Mobile Operator
Analysis of European telco priorities reveals surprising results
We recently conducted an exercise looking very closely at the major strategic initiatives that have been implemented by the European telco community. It was a fascinating exercise that revealed a perhaps surprising level of consensus amongst all major European telcos. Whilst the tactics in reaching the goals may vary, our analysis showed the long-term strategic priorities are shared and fall into four very clear and focused aims. Read more »
JIL’s slow progress doesn’t bode well for WAC
The Wholesale Applications Community is keeping up with the timeline it announced back in May and was registered as a limited company in the UK on July 1, as well as appointed a board of directors featuring an impressive array of top executives from leading carriers from different corners of the world. It has also fleshed out plans for its merger with JIL – a similar initiative launched in April 2008 by a select clique of operators; namely China Mobile, Softbank Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. JIL will be fully subsumed into WAC by the end of September, Michael O’Hara, chief marketing officer at the operator association the GSMA, told journalists and analysts during a webinar this week. Read more »
LTE looms on the horizon, but GSM still has a long shelf life, says Thomas Wehmeier
I recently chaired the keynote session at our flagship LTE World Summit in Amsterdam. The event was packed with a who’s who of the LTE sector – more than 600 attendees from all around the world and all parts of the LTE ecosystem. Perhaps not an obvious occasion upon which to switch discussion toward the useful life of 2G. But with Seizo Onoe of NTT DoCoMo confidently outlining the Japanese operator’s aggressive plans to switch off its 2G network within two years and many other operators wondering how long they’ll have to operate multiple costly radio access networks (GSM, UMTS, LTE), the discussion was entirely valid. Would other operators join DoCoMo in moving away from their 2G networks so early? We’re not yet convinced and believe the Japanese situation is a very market-specific issue based both on the choice of a proprietary and niche technology (PDC) for 2G and on an unusually high level of 3G coverage and user migration in that market. Read more »
China Mobile rallies operator support for TDD-LTE
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator by subscriptions, has reached an agreement with 11 operators worldwide to co-operate on TDD-LTE. The move underlines China Mobile’s intent to create a sizeable global market for TDD-LTE, a technology the operator is heavily invested in. Read more »
A CDMA iPhone would be great for Verizon, but does it make sense for Apple?
If Apple decided to make a CDMA iPhone, the whoops of jubilation would be heard all the way from Verizon Wireless’headquarters in Basking Ridge, NJ, to AT&T’s HQ in Dallas, TX, where the news would no doubt be greeted with stunned silence. Latest reports cite unnamed sources as confirming that Verizon Wireless will offer the iPhone in January, when they say AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple ends.
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Gemalto buys into M2M future
French mobile vendor Gemalto has acquired German M2M vendor Cinterion for €163 million (US$198.8 million) in cash in a bid to position itself to capitalise on the fast-growing M2M market. Read more »
UK iPhone 4 retail appetite puts pressure on supply
The iPhone 4 launched today in the UK and was greeted by queues of people eager to buy the device before it sells out. Vodafone’s flagship London store only had 50 handsets and the 32GB version was sold out in most stores. The next batch of devices isn’t expected for a month in that store, according to store representatives speaking with Informa analysts. Read more »
No money is changing hands between Facebook and its new operator partners
The recent launch of Facebook’s new text-only mobile website, 0.facebook.com, is a good illustration of the kind of non-commercial relationship that online social networks and mobile operators tend to form. Although 53 operators from 45 countries have agreed to waive browsing charges for 0.facebook.com users for at least a year, they are getting no payment in return from Facebook. No money has or will be changing hands between the social network and its 0.facebook.com operator partners. Read more »
Google’s momentum is growing in the mobile handset market
Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and CEO, last week revealed that the company’s “partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day”. Assuming Google’s hard working partners keep going at weekends, and if that rate were to be extended over the next year, there would be nearly 24 million new Android-based handsets shipped. That’s an impressive number for an OS platform that only launched its first handset 19 months ago, in late October 2008. Read more »
Low-end, mainstream and female: the bigger addressable market for Orange UK mobile media?
Orange UK released their sixth Digital Media Index earlier this month, revealing some intriguing mobile content consumption trends during 4Q09. Read more »
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