WCA March 2011

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32 Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2011
Telecom news
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,” 10th 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
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.
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.”
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Andy Rubin, Google’s vice ✆ ✆
president of engineering and the
creator of the Android mobile
operating system, on 9th 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,
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 (13th 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