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LONDON (Reuters) – Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile operator by revenue, is to close its navigation business as it could not compete with free services provided by Google and Nokia.
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LONDON (Reuters) – Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile phone group by revenue, is to slash up to 500 jobs in Britain, the Times reported in its Monday edition. Read Full Story…
Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturer backing Google’s Android OS is accused of infringing 20 Apple patents Apple is suing the Taiwanese handset maker HTC, alleging that it has infringed 20 patents relating to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”. Among the patents that Apple alleges have been infringed are a number relating to touchscreen interfaces – for which the iPhone has become the best-known, though it was not the first, mobile device. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” It is thought that a key element that triggered the lawsuit is that in February HTC released handsets which use “pinch-to-zoom” functionality resembling that of the iPhone. Apple has filed the suit in the US courts in Delaware, Maryland, but also with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which has the power to halt imports of products. That would stymie HTC and Google, whose free Android mobile operating system is built into a growing number of HTC phones, and has made significant inroads into the burgeoning smartphone market in recent months. But the move was received with surprise in the technology community. “I don’t fault Apple for acquiring patents. They have to, for defensive purposes, given the current laws,” noted John Siracusa, a journalist at Ars Technica who has followed Apple closely for years. “But using them offensively sucks.” The use of the ITC could be key for Apple. A recent analysis found that where lawsuits are filed both with US district courts and the ITC, plaintiffs succeed in the latter more often than the former, by 58% to 35%. That means Apple is roughly 50% more likely to win the case with the ITC – and so could block HTC imports of newer handsets. HTC indicated that it was completely surprised by the case, and had not even received the formal complaint from Apple when the American company announced it publicly. Apple has submitted more than 700 pages of exhibits relating to its patents to the court in Delaware, Maryland, where it is filing the case. It cites a number of handsets, including the Nexus One handset powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, and also other handsets which use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile system. HTC has in the past been the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile handsets – although it has recently shifted its allegiance to Google’s Android, which is free and has captured significant market share since being launched in 2008. Apple has specified 10 patents in the Delaware filing, and a different 10 in the ITC filing. The case is thought to be the first in which Apple has taken the first step in suing a rival mobile phone company. Although it has an ongoing patent dispute with Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset maker, the first move there was by Nokia. Apple has since countersued. The case is ongoing.
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The European Commission has approved the merger, which will create the UK’s largest operator, after the parties allayed fears over spectrum and competition
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React Technologies is celebrating winning what it claims is the largest ever Read Full Story…
Orange relied on iPhone to persuade new customers, while T-Mobile dived back into the pre-pay market
Orange and T-Mobile, who are preparing to merge their UK businesses this year, both had a bumper Christmas, but for wildly different reasons. While Orange relied on the iPhone to persuade people to sign-up to long-term contracts, T-Mobile threw caution to the wind and jumped back into the pre-pay market. But as both companies had to slash prices and offer customers ever more favourable tariffs in order to remain competitive in the cut-throat UK market, they saw margins decline and average revenue per user – a crucial metric for analysts – take a tumble. In the last three months of 2009, third-placed Orange added 404,000 new customers, while fourth-placed T-Mobile gained 571,000. Orange’s figures included 266,000 new contract customers, its best ever fourth quarter performance, and four out of every five of those customers signed up to a 24-month deal, suggesting they were either getting an iPhone or another high-end smartphone, such as one running Google’s Android operating system or a Blackberry. Orange ended O2’s two year exclusive hold on the iPhone in November and sold about 90,000 in the first month. Orange’s revenues in the fourth quarter were €1.29bn (£1.13bn), down from €1.3bn, including its struggling residential broadband business, which lost 50,000 customers in the quarter and now has just 840,000 users. There has been intense discussion within Orange about closing down the broadband business, selling the customers to a rival ISP, such as BSkyB, but management have decided to hold onto the operation and it is now offering a free 32GB iPhone to customers who sign up for its high-end home broadband package. Margins at Orange, meanwhile, declined to 18.4%, down 2 points compared with a year ago, while its average revenue per user – across both contract and pre-pay customers – was £21.41 a month in the fourth quarter, down from £24.25 a year ago. As it does not have the iPhone, T-Mobile, in contrast, put all its focus on attracting new pre-pay users, putting a lot of marketing spend behind its “free texts for life” for any customer topping up by at least £10 a