www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Macedonian government has reportedly failed in its latest attempt to increase competition in the country’s mobile market. In a second bid to drum up interest, the Macedonian Agency for Electronic Communications (AEC) apparently solicited interest from 19 of the world’s biggest telecoms companies including Vodafone Group (UK), Telefonica of Spain, China Telecom, Telenor Norway and companies in India, Russia and South America. The AEC has requested them to place an auction for for two 3G mobile licences but none of the firms approached showed interest in investing in the country. The licence was offered at a reserve price of just EUR5 million (USD7.1 million).
On 08.28.09, In Mobile, By Editor
On 08.19.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vodafone Qatar, the newly launched mobile operator in the country, reportedly anticipates to capture nearly 60% of the Qatari mobile market in next 10 years, a senior company official has said.
“We hope that by 2019 Vodafone Qatar will have acquired 40-60 percent market share as we will be offering quality product and a great distribution system nationwide,” director, Consumer Business Unit, Vodafone Qatar, Daniel Horan reportedly said.
He further revealed that the operator is in partnership with 10 leading companies to open around 100 more distribution outlets by next week.
“Next week, we will have 100 more sales outlets in addition to the 26 already existing to take the number of distribution outlets to 126 in the country,” Horan said.
The operator further aims to raise the number of sales outlet to 1500 by year-end. Horan further unveiled that the operator intends to introduce prepaid services by next month, a part of its market strategy.
“Very soon Vodafone Qatar will be announcing a major initiative for customer services and this will set new industry benchmarks in this segment,” Horan added.
On 08.17.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: China Mobile, the nation’s leading mobile operator, has reportedly introduced an online application platform which offers music, games, videos, and other entertainment applications for download to mobile phones.
The online store is dubbed as Mobile Market acts as a link between handset vendors and applications developers to China Mobile’s users.
Mobile Market currently supports 10 handset models including Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. brands, the company said.
On 08.06.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The French mobile operators have added 678,600 new subscribers in Q2′09 to end June with 58.91 million subscribers, reports the French telecom regulator Arcep. While the overall mobile market grew by 1.2% in Q2, the postpaid subscriber base grew by 1.8% to 40.51 million and prepaid subscribers fell by 0.3% to 18.4 million. MVNOs, at the end of June, had a 5.3% market share by subscribers, up from 5.17% at the end of March and 4.67% at the end of June 2008. During the Q2, SMS traffic grew by 7.2% to 14.66 billion messages, or 85.9 per month per active subscriber, compared to 13.68 billion or 80.6 monthly messages per customer in Q1.
On 07.30.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vodafone, the Tukrish mobile operator, intends to make an investment of 1 billion lira ($675 million) in technology over a years time period in order to boost its position in the fast paced market, chief executive, Serpil Timuray reportedly unveiled.
The investment will also include 3G services.
On 07.30.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s leading mobile operator, has ended its fiscal year on 30 June with a 15.1% drop in net income to JPY147.4 billion (USD1.6 billion). The sales came down from JPY1.17 trillion to JPY1.08 trillion, while operating income came in at JPY251.8 billion, a 15% decline from last year.
The fall, according to the operator is because of the maturity and competition coming in the Japanese mobile market. DoCoMo did, however, leave its forecast for the year ending March 2010 unchanged: revenue is expected to reach JPY4.38 trillion with operating income of JPY830 billion.
On 07.28.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: China Telecom Corporation Ltd. and China Mobile Ltd., two Chinese telecommunications giants, are joining hands against iPhone, a 3G smartphone of Apple Inc. aiming to nibble up the largest Chinese telecommunications market.
In detail, the nation’s largest telecommunications carrier China Mobile, is scheduled to establish its AppStore-similar online store named MobileMarket, which will start running in September 2009. Moreover, the company has been developing the OMS operating system based on the Android platform of Google Inc. in recent two years, and it introduced Android-powered OPhone in partnership with Lenovo Group Ltd. to directly challenge iPhone.
China Telecom is planning to hit the market with star products like Blackberry smartphone while China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. is bringing in iPhone.
For more information, please visit www.chinamobileltd.com/ and www.chinatelecom-h.com/
On 07.27.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Verizon is reportedly planning to launch Long Term Evolution (LTE) services across its key markets in the first quarter of 2010, in an effort to beat rivals such as MetroPCS. Earlier reports said that Verizon officially planned to begin testing its networks by the end of 2009 before commercially launching services in the second quarter of the following year. The latest report however, asserts that limited trials are already underway as the company looks to become the first to bring LTE to the US mobile market.
On 07.24.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country’s mobile operators added 6.322 million subscribers on their network in 2008-09. As per latest statistics released by the telecom regulator, the total mobile subscriber base across the nation reached 94.342 million on the network of five operators. Accordingly, the subscribers’ base widened by 7.1% with teledensity touching 58.20.
Telenor ruled the market as it added the maximum subscribers of 2.767 million taking the total base to 20.893 million base, PTA data said. Zong has remained dominant in the market by capturing 2.435 million subscribers in the overall addition of subscribers. Its network has increased to 6.386 million by the end of 2008-09 followed by Warid, which attracted 2.39 million subscribers in the same period with the overall base stood at 17.886 million.
The PTA data says by June 2009, Mobilink was leading the market share with 29.136 million subscribers. Ufone’s base stood at 20 million in the same fiscal year.
The report unveils that the Pakistani mobile market has reached a saturation point so the operators have shifted their focus on to VAS to earn greater revenues.
On 07.24.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The mobile subscribers in Colombia dipped to 40.82 million at June-end, down 1.4% from 41.41 million at March-end, reports the Colombian antitrust agency.
Telefonica, country’s second largest mobile operator posted a subscriber base of 9.03 million at the June-end, down from 9.81 million subscribers at March-end. The market share of Telefonica in Colombia is 22.1%, down from 23.6% at the March-end.
Comcel saw a rise in subscriber base up from 27.84 million at March-end to 27.93 million at June-end and held 68.4% of the Colombian market, up from 67.2% three months earlier.
Colombia Movil SA had 3.86 million subscribers, up from 3.76 million at March-end. The operator held a 9.5% share of the Colombian market, up from 9.1% three months earlier.