TIMELINE


A roundup of the major stories in telecoms in the past month, as reported in our daily news service www.totaltele.com


BUSINESS


Swiss Orange acquired Apax Partners agreed to pay €1.6 billion for Orange Switzerland and is examining the possibility of merging the operator with rival player Sunrise. A similar move to combine the two businesses was blocked by regulators in 2010.


Ericsson eyes NSN Ericsson would be interested in acquiring certain assets from rival Nokia Siemens Networks if they were put up for sale, the Swedish vendor’s CFO Jan Frykhammar told Total Telecom.


UK LTE rules Ofcom has proposed reserving spectrum in the UK’s upcoming LTE auction for either 3UK or a new entrant to ensure that there are four viable mobile networks in the country. However, it denied Everything Everywhere’s request to have sub-1 GHz spectrum reserved for it.


Chile merger off


After being blocked by a Chilean antitrust court, the planned merger between Entel and GTD Manquehue was called off when GTD’s controlling shareholder backed out of the deal.


Huawei drops India plant plan China’s Huawei has abandoned its plan to set up a manufacturing plant in India due to weak demand for telecoms equipment there. It has instead contracted a unit of Flextronics International to manufacture equipment for the local market.


February 2012 www.totaltele.com


Zambia privatisation reversed The Zambian government reversed the 2010 sale of Zamtel to Libya’s LAP Green Networks after an investigation concluded that the telco had been grossly undervalued. LAP Green paid $257 million for a 75% stake.


OTE sells out of Serbia Telekom Srbija bought back 20% of its own shares from Greek incumbent OTE for €380 million.


Mindspeed buys Picochip US-based semiconductor company Mindspeed agreed to acquire UK small cells chip maker Picochip for approximately $51.8 million: $27.5 million in cash and $24.3 million in stock. The deal also includes a $25 million earnout provision, payable in Q1 2013.


Nokia shifts Asia-Pac HQ Nokia is moving its Asia-Pacific headquarters to Beijing from


Singapore in a bid to meet its cost-savings targets.


Reding tackles data protection The EU’s justice commissioner Viviane Reding proposed new data protection rules that she claims will help build trust in online services.


Netflix UK launch Video streaming Website Netflix made its UK debut with a £5.99 per month unlimited tariff.


Google buys more patents Google acquired 187 patents and 36 patent applications, mainly relating to mobile devices, from IBM at the end of December.


Brazil may ban Chinese kit The Brazilian government is considering a ban on cheap mobile phones imported from China. Brazilian manufacturers have complained that Chinese handsets are entering the


US operating system share - consumers


n Android n iOS n RIM BlackBerry n Windows Mobile n Palm / WebOS n Symbian n Windows Phone 7


xx% 4.5%


30%


1.4% 1.4% 1.3%


37% 6%


0.8% 1.4%


0.5% 2.4%


country at prices well below local manufacturing costs.


Intel buys software, patents Intel agreed to pay $120 million for video software, 190 patents and 170 patent applications from RealNetworks.


HT cuts jobs


Croatian incumbent Hrvatski Telekom announced plans to cut 450 jobs as a result of weak market conditions. Amongst other things, the company blamed lower sales, regulatory changes and stiff competition.


BSNL to raise $3bn Executives at India’s BSNL said the telco is planning to raise up to INR150 billion (about $3 billion) via bank loans, mainly to clear arrears to vendors who have not been paid for the past six months.


Slim gets Net Servicos Carlos Slim’s Embratel has been given the green light by Brazilian regulator Anatel to take over cableco Net Servicos.


Apple reinvents textbook Apple unveiled a range of new products designed to drive the use of electronic textbooks in the classroom. These included iBooks 2, iBooks Author and iTunes U.


46.3% All smartphone users 51.7% Recent acquirers (past 3 months) Source: Nielsen Mobile Insights


The launch of the iPhone 4S in autumn 2011 had a big impact on the shape of the US smartphone market, according to Nielsen. 45% of ‘recent acquirers’ (those who acquired a smartphone in the last three months of the year) surveyed in December said they chose an iPhone, compared with 25% in October; 57% of those who bought an Apple device in December chose the iPhone 4S. 46% of US mobile consumers had smartphones in Q4 2011, while 60% of those who bought a new device in that quarter selected a smartphone over a feature phone.


Patents shuffle Ericsson reorganised its Licensing and Patent Development division in a bid to generate more revenues from its intellectual property. The vendor holds 27,000 patents that in 2010 generated SEK4.6 billion (£433.4 million) in revenues.


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