month. In the second half of the year, T-Mobile added 629,000 new pre-pay users, 570,000 in the run-up to Christmas alone. All but 1,000 of its new customers in the fourth quarter were on pre-pay. Revenues, however, were down in the quarter to £737m, from £820m a year ago, with margins of 20.1%, down dramatically from 24.8% a year ago. Average revenue per user (ARPU) was £18 a month, down from £21 a year ago. In the same period, second-placed Vodafone added 410,000 new customers with ARPU of £20.40, down from £21.5 a year ago, and margins of 23.2%, down from 25.9%. The UK’s largest mobile phone company O2 will report on Friday. The fact that three of the four largest players in the UK added almost 1.4 million brand new customers means that either O2 and 3 saw subscriber numbers fall off a cliff, or the first quarter of this year will contain a nasty surprise for at least one operator. It is unlikely that O2 has seen its winning streak come to a complete halt, given O2 boss Matthew Key’s upbeat statements about life since it was forced to give up its exclusive hold on the iPhone first to Orange then Tesco Mobile before Christmas; and then to Vodafone last month. As a private company, rival 3 does not provide regular figures, but its owner Hutchison Whampoa, which keeps a very close eye on its mobile phone business, would react fast if UK chief executive Kevin Russell had lost hundreds of thousands of customers in the last three months. For the past few years, 3 has had between 3 and 4 million users and will report financial figures at the end of March. It is more likely that because of the way in which the mobile phone companies count pre-pay customers as active or inactive that the first quarter of this year will see a balancing of the books. More than half the new customers added in the fourth quarter so far, are pre-pay users and are likely to have switched between pre-pay providers. But while their new network will count them as a new customer from day one – ie in the fourth quarter – the network they are leaving will not count them as inactive until they fail to make a call or send a text within a 90 day period. As a result, they are not likely to have been identified as customers who have defected until sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
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Feb
24
2010
 
PocketGear buys Handango to create giant app storePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The deal creates the world’s largest cross-platform mobile app store, with more than 140,000 titles for a variety of handsets
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Feb
21
2010
Orange and T-Mobile merger finds favour in BrusselsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
• European commission set to approve plan to create UK’s largest mobile phone company The merger of Orange and T-Mobile looks set to get the go-ahead from the European commission after a last-minute deal was thrashed out over the weekend to secure the future of 3, the UK’s smallest mobile phone network. The merged business would be the UK’s largest mobile phone company, with almost 30 million customers, and Orange and T-Mobile have agreed to hand back some of the mobile phone spectrum it would own in order to allow this to be used by rivals to run super-fast wireless broadband services. The commission has yet to inform the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) about its decision, and the merger could still face a challenge from Vodafone and O2, which are understood to be “lukewarm” about the concessions made over spectrum. The commission’s decision is a blow to consumer groups that had been campaigning for authorities in the UK to investigate the deal. This month the OFT formally requested jurisdiction to investigate the merger from the commission, which had until 1 March to give a decision. The OFT will tomorrow publish the reasons why it had asked to be allowed to run its own investigation, although the commission now believes it has dealt with any concerns. It was the OFT’s request that spurred Orange and T-Mobile into action. Fears that the merger, announced last September, would become clogged up in the UK’s lengthy competition procedure led both companies to come up with a solution that met the concerns of the commission about the deal. The OFT and Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, were extensively consulted by the commission during the process. The main concern was about the merger’s effect on the future of 3, which has driven price competition in recent years. However, over the weekend, 3, which is owned by the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, signed a new deal with T-Mobile and Orange, which will give it access to 3,000 more mast sites across the UK over the next few years, bringing the total to 16,000, the largest 3G network in the country. Second, the UK authorities and Brussels were concerned about the level of control that the merged company would have over the scarce resource that is wireless spectrum. Specifically the merged group would have the vast majority of the spectrum granted in the 1990s, when Orange and One2One were launched, at 1800MHz. As reported by the Observer a week ago, T-Mobile and Orange have agreed to hand back a quarter of the spectrum the merged group would hold. Neither 3, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2 nor the OFT would comment. The OFT will tomorrow give its reasons for asking the commission whether it could have jurisdiction over the case, in a stock exchange announcement. A copy of its reasoning, seen by the Guardian, makes it clear that the OFT’s main concern about any deal was also the future of 3. “The OFT considers that any weakening/elimination of Hutchison 3G would effectively result in a reduction of vertically integrated competitors from five to three and cause significant detriment to competition in mobile retail telephony,” the document reads.
