WCA September 2011

Telecom news

on 14 th June said it had agreed to buy privately owned tele- communications software com- pany Telcordia Technologies Inc (Piscataway, New Jersey) for $1.15 billion. Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg described Telcordia in a statement as a “perfect fit” for the world’s largest maker of equipment for mobile phone networks. Missing the mark, industry speculation had centred on Hewlett-Packard Co (Palo Alto, California) as the likely buyer. As noted by Ray Le Maistre of Light Reading, the acquisition will make Ericsson one of the biggest SPIT (service provider information technology) vendors in the global market as its existing OSS and BSS capabilities are added to Telcordia’s extensive suite of software and services to fixed-line and wireless carriers. These generated revenues of $739 million in the year through January. About 2,600 US staff will join Ericsson as part of the deal. wireless-sector analyst firm Juniper Research Ltd expects the number of users of mobile IM (instant mess- aging) to exceed 1.3 billion by 2016. The threefold increase of users from 2010 would be driven by the arrival of new services (such as Apple’s iMessage) and continued growth in existing services: among them, BlackBerry Messenger, Skype, and Yahoo. However, Daniel Ashdown, who led the Juniper study on mobile messaging markets, does not believe that IM will challenge SMS (short message service, via standardised protocols) as the primary means of text communication on mobiles. Mr Ashdown wrote: “SMS has one distinct advantage over ‘over- the-top’ services: its ubiquity. With an SMS I know I can reach almost any handset in the world, if I have its number. While IM services have some advantages, such as real-time communication, the market is fragmented by different services which cannot communicate [with one another].” Details of the report “Mobile Messaging Markets: SMS, MMS, IM & Email Strategies 2011-2016” are available at the website www.juniperresearch.com British

Nomura’s reported prediction “is the most damning for the Finnish company to date.” The negative forecasts do not, how- ever, impact Nokia’s position as the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer, bolstered by its strength in basic devices and its wide distribution network in emerging countries. ✆ ✆ In other, happier, news for Nokia, the Finnish company on 14 th June announced it had settled a two-year-old global patent fight with Apple over smartphone technology. Their agreement commits its US rival to making a one-time payment to Nokia and, as a Nokia licensee, to begin paying regular royalties. Since 2009 the mobile phone makers had engaged each other in more than 40 patent lawsuits in Germany, England, and the US over basic technologies relating to a handset’s user interface, power management, antenna and camera. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Nokia’s reference to a positive financial impact on its revised quarterly results suggests what one German analyst termed “serious money.” While Apple emphasised that the patent settlement does not extend to most of the unique features of its iPhone, the world’s best-selling smartphone, the outcome marks an early success for a Nokia strategy of more aggressively defending its patent archive. The trove includes more than 10,000 groups of handset “patent families” developed over two decades at a reported cost of over $62 billion. If Nokia now turns its attention to Google – maker of the popular Android open-source phone operating system, which bears certain similarities to the iPhone system – another American company will be devoting some study to the lessons of Apple’s capitulation. ✆ ✆ In a cash deal that will help it meet explosive global growth in smartphone and broadband- Internet use, Sweden’s Ericsson

Elsewhere in telecom . . . ✆ ✆ Oman

Telecommunications Company (Omantel) has signed a contract in Tehran with three international telecom partners – Iran, the United Kingdom, and Russia – to provide a new cable system that will ultimately link the Persian Gulf with the German city of Frankfurt. The agreement will help Oman to become a gateway hub for the region in the delivery of high- speed telecommunication services through the new Europe Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) system. Each of the four partners in EPEG will have responsibility for construction and development of that section of the network that runs through its own country. Reporting from Muscat in the Oman Times (19 th June), A E James said that a major benefit of the EPEG system will be an alternative cable route between the Gulf region and Europe. Current routes go through Egypt and the Gulf of Suez. The Tokyo-based investment bank Nomura predicted in early June that South Korea’s Samsung would become the world’s leading smartphone vendor in the second quarter, taking the crown from Finland’s Nokia after 15 years. Citing a research note by Nomura analysts, Reuters reported that Nokia was also expected to surrender the No 2 spot to Apple, of the US, in the third quarter. The analysts wrote, “Further emphasising the shift in power to Asia is our forecast for HTC to almost match Nokia during 2012.” Mobile Business Briefing (13 th June) took note of a major shift in strategy by Nokia, which in recent months had moved from Symbian to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone software system. Although research firms such as IDC, Canalys, and Gartner had forecast a falling share for Nokia in the smartphone space over the next few quarters, the GSMA publication observed that

✆ ✆ The

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2011