WCA March 2011

Telecom news

Ms Gabriel noted that the mobile chief of Acer (also Taiwanese), told Reuters that the industry as a whole is struggling with supply. Aymar de Lencquesaing said: “It is a bit of a scramble.” Smartphones are seen as increasingly vulnerable to malware in 2011 Perhaps inevitably, along with the steep rise in smartphone sales the threats to smartphones are also growing sharply. As noted in mid- December by mobile security vendor AdaptiveMobile, the number of such reported infections increased by a third in 2010. The biggest rise was against Google’s Android operating system, where identified “exploits” grew fourfold. According to AdaptiveMobile, exploits aimed at Windows CE rose 7% over the period, while those for phones running Java-based apps grew 45%. The number of new threats targeting Symbian and iPhone declined. “With the increasing pervasiveness of smartphone devices, 2010 has undoubtedly been the year that fraudsters have truly turned their attention to mobile platforms,” COO Gareth Maclachlan of AdaptiveMobile told telecomasia’s Dylan Bushell- Embling. He said the change in platform focus comes as fraudsters seek to target the operating systems they think will be most popular in the coming year. (“Smartphone Malware Grows 33% in 2010,” 16 th December) Mr Maclachlan said he believes that smartphone malware will increase at an exponential rate throughout 2011, “with new, increasingly sophisticated programs becoming a major headache for both users and operators.” Andy Rubin, Google’s vice ✆ ✆ president of engineering and the creator of the Android mobile operating system, on 9 th December declared via Twitter that more than 300,000 Android phones are being sold every day. If accurate, that would bring Google’s quarterly sales to about 27 million phones, Elsewhere in telecom . . .

The IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) fibre optic undersea cable connecting India to Italy and France via the Middle East is open for business. As reported in TeleGeography (13 th December), in the east the 8,078-mile three-pair cable has landing stations in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon. The third submarine cable, after SMW3 and SMW4, to operate between India and Europe has a design capacity of 3.84TBps (Terabytes per second). Construction of the IMEWE link was funded by an international consortium of nine operators. They are: Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications (both of India); Etisalat (UAE); France Telecom; Ogero (Lebanon); Pakistan Telecommunication Co; Saudi Telecom Co; Telecom Egypt; and Telecom Italia Sparkle. Paolo Ferrari, the CEO of TI Sparkle, noted the “full resiliency” in an emergency that can be expected from the ring configuration of the IMEWE cable system (with a landing in Catania) and SMW4 with a landing in Palermo – both in Sicily. The state-of-the-art fibre network will, he said, enable Sparkle to make good on its intention to provide top-quality services in the Mediterranean. New Asia-Europe subsea cable allows for two points of presence in Sicily

on the client side, particularly in touchscreens and printed circuit boards. For its part, Taiwan’s HTC faced especially conspicuous challenges because of the popularity of its flagship range of gigahertz Android phones (Desire, Droid Incredible EVO 4G, and others). Stock shortages have hampered its ability to meet high demand for these models. Ms Gabriel noted that HTC does not have the same control over the source of vital touchscreen displays as arch-rivals Apple, of the US, or South Korea’s Samsung. She wrote: “The former commissions its own Retina Display from LG [South Korean], while the latter’s sister firm has the monopoly of bright AMOLED screens at this stage.” This drove HTC to adopt an enhanced LCD technology from London-based Sony Ericsson for some models. However, the problem is not ✆ ✆ confined to touchscreens, for HTC or its competitors. Rethink Wireless pointed out that Sony Ericsson has also complained about scarcity of LCD screens and circuit boards. And, according to Bloomberg News, HTC in December called together its component suppliers to discuss ways of improving product flow. The invitees included vendors of processors, touch panels, software, casings, camera modules and system logic boards.

Industry-wide component shortage makes it a challenge to fully meet the demand for mobile broadband “The big three European base station makers all cited shortages in their third-quarter [2010] results. And many key handsets, such as the HTC Desire and iPhone 4, have also suffered from scarcity of key elements such as touchscreens.” Writing in Rethink Wireless, Caroline Gabriel cited this evidence that the mobile industry is still in the grip of component shortages, of both devices and infrastructure. Ericsson’s chairman, Michael Treschow, said that in third-quarter of 2010 the Swedish company had found it tough to meet demand for its 3G and LTE kit because of problems in procuring some key components, especially base station semiconductors. He confirmed that the firm was still being hit by shortages, even as he saw an “improving” situation toward the end of the year. (“Mobile Vendors Grapple With Shortages,” 10 th December) Supply shortages reduced Ericsson’s Q3 2010 sales by $285 million to $428 million. While results for the last quarter have not posted yet, it seemed clear to Ms Gabriel that the problem will not go away before the middle of 2011. Smartphone manufacturers were experiencing similar shortages

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2011