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At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s largest trade show, some of the biggest names in technology competed for attention. Here are some of the highlights, in pictures
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Corporation to roll out official applications, beginning with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May The BBC has announced a new range of free applications that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April. The BBC is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year. BBC Sport will follow News, lauching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in a UK and a global version. Announcing the new mobile services today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said: “It’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.” A range of unauthorised BBC applications are already available and fairly popular. The new official applications now give licence payers an authorised alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible. According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorised version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January. In December, the mobile BBC site attracted by 1,851,000 visitors. BBC NewsBBC News for mobile will not only provide users with updated breaking news including video and audio, it will also allow them to send comments and pictures directly to the newsroom. However, the demo of the new app reveals that the user integration isn’t as prominent as with the BBC’s international rival CNN. The simple and intuitive navigation of thn ews app can already be tested online. “The main screen uses a carousel structure so you can quickly catch up on the news by sliding each row sideways to skim through the latest stories. You can also personalise the experience by reordering the rows to put your favourite news section at the top,” says David Madden of the future media and technology mobile team in a blogpost. BBC News will first be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, followed by the BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android later in the year. BBC SportStarting with the football World Cup in South Africa, the sport app will focus on the live match experience. Content that is broadcast on TV by the BBC will be available for football fans as well as on-demand clips of every goal scored in the tournament. Users will also be able to access content from BBC Radio 5 Live, and live text commentaries from BBC presenters and blogs. The 2010/11 English football season, Formula One and coverage of other sports will be added later in the year. While the UK version of the spoart app will be free, the global version will be released separately by BBC Worldwide and, in line with other international BBC Worldwide services, will feature advertising. How will news organisations react?The BBC iPlayer is already optimised for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s Ovi app store, but there are plans to make further versions available for other smartphones available to UK audiences only. While news organisations have pinned their hopes on smartphone applications as a way to make revenue, the BBC will offer its applications for free. Recently, News Corporation’s James Murdoch said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK. Should the BBC charge for its mobile applications or does its licence fee already include them? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) – The chief executive of Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile network operator, expressed the fears of many on Tuesday when he said Google Inc should not be allowed to dominate the mobile space. Read Full Story…
Feb
16
2010
Vodafone chief warns Google’s power could harm consumer choicePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
• Google’s domination of search market ’should be looked at’ Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao has warned mobile phone executives about Google’s growing power in the online advertising and search market, which he claims could damage consumer choice. Delivering his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Colao showed a slide setting out the communications market, with just Google and Yahoo under the heading “Advertising and search”. Without naming either firm, he said the “70%, 80% maybe even more” concentration of power in just a few hands, “from a public policy perspective is something that should be looked at”. While stopping short of asking for direct regulatory intervention, Colao warned that there is a risk such concentration of power will hamper choice and something needs to be done “before it’s too late”. He also called for greater openness in the booming market for mobile phone applications, saying that people should be able to freely ‘transfer their apps between devices, regardless of the operating system. “If today I buy a book in London I can freely bring it to another country and do anything I want with it,” he said. “Portability of personal data is going to be a very important point.” Earlier this week two dozen of the world’s largest operators got together to try and create an open apps platform. Google, though, has questioned whether this ambitious move will be successful, pointing to the technical challenges of writing applications that can run on a range of different handsets.
