After a disastrous second quarter, Leap Wireless will not make its $75m minimum wholesale purchase commitment of network access from Sprint Nextel. ‘Due to certain provisions in the wholesale agreement, we do not believe the company is obligated to meet this commitment in 2012, although we expect to satisfy a significant majority of it in any event,’ said Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson. ‘Sprint has not agreed to our decision and we are in discussions with them.’ Leap reported a net loss of 289,000 customers and a net loss of $41.6m that was more than analysts expected. The company also plans to narrow its national retain expansion to just 8,000 stores. ‘Our results for the second quarter are not acceptable,’ said CFO Jerry Elliott.
In some rare good news for RIM, a US judge has overturned an earlier verdict that the BlackBerry maker infringed patents held by Mformation. A $147.2m judgement against RIM has now been cancelled, though Mformation could appeal, which might result in a second jury trial.
Chinese vendors continue to come up against obstacles in India because of suspicions among security agencies. These have raised concerns about ZTE’s deal to manage Bharti Airtel’s TD-LTE network, which involves the Chinese firm training Bharti staff. According to current rules, local operators need to get equipment sourced from abroad certified by security agencies, and the key executives handling the networks should be Indians. But Indian cellcos are particularly keen on outsourcing their systems in managed services deals.
The LTE RAN equipment market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of more than 50% over the next five years, according to Dell’Oro Group. ‘The success with early adopters in North America, Japan, and South Korea is driving operators around the world to commit to LTE,’ said analyst Stefan Pongratz. ‘It has been only 18 months since the first large scale commercial deployment of LTE and it is already generating more than 15% of total RAN revenues.’
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced a research project to create a ‘human body-on-a-chip, using MEMS technology to mimic people’s reactions to substances of interest. The researchers will use microfluidics to test drugs, vaccines and toxins on human tissue samples housed above sensors on a chip. Funding for the project is being provided by two US agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). The program aims to accelerate the pace and efficiency of pharmaceutical drug discovery as well as provide a quick in-the-field method for testing the toxicity of unknown substances.
Two banks are to acquire Bulgarian fixed and mobile operator Vivacom, ending the prospects of a purchase by Turkcell or Telekom Austria. VTB Capital, a unit of Russia’s VTB Bank, and Bulgarian Corporate Commercial Bank, will take over Vivacom, which carried debt of €1.65bn, and will then initiate a restructuring plan. The carrier has been in the hands of creditor banks since 2010. Under the deal, about €1bn in debt will be written off. Turkcell and Icelandic tycoon Thor Bjorgolfsson were the only other bidders though Telekom Austria had previously express interest, as it already owns Bulgarian cellco Mobiltel. The country’s third mobile operator is Globul, a unit of Greece’s OTE.
Polish regulator UKE has outlined plans to launch a tender ‘in the next few days’ for 1.8GHz spectrum, which will require winning bidders to start building their networks within 12 months of the award.
Australian incumbent Telstra posted a 5.4% gain in full year profit to reach A$3.42bn ($3.6bn). Most of the upside was mobile, with the carrier adding 1.6m new cellular customers, bringing its base to 13.8m. Gains from the mobile segment, which now accounts for more than a third of Telstra’s total revenue, pushed sales up 1.1% to A$25.368bn, though fixed line revenue declined by 6.1%. The firm said it invested A$3.6bn in its network, including the expansion of its LTE network, over the year. It announced plans to accelerate LTE investment, spending A$1.2bn in fiscal year 2013 to keep ahead of its rivals.
Taiwan mobile carrier Far EasTone has signed a NT$4.425bn ($147.7m) deal with Ericsson for 3G expansion. About 32% of its postpaid subscribers are now using smartphones and tablets.
Brazil’s minister for communications Paulo Bernardo is seeking to reassure the country’s cellcos that, despite resistance from broadcasters, the federal government is keen to allocate parts of the 700MHz band for mobile broadband services, probably via an auction next year. ‘The regulator is working on it and we hope to have this issue resolved in the second half of 2012, ahead of an auction next year,’ he said. Regulator Anatel has conducted a public consultation on the possible revision of the 746MHz to 806MHz band, currently used for TV channels 60 to 69.
Sharp is producing the screen for Apple’s next iPhone and will have it ready to ship this month, the Japanese company said in a press briefing, though it would not reveal further details, though sources have pointed to a larger, 4-inch iPhone to come in September. The display may harness Sharp’s IGZO technology, which the Japanese supplier has been bringing to mobile devices. Apple is looking to diversify its screen vendors, to reduce reliance on Samsung. In less good news for Sharp, the firm reported a disappointing second quarter and said it would cut 5,000 jobs by the end of March. Its revenue in the quarter was down 28.4% year-on-year and its losses widened from ‘49.2bn last year to ‘138.4bn.
Comverse has sold wholly owned subsidiary Starhome to Fortissimo Capital for $80.3m in cash. Starhome provides roaming services and network optimization suites for mobile carriers. The unit’s CEO Eitan Achlow said: ‘Fortissimo, as an investor in Starhome, will make it possible to accelerate the company’s growth and realize the potential of its technological edge, position as a leader in the roaming sector, and its excellent and longstanding ties with its customers.’
The wireless packet core equipment market is forecast to more than double in size to reach almost $6bn by 2016, according to Dell’Oro Group. ‘Evolved Packet Core will expand half of the total market, driven by LTE network capital spending. More mature Traditional Packet Core revenues are expected to experience low single-digitannual growth rates between 2011 and 2016. The PCRF market should reach nearly $700m in 2015.
