Promised market for NFC effectively commences in 2011 with commercial rolls
The near field communication (NFC) market has moved from an innovator to an early adopter phase and from trial development to the first commercial roll out. The key driver for the market is the wide adoption of the NFC solution in mobile phones, as without massive number of NFC-enabled mobile phones in use; the market will not be able to realize its immense potential. Researchers anticipate that NFC-enabled mobile phones will reach 863 million units in 2015. At this time, NFC-enabled mobile phones will represent more than 53% of the overall market.
Researchers state that in 2015, NFC will clearly be the most-used solution for mobile payment. They expect that the total payment value for NFC globally to reach US$152.71 billion in 2015, while the NFC payment value in the EU is expected to reach US$57.50 billion. They forecast a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 118% between 2010 and 2015.
There are two possible business models for the NFC market; the first one is based on a memory rental model where the NFC application will rent the memory space used by its application and the second is a pure rental model coupled with extra cost per use where the application will pay a cost per year with a given number of actions. When this number of actions on the application such as update, patch, read and write is reached, extra costs are charged to the application provider.
Different secure elements for NFC methods have allowed different technology players in industries such as telecoms operators and electronic device manufacturers to establish their own payment infrastructure. This lack of harmonization has been an obvious restraint for the NFC industry.
For nearly a decade, the NFC solution has been facing political and commercial problems. Most industries involved in NFC trials did not want to share the substantial revenues generated by this solution. Illustrating this point was the commercial discussion between banks and network operators, neither of whom wanted to share revenues. At the beginning, each wanted to force the other to adopt their business model. At the end, after network operator acquisition of banks and financial company acquisition of network operators, they were forced to admit that cooperation was the best compromise.
The NFC market also has the potential to create revenues for the entire NFC ecosystem. Even if it seems that purely hardware – SIM card and NFC controller – revenues will decrease, the gain will still be really important.
However, most technology providers have been able to offer new services directly linked with NFC. Handset manufacturers, trusted service management system providers and marketing and commercial NFC service providers all stand to benefit.
Many marketing companies are already involved in the NFC ecosystem. This is a good signal because, in the past, marketing companies were involved in new technology roll-outs only when the transition occurred from purely trials to first commercial deployments.
EU investigates Telefonica, Portugal Telecom deal (Europe)
Europe’s top competition regulator EU has stated that it has opened a formal investigation into a non-compete deal between Spanish and Portuguese telecommunications companies Telefonica SA and Portugal Telecom SGPS SA.
According to the European Commission, it will probe whether the two companies have broken EU law by agreeing not to compete with each other in their home markets. It states that the non-compete deal between the two companies was concluded last year when Telefonica acquired sole control over their Brazilian joint venture Vivo.
The Commission added that it will also investigate whether the non-compete agreement predates the Vivo deal, which is not concerned by this probe. A formal investigation does not imply that the companies have actually broken EU laws.
China postpones NSN-Motorola deal
Chinese regulators have vetoed Nokia Siemens from attaining its goal of buying Motorola’s wireless infrastructure business by the end of 2010.
According to the company, it now expects the $1.2 billion acquisition to close in the first quarter of this year.
China’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau, a unit of the Ministry of Commerce, has so far yet to sign off on the proposed purchase.
Regulators from the US, the EU, Brazil, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan and Turkey have all approved the deal already, making China the last holdout.
According to Nokia Siemens CEO Rajeev Suri, they are continuing to work closely with the authority in China to finalize the clearance process in that country. The company was disappointed by the delay.
The deal for Nokia Siemens to buy the bulk of Motorola’s wireless infrastructure assets was first announced in July. It is part of Motorola’s plan to spin off its handset division from the rest of the company.
Nokia Siemens stated it would acquire around 7,500 former Motorola employees with the purchase, including entire large R&D sites in the US, China and India.
China positive on EU wireless modem decision
Commerce Minister Chen Deming has stated that the Chinese government is hopeful that the European Commission (EC) will stop an investigation into Chinese wireless wide area networking (WWAN) modems.
According to Chen, they hope the EC will support the China-EU business cooperation and make a prompt decision to stop the three types of trade investigation. The Chinese government will continue to keep an eye on the issue.
The EU opened an anti-subsidy probe into WWAN modems imported from China in September after it initiated an anti-dumping investigation and a safeguard measure probe into the modems in June.
The complaint behind the three probes was laid by Belgium’s modem-maker Option, the sole producer of WWAN modems in the EU. It had been alleged that China unfairly subsidies wireless modem makers such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE. However, Option later dropped its anti-dumping and anti-subsidy complaints after securing a commercial agreement with Huawei.
Chen added that China is very concerned with the issue because it involves a great amount of money and comes under three types of investigations. It is the first time that a single Chinese product has simultaneously come under three types of trade investigations by the EU. The commodity in question involves over US$4 billion in exports.
EU expands Slovak Telekom anti-trust probe to Deutsche Telekom (Europe)
European Commission, the European Union’s highest antitrust authority has extended an investigation into whether Slovak Telekom violated anti-monopoly rules to the telco’s parent, German heavyweight Deutsche Telekom (DT).
In 2009 the commission began probing the incumbent Slovakian PSTN operator, which uses the T-Com brand, concerning alleged infringements mainly relating to broadband internet access services.
In a statement, it confirmed that the inquiry had now been broadened to the parent group, claiming the extension of the proceedings to Deutsche Telekom is to establish whether Deutsche Telekom may have been involved in one or more of the suspected infringements or may be held liable for one or more of them.
EU’s Cyber-security Agency Highlights Risks & Opportunities of Smartphones
A report by Europe’s Network and Information Security Agency has warned of the security risks that could occur from the increased use of smartphones by business and government employees.
“Given the growing importance of smartphones for EU businesses, governments and citizens, we consider it essential to assess their security and privacy implications,” says Prof. Dr.Udo Helmbrecht, Executive Director of ENISA.
Some of the key risks identified by the Agency include the accidental leakage of sensitive data -e.g. through GPS data attached to images; Data theft by malicious apps and from stolen, lost or decommissioned phones; and the potential overload of network infrastructure by smartphone applications.
In terms of opportunities, backup is often very well integrated into smartphone platforms, making it easy to recover data if the phone is lost or stolen. Another opportunity lies in the use of app-stores: “Most smartphone users only install 3rd party software through controlled software distribution channels,” says Dr. Marnix Dekker, co-author of the report.
The most important result of the report is a comprehensive set of strategies for securing smartphones. “Smartphones are a goldmine of sensitive and personal information – it’s vital to understand how to maintain our control over this data. We’ve designed our recommendations to plug into a typical security policy,” says Dr. Giles Hogben, co-author of the report.
The full report can be downloaded from http://enisa.europa.eu/smartphonesecurity/
Telekom Slovenije suffers loss in Q1
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The operating revenue of the Slovenian communications group Telekom Slovenije grew by 3% to EUR203.4 million (USD249.6 million) for the first quarter of 2010, including its subsidiaries across southeast Europe.
The EBITDA went down 7% to EUR65.3 million and net income dipped from EUR14.1 million in Q1 2009 to EUR600, 000 in the three months to March 31, 2010. The number of retail fixed broadband connections was up 5,193 on the end of 2009, at 326,000. Even the number of wholesale high speed lines stood at 100,000, an increase of 1% quarter-on-quarter.
2% fall in the consolidated number of mobile and fixed telephony subscribers has also been reported in the consolidated number of mobile and fixed telephony subscribers. According to the company, its Kosovan unit, IPKO’s mobile user total fell by 37,083 to 494,647 in January-March.
Telecom Italia Q1 profit rises 31%
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 31% rise in first-quarter net profit has been reported by Italy’s largest telecoms operator Telecom Italia SpA. The profit has been attributed to the improved margins and the turnaround in the revenue trends for the Italian business. Telecom Italia has targeted annual average revenue growth of around 1% for the three years in its 2010-2012 strategic plans.
0.7% fall in the first quarter revenue has been reported, improving from a 6.8% drop in the previous quarter. Due to growing competition in its core markets and focuses on reducing its debt burden, full year revenue is seen down 2% to 3%.
The first quarter net profit of the company has gone up from EUR460 million a year earlier to EUR601 million and analysts’ consensus of EUR511 million. The EBITDA grew 3.2% to EUR2.83 billion.
According to Telecom Italia Chief Executive Franco Bernabe, these results demonstrate that the company is on the right track to relaunch the group and it is confident that the next quarters will continue to meet the commitments made in the industrial plan.
EU roaming cap to stay says EU Advocate General
British Mobile operators are facing defeat in their battle against EU plans to regulate international roaming rates, after the EU’s Advocate General ruled that the price caps were valid.
Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and O2 are challenging plans by the European Commission to regulate roaming charges on voice calls.
Luis Miguel Poiares Pessoa Maduro, the Advocate General and a key adviser to the European Court of Justice, ruled recently that the regulation is in the interests of the internal market in which ‘free movement of goods, services and capital is ensured’.
His decision is non-binding but in vast majority of cases rulings by Advocate Generals are heeded by the European Court of Justice. The final ruling will be delivered over the coming months.
Maduro said in a statement: ‘The differences in price between calls made within one’s own member state and those made while roaming could reasonably be regarded as discouraging the use of cross-border services such as roaming.’
The case was referred to the European Court of Justice in 2007 by the UK High Court.