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• Phones with the new software will appear at the end of the year
Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer is hoping that 7 will turn out to be a lucky number again. With Windows 7 helping to bury the ghosts of the poorly received Windows Vista in its core PC market, the software group is hoping to repeat the trick with a new version of its software for mobile phones, a device that has refused to yield to the firm’s attentions despite almost a decade of trying. Windows Phone Series 7 is the result of a complete overhaul of Microsoft’s vision of the mobile phone. It has abandoned its attempts to turn mobile phones into mini-PCs, focusing instead on giving users easy access to social networking, music, video and mobile phone applications. Coincidentally Ballmer’s presentation, at the mobile industry’s annual trade show in Barcelona came hours after the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia revealed a tie-up with chipmaker Intel that is headed in the opposite direction. The two companies have pooled their software development resources to create MeeGo, a free software platform which they reckon will pave the way for the next generation of wireless communications devices. Both companies have Apple, Blackberry and Google, with its Android mobile phone platform, firmly in their sights. Fierce competition has eroded Nokia’s share of the market over the past year, and Microsoft fears that if it cannot get back in the game now, it may never manage it. Ballmer admitted that Microsoft, which has failed to gain any significant share of the mobile phone market, had been forced to “retool and reform” its mobile phone software two years ago. “There is no doubt that the phone market is highly competitive, highly dynamic, super-exciting,” he said. “There was no question in our minds… that we needed and wanted to do something that was out of the box, clearly differentiated from our past and clearly differentiated from other things that are going on in the market.” “We’re taking a big step,” he added. “I hope seven’s our lucky number.” The first phones using the new software will not appear until the end of the year and Microsoft is being very prescriptive about what they should look like, which has raised questions about whether handset manufacturers will be willing to make Windows Phone devices that they will be unable to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. Manufacturers including HTC, LG and Samsung have, however, signed up, while Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange are all likely to sell the devices in the UK. The proliferation of so-called open source software platforms – such as Android – has raised the question of whether Microsoft, which still charges hardware manufacturers a licence fee to use its Windows Phone software, should adopt the same model. Refusing, as ever, to actually name Apple, Ballmer spoke about “vertical competitors” – companies that make devices as well as the software that sits on them, such as Apple – saying “their model is really clear, it’s sell devices. We sell software to companies that make devices” and that is not going to change. “My mother used to say to me, if something is free, you should take a look and find out what the real cost is.” Nokia, however, has become a convert to the idea of open source platforms. Having bought out its partners in smartphone software developer Symbian and made that available free to all developers and hardware manufacturers, it announced a tie-up with Intel under which it plans to do the same for the next generation of mobile devices. Nokia was already working on an open source platform for so-called internet tablets, called Maemo, which it used in its recently launched N900 phone. Now it is merging it with a similar programme which Intel ran for laptops, called Moblin, into a new platform called MeeGo. “It is the future of how we think people are going to use computing,” said Renee James, Intel’s head of software and services. “From Intel’s perspective, we see expansive growth which brings new users to computing and at the heart of that has always been software innovation and that happens when there is a stable platform that developers can bet on being there long-term. So I consider this critical to the long term growth initiatives of Intel.” The first MeeGo devices will start appearing in the second half of the year, but Intel already has hardware manufacturers such as Dell, Asus and Samsung making laptops for its existing open source platform and they will all be moved over to MeeGo. “They have understood the only way to beat Microsoft, Google and Apple is to do it through scale – get the platform to more devices,” according to John Strand, owner and head of Strand Consult after the announcements at the Mobile World Congress fair. Immediately dubbed MeeToo by some analysts, MeeGo will create an open source software platform which Nokia reckons will be used in a new generation of wireless devices. Both companies want to attract a wide range of operators, handset manufacturers and software developers. “This is not a closed club,” said Kai Öistämö, Nokia’s head of devices. “We are inviting everyone into this. “MeeGo will create a new strong single platform that will drive the future of mobile computing.” The announcement of MeeGo, however, immediately raised questions about the future of Symbian, but Öistämö stressed: “This is very consistent with Nokia’s software strategy. Symbian is the perfect environment for democratising the smartphone, what MeeGo allows is the future of mobile computing … well beyond what can be done with smartphones today.” The deal may raise some eyebrows at Google, however, as Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini has sat on the Google board since 2004.
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Feb
15
2010
Two dozen mobile carriers unite against Apple’s App StorePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create an “open international applications platform,” which is obviously in direct response to Apple’s success with its own iPhone App Store. Release. The announcement was made this morning at Mobile World Congress. In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three device manufacturers – LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson – are also supporting the initiative. All combined, the group reaches 3 billion subscribers worldwide, making it easily the largest app-store initiative. However, the task will also be exceedingly complicated because of the massive scope and technological barriers in uniting so many disparate platforms and operators. Called the the “Wholesale Applications Community,” it aims to create a wholesale platform for mobile apps that provides a single point-of-entry for developers. In other words, it wants to solve the massive fragmentation problem. The group intends on using common open standards that will allow developers to create apps across multiple platforms. Those standards include JIL, which Verizon, Vodafone and China Mobile have been working on, and OMTP BONDI. Those two standards are expected to evolve into a common standard within the next year. Ultimately, they pledge to work with the W3C standards bodies to create one solution for developers to create apps and port them across mobile device platforms and operators. The full list of operators are: America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom Austria, MTN Group, NTT Docomo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, VimpelCom and WIND. The four operators in the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) mobile apps initiative – Vodafone, China Mobile, SoftBank and Verizon Wireless – are also included.
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Feb
11
2010
Pirate Bay legal battles continue across EuropePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
An attempt to force the sixth largest telecoms company in the world to block Read Full Story…
Feb
11
2010
Wins and losses as Pirate Bay fights across EuropePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
An attempt to force the sixth largest telecommunications company in the world Read Full Story…
Feb
08
2010
Vodafone Enterprise signs 4-year Oracle dealPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
LONDON (Reuters) – Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile phone operator by revenue, has secured a four-year deal to provide Oracle Corp with voice, data and management services to employees in the EMEA region. Read Full Story…
Feb
04
2010
Symbian makes its smartphone software open sourcePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Mobile phone operating system can now be modified by anyone as Nokia’s platform struggles to compete with Apple and Google Symbian, the operating system used in the majority of the world’s smartphones, is now available as an open source platform four months ahead of schedule as it looks to compete with Apple and Google’s Android. In a move widely seen as a desperate attempt to prevent Google and Apple from grabbing an ever-larger slice of the smartphone pie, Nokia took control of the UK-based Symbian in the summer of 2008, announcing plans to make its mobile phone software free of charge. Nokia helped create Symbian with the UK-based Psion more than a decade ago and it is installed in some 330m mobile phones across the world. But its share of the smartphone market has come under attack. Two years ago, Symbian devices accounted for almost 60% of the market, but now account for less than 50%. Industry experts Ovum reckon that figure will fall to below a third by 2015, in part because of the influence of Android, which is also open source. The Symbian Foundation, which runs the platform, said the switch from a paid-for proprietary model, where developers had to pay a licence fee to create devices using the software, to a free open source model is the largest in software history. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether for a mobile device or another piece of kit. Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said: “The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result. “When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open source release of the platform by mid-2010 and it’s because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we’ve reached it well ahead of schedule.” The hope is that allowing any developer to use Symbian will speed up the development of new and innovative devices, which will help the platform to see off the threat of Apple and Android. But it is competing in an increasingly crowded market. Handset manufacturers from LG and Samsung to Sony Ericsson have their own proprietary operating systems, as do RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, Palm and Apple. Microsoft is still trying to gain traction for its Windows phone operating system, while a slew of handsets with Android installed will be launched this year. All 108 packages containing the source code of the Symbian platform can now be downloaded from Symbian’s developer website under a public licence. Also available for download are the complete development kits for creating applications and mobile devices.
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Feb
04
2010
Vodafone eager to become iPad wireless provider in the UKPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
• Chief executive “very interested” but refuses to say whether talks have taken place Vodafone has set its sights on selling the Apple iPad in the UK after its success with the iPhone, which it started selling in the UK last month. Speaking after the world’s largest mobile phone company by sales announced better-than-expected third-quarter results, chief executive Vittorio Colao said he was “very interested” in the iPad, which Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled in San Francisco last week. “I have not, personally, touched one but I really look forward to it. I believe it is going to be another important piece of the [mobile] data experience.I think anything that improves the customer experience with mobile data is welcome and as such I would be very interested in having it.” He refused to say whether any talks have actually taken place, but Apple is understood to be scouting for UK wireless partners for the device. Earlier this week O2 UK chief executive Ronan Dunne said he is also interested in the iPad, but it is unclear exactly how it will be sold this side of the Atlantic. There is speculation that O2 and Orange have already put in an order for the micro-SIMs needed to provide 3G wireless connectivity in the iPad. Orange has already started talks with Apple to sell the iPad in the UK. The company, owned by France Telecom, was also the first British network to break O2’s exclusive hold on the iPhone. It started selling the handset last November and is understood to have sold over 200,000 by Christmas. Vodafone’s third-quarter results yesterday were boosted by sales of smartphones, which pushed the company’s revenues from mobile data services – such as internet browsing – over £1bn in the quarter for the first time in the firm’s history. In the three months to end December, 25% of all new phones sold by Vodafone across the world were smartphones, up from 20% in the second quarter of the year, with the bulk of those sales in Europe. Colao said he expects smartphones to make up between 30% and 40% of all the phones the company sells in its next financial year to end March 2011. The figures were warmly welcomed by the City as showing signs of recovery in some key European markets such as the UK and Germany, where the company has lost ground to rivals and been battling against the tough economic climate, while its cost-cutting programme is also bearing fruit. Shares in the company were up almost 5% after the company raised its forecast for free cash flow for this year by £500m to between £6.5bn and £7bn and forecast annual operating profits of £11.4bn to £11.8bn, rather than its initial forecast of £11bn to £11.8bn. On a like-for-like basis, revenues fell slightly in the quarter but the decline was far less than in previous quarters. Overall third-quarter revenues were up more than 10% to £11.5bn as the company benefited from currency fluctuations. Colao said he was conditionally optimistic about the group’s prospects. “I keep my feet on the ground; I see what I see. I see a few things going in the right direction. I see mobile data continuing to grow. I see a good performance in [fixed-line telecoms]. I see in some markets like the UK and Italy a good performance, but I still see a lot of price pressure in voice and I still see unemployment being a concern in Europe.” There had been some speculation, ahead of the results, that shareholders were pushing for a break-up of the company as it has consistently underperformed its publicly quoted peers. Colao, however, said the size of the company – which has operations from western and central Europe through to Turkey, India and South Africa as well its Verizon Wireless joint venture in the US – not only gives it scale in purchasing, but also an advantage in international roaming rates and helps it to attract business customers”There is a full set of opinions on how to structure Vodafone and we take due notice of all of them,” he said. “The board regularly reviews our corporate structure but there is unanimous consent now that in our opinion the current structure serves shareholders well.”
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Feb
04
2010
Symbian fully open-sourced ahead of schedulePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The Symbian Foundation, which has made all its source code available for free, says the migration to open source was the largest in software history
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