French CE firm Thomson has re-structured most of its debt, as it promised it would, dumping 45% of its €2.84 billion debt by converting it into new shares, notes redeemable in shares and new notes which will get paid when it finishes its disposal program. Existing shareholders can opt into the new shares in the form of a €350 million rights issue. Thomson’s existing shareholders get diluted but may get to keep as much as 52% of their stock. The company still has €511 million in cash.
Not only did we just miss cellular chip giant Qualcomm’s record $200 million fine by the Korea Fair Trade Commission last week, but now Japan has followed suit and said its Fair Trade Commission has issued a draft order and sent it to the company. Qualcomm was found not guilty of most charges in Korea, except the Commission said that certain discounts and rebates on the purchase of its CDMA chipsets are in violation of Korean competition law. Much the same appears to be alleged in Japan, but even Qualcomm’s not sure because it is waiting for a full translation of the document. Whatever Qualcomm does about the fine, it will not significantly affects its results for the year, although the fine was expected to be closer to $50 million and may well reduce if Qualcomm appeals.
In a separate statement Qualcomm said it had revenues of $2.75 billion for the current quarter, just a tiny bit less than this time last year, and ahead of the $2.46 billion it did in the last quarter. Qualcomm turned in operating income of $894 million, up from $824 million last year and a small loss last quarter. Its net income was $737 million again slightly down on last year, but improved on the immediate past quarter which was down due to its settlement with Broadcom. The company has $15.7 billion in the bank, and said it had done well on the back of 3G deployments, and that although market softness is likely to continue it has cut R&D and SG&A expenses by 5%.
MaxLinear, a fabless semiconductor company which specializes in CMOS RF circuits said it has partnered with Hauppauge Digital to deliver an ATSC minicard for ultra-mobile PCs . The companies said this was a first for embedded digital TV on a Netbook PC. This is full ATSC not the Mobile Handheld version that will be developed for handsets, though in most cases the programming will be the same, but battery life won’t be.
US researcher TeleAnalytics says that by the end of 2009 there will be 80.8 million to 81.9 million mobile broadcast TV devices globally, saying that despite the financial crisis, Mobile TV sales will at worst remain flat, or could increase up to 2%. It says that in Korea there are 2 million S-DMB subscribers and that in the Korean automotive market there are signs of significant saturation using T-DMB. In Japan Mobile TV handsets were still shipping at 6.2 million a quarter despite the recession and 1 Seg penetration among Japanese handsets sold climbed to 81% from 61% one year earlier. It says that China has hit problems (see lead story) and that Europe is stagnant, while Brazilian 1 Seg prices are finally falling. ISDB-T sales this year should reach 27 million new units combined in Japan and Brazil, TeleAnalytics says.
European researcher EITO says that mobile data services are booming throughout Europe with 10% growth in the EU in expected both 2009 and 2010 with Great Britain (UK) the largest market in Europe. Individuals and companies across the EU will spend €32.6 billion this year and €36 billion next, on mobile data services with UK revenues reaching € 5.6 billion and Germany in second place with €5.2 billion, followed by Italy with just under €5.2 billion and France with €4.0 billion.
New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has dumped the brands for its three operational divisions, MediaGlow, Platform-A and People Networks, and these will be replaced with two AOL brands, AOL Advertising and AOL Media, while the People Networks, which used to include AIM, ICQ, and social network Bebo will be submerged into one of three new divisions. The company will introduce AOL Communications, AOL Local & Mapping, and AOL Ventures. The New York Times carried a long piece on the new guy at AOL and it basically said that the company had been chasing too many deals, most of them small, and has set about changing the company’s approach.
Meanwhile the separation of AOL from Time Warner is moving on a pace and part of the preparation for the deal was to repurchase the 5% of the company that Google owned, which it did this week for $238 million, less than a quarter of what Google paid for it, implying a value of around $5 billion, compared to $20 billion when Google bought the stake.
Sprint Nextel has swooped to do a surprise acquisition of Virgin Mobile in the US, on extremely good terms, buying the business for $483 million and assuming more than $200 million in debt. It is certainly a good way to pick up 5.25 million customers, and the $ per subscriber price was way below what observers had said Virgin was worth earlier in the year.
UK transmission specialist Arqiva has bought Project Kangaroo’s assets from its owners which included the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, for around £8 million according to the Guardian newspaper. Kangaroo was supposed to offer an internet VoD style broadcasting service like BBC’s iPlayer, shared among a number of TV channels, and Arquiva says it will now see this through and offer such a service. Kangaroo was blocked because of BBC’s part ownership. Arqiva expects to complete the acquisition within a few weeks. Orange was thought to be the only other bidder. Project Kangaroo cost its partners some £30 million with BBC accounts putting its loss at £9.1 million so far.
Finnish global handset leader Nokia said this week it would acquire Cellity a privately owned mobile software company which employs 14 people in Hamburg, Germany. Cellity is a specialist in social networking and its current service will be closed, in order to launch another service, we presume, on Ovi.
Netflix said that its second quarter financial results brought it 10.6 million subscribers, and revenues of $408.5 million and net income of $32.4 million. It now has 26% more subscribers than this time last year, and a 3% sequential growth from last quarter. Revenue was up 21% over the previous year’s second quarter, and 4% sequentially. Somehow Netflix has managed to get its subscriber acquisition costs per subscriber down to $23.88 compared to $28.89 for the same period of 2008, and said churn was 4.5% on the quarter up slightly from 4.2% last time.
Ericsson finally won the bidding war to buy Nortel’s wireless businesses in CDMA and LTE beating out bids from Nokia Siemens and private equity MatlinPatterson, paying $1.13 billion. Some 2,500 employees will be transferred to Ericsson and this brings Ericsson back into the CDMA market that it crashed out of years earlier and makes it the strongest cellular supplier in the US.