Vodafone Greece plans to deploy LTE in ‘selected areas’ this year, following larger rival Cosmote’s switch-on of a pilot 4G network. The Greek regulator, the EETT, has cleared all 900MHz and 1.8GHz GSM spectrum for 3G or 4G refarming. In November 2011 Vodafone renewed existing licences and expanded its allocation in those two bands at a cost of €168.5m ($209m), while the cellco says that it has invested more than €500m in its network in the past three years. An auction of 2.6GHz spectrum is due this year, while digital switchover should also free up the 800MHz band by the end of 2012.
MTN Nigeria has expanded its WiMAX network to the cities of Abuja and Port Harcourt in Nigeria. It kicked off its ‘MTN HyConnect Wireless Internet’ service in select locations in Lagos in July 2009 and since then extended it to other areas, targeting mainly the SME sector.
Cellular M2M connections are predicted to grow from 277m in 2012 to 2.5bn by 2020, according to Strategy Analytics. A combination of factors, including global connectivity platforms, efforts at standardization, cloud computing and regulatory initiatives will help contribute to an excess of 30% CAGR growth between now and 2020.
Vodafone has announced plans to open a new technology and incubation center in East London’s Tech City, offering technical expertise, financial assistance and logistical support for UK start-ups. The center will draw on the experience of Vodafone Ventures, the company’s corporate venture capital arm, which has been investing in new businesses for over a decade. Last year the operator set up the xone incubator in Silicon Valley. Telefonica and Orange have also recently set up new incubator activities.
Huawei has reportedly ousted Nokia Siemens from the network of 3GIS, a joint venture of Telenor and 3 Sweden. NSN will still provide optical gear, says LightReading, but a previous deal for base stations has, sources say, been replaced by a Huawei contract, because the Chinese supplier also threw in three years of free service.
Everything Everywhere says its MVNA (mobile virtual network aggregator) partnership with Transatel is still highly valuable, despite the announcement last week of a new agreement with a rival MVNA, Viacloud subsidiary Atmovia. ‘Transatel is a highly valued partner and our relationship with them will not be affected by this new partnership with Viacloud,’ a spokesperson told TotalTelecom. ‘Through a combined approach with both partners we are giving our customers more choice and the best possible service.’
Foundry TSMC is following Intel’s lead and taking a 5% stake in lithography equipment maker ASML of the Netherlands. Intel has already taken 15%, in a program in which investors contribute directly to R&D into new chipmaking processes. In particular, ASML plans to accelerate the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and the transition to manufacturing on 450mm diameter wafers. It has said it would offer up to 25% of the company in total.
Samsung is set to join the fledgling market for ARM-based server chips, challenging the 90% share of Intel and the x86 architecture in that space. Companies like Marvell and Calxeda have already launched ARM products for cloud servers but Samsung will not go commercial until 2014, said sources, targeting the low power microserver segment. It is also expected to debut an ARM processor targeted at Windows 8 PCs ‘ not just mobile gadgets ‘ later this year.
Hours after Google unveiled its cloud-based new version of Wallet, announcing support for all major credit and debit cards, American Express said it had not authorized its cards for use with the service. ‘We want to make sure Google’s mobile wallet product meets the standards we set for our card members in terms of transparency and clarity about transaction detail,’ the firm’s VP of social media, Bradley Minor, told TechCrunch. ‘Right now, American Express does not have an agreement with Google for our cards to be used in the Google mobile wallet.’ Minor added that American Express and Google have formally discussed a mobile payments partnership in the past.
Microsoft is alerting developers to stop using the ‘Metro’ brand in reference its user interface for Windows Phone and Windows 8, because of a trademark dispute with German retail giant Metro AG. The software giant tried to cover its embarrassment by saying Metro had always been a codename, but has not yet come up with a new label ‘ staff have been advised to refer to it just as the ‘Windows 8 style UI’ for now.
ARM has upgraded its Mali family of GPU (graphical processor unit) cores. The quad-core Mali 450-MP found in the Samsung Galaxy S III will no longer be the top end, as ARM releases three new multicore designs for inclusion in devices in mid-2013. The Mali T624, T628 and T678 all use ARM’s Midgard graphics architecture and promise up to 50% performance increase over the first generation Midgard GPUs (T604 and T658). This will be essential for rising screen resolutions on portable devices. They will also support a graphics compression codec called ASTC (Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression), which optimizes GPU performance and increases battery life. ASTC is part of the Khronos open standard. The T624 scales from one to four cores, and the T628 from one to eight cores. Both of these are aimed at the smartphone and smart TV sectors. The high end T678, from one to eight cores, delivers four times the GPU performance of the T624, and is aimed at tablets.
The immaturity of the tablet market is signified by the wild disagreements in analyst projections. For instance, Strategy Analytics is forecasting that the number of slates with cellular connectivity will rise sevenfold between now and 2017, while CCS Insight thinks the share of tablets with built-in 3G or 4G will decline over the next four years. The former report says there will be 24m tablets with active mobile data subscriptions this year, about 12.5% of the total base, and the cellular figure will rise to 172m, or 18% of the installed base, in early 2017. That will drive global tablet data service revenues to $15bn. But CCS Insight says 48% of tablets shipped in 2011 were cellular enabled, and this percentage will gradually fall to 37% by 2016.