Mobile phones: Spanish troubles drag down Vodafone

Vodafone became the latest victim of the slowdown yesterday as the mobile group warned that its annual revenues would be at the bottom end of forecasts.

The revision - mainly caused by falling sales in Spain - shocked the City and sent shares down almost 14% to close at 129p, making it the biggest percentage faller in the FTSE 100. It cast a shadow over the departure of chief executive Arun Sarin, who is stepping down next week after five years at the helm.

Ericsson also suffered from a Vodafone effect, with shares down 11% despite reporting better than expected quarterly earnings figures.

Although Vodafone said results were in line with expectations, and reiterated guidance on operating profit and cash flow, it said full-year revenues were likely to be at the lower end of its previously stated range of £39.8bn to £40.7bn.

The company said trouble at its Spanish operations had dragged European organic revenues down by 0.2% year on year in the three months to the end of June. With more than 16 million customers, Spain is one of the company's four main European markets, along with the UK, Italy and Germany. Service revenues in Spain were down 2.5% in the quarter, contrasting with 8.1% growth over the course of last year.

Jonathan Groocock, an analyst at Investec, said the evidence of slowdown in Spain "shatters the widespread perception that the company is immune to an economic slowdown".

"Perhaps it was always too good to be true," said Mark James at Collins Stewart. "The Spanish and UK telecoms markets, resilient to the economic slowdown to date, finally look to have cracked."

Sarin said Vodafone had suffered from a "relatively severe macroeconomic environment". "We are not immune to it but we are much more resilient than most other companies. If anyone thought we were immune, that would have been a mis-thinking about how we operate."

He said one problem in Spain was that migrant workers who had been working in construction were returning home.

"Migrants and small-to-medium-size companies have taken a lot of share. But here comes the downturn - there's less construction work and some migrants have gone home. But it's not a business that's falling apart, it's a segment within that business."

He said in the UK - where service revenues for the quarter were up 2.1% thanks to data and messaging, but revenues from phone calls fell by 4.4% - the main difficulty was competition from other mobile networks.

Sarin said earnings would be protected by the company's cost-reduction plans and the strength of the euro against the pound could, on current trends, benefit the company by as much as £750m over the six months to the end of September.

Revenues for eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific were up 9.2% on an organic basis in the quarter. Overall Vodafone added 8.5 million subscribers in the quarter, taking the company's customer base to around 269 million. Group revenues rose 19% to £9.8bn in the quarter, with overall organic growth of 1.7%.

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Truphone's VoIP app dials up iPhone

Getting poor Skype sound and want to cut down on international call costs? Truphone's new iPