid Faraidooni, they became aware of this trend through the company’s network technologies, which detected a number of iPhone4 smartphones that had been sold by them and yet were inactive within the country. They also received information from abroad that smartphones sold by du are actually operating in neighboring countries.
According to sales assistants at Etisalat stores across Dubai, they have also been instructed to suspend sales of the prepaid iPhone 4, but blamed the decision on a lack of handsets to sell, not a ban by the company HQ. The iPhone 4 was launched in the UAE last September.
Axiom Telecom calls off IPO (Dubai)
Dubai-based mobile-phone distributor, Axiom Telecom has canceled its initial public offering of shares and listing on the Nasdaq Dubai because of liquidity and market concerns.
According to the company, while there were sufficient orders to fully cover the IPO book at the price range, primarily due to demand from high quality international investors in Europe and the U.S; there were widespread concerns about market conditions and liquidity. The board has therefore decided to withdraw the offer at this juncture to protect current and future shareholders of Axiom.
The Axiom IPO would have been the first in the United Arab Emirates in about two years.
