Gadget Maker or Service Provider? Firms Start to Overlap - New York Times
“Devices alone are not enough anymore,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia, said last week in London as the company announced plans for a digital music store, a game service, social networking links and other mobile Internet initiatives, grouped under a new brand, Ovi. “People want more; they want the complete experience.”
Meanwhile, a Google spokesman declined to comment on reports that a “Google phone,” or “G-phone,” was imminent. Such a device would take the Internet company into a business that has long been dominated by Nokia, but that has been shaken up by the recent introduction of a high-profile newcomer, Apple’s iPhone.
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Sales in Emerging Markets Help Nokia Add to Its Cellphone Lead - New York Times
Nokia sold 100 million mobile devices in the period, an increase of 29 percent over 2006, while the overall industry growth was about 14 percent, with 262 million mobile devices sold globally, Nokia said.
But the group again warned about the performance of its troubled network operations, describing market conditions as challenging because of heavy competition.
“We shall have to increase the amount and speed of cost cutting,” the chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said, giving no details.
The greatest growth in Nokia’s handset sales, 37 percent, was in the Middle East and Africa, it said. But at 36 percent growth, sales were also strong in the Asia-Pacific region and in China.
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The Business Standard (Nokia focuses on rural markets)
Sapna Agarwal / Pune July 16, 2007The rural markets account for around 5 per cent of the national GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) handset sales. The figure is expected to rise to 25-30 per cent, adding around 100 million new cellular subscribers by 2009, according to a recent study by LIRNEasia and AC Nielson.
Tags: Devender Kishore, General Packet Radio Service, GSM, India, Kerala, LG, media houses, mobile phones, Motorola, Nokia, Rs, rural retail chains, unnecessary travel expenses.
Most Indonesians access the Internet primarily using fixed wireline infrastructure, mostly dialup. Because of lack of competition in the fixed line sector due to various reasons fixed line growth has been stagnant which has also affected Internet growth in the country. Not only are no new lines being added to bring more homes online, the inadequate backbone infrastructure in large swathe of the country makes deployment of broadband services unviable even if incumbent’s local loop bottleneck could be bypassed.
However, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (March 15, 2007) seems to suggest that high speed 3G wireless technology like HSDPA can bring broadband on a large scale to Indonesians. It (misleadingly) implies that since HSDPA is merely a software upgrade to 3G networks it will not require any new…
Tags: 3G, 3G mobile-phone technology, 3G services, 3G technology, ADSL, Asia, backbone infrastructure, Broadband, broadband services, cable networks, cellphone technology, cellular networks, connectivity solution, connectivity solutions, Dev Yusmananda, Djarot Handoko, Ericsson, fiber optic, fixed wireline infrastructure, flood, high speed 3G wireless technology, HSDPA technology, inadequate backbone infrastructure, Indonesia, Indosat, Internet access, Internet connections, Internet download speeds, Jakarta, least-developed communications systems, local telecommunications, Malaysia, mobile-phone technology, Nokia, potential Internet users, PT Excelcomindo Pratama, PT Indonesia Satellite Corp., PT Telekomunikasi Selular, SouthEast Asia, Surabaya, telecom infrastructure, the Philippines, Wall Street Journal.
Later this year, T-Mobile plans to test a service that will allow its subscribers to switch seamlessly between connections to cellular towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, including those in homes and the more than 7,000 it controls in Starbucks outlets, airports and other locations, according to analysts with knowledge of the plans. The company hopes that moving mobile phone traffic off its network will allow it to offer cheaper service and steal customers from cell competitors and landline phone companies like AT&T.
“T-Mobile is interested in the replacement or displacement of landline minutes,” said Mark Bolger, director of marketing for T-Mobile. Wi-Fi calling “is one of the technologies that will help us deliver on that promise.”
Major phone manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are offering or plan…
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/17101_print.php
The GSM Association recently announced that its Emerging Markets Handset program is exceeding expectations: mobile operators in Bangladesh, China, India, and Russia have already purchased 12 million of its Ultra Low Cost Handsets (ULCH). But will the initiative reach the rest of the three billion unconnected peoples in emerging markets? Under current cost models that is unlikely.
The problem is that even at US$30 the ULCH’s price is too high for at least a billion of this population.
The annual gross per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa is just US$371. It is unrealistic to expect people there to spend 10% of their annual income on a mobile phone. So semiconductor vendors, such as Texas Instruments, Freescale, Philips, and Infineon are continuing to reduce the Bill-of-Materials for ULCH…
Tags: Alan Varghese, Bangladesh, cellular telephone, China, Ericsson, Freescale, GSM, GSM Association, India, Infineon, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Russia, Samsung, semiconductor, Sharedphone, software, Sony, South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Texas Instruments, Ultra Low Cost Handsets, USD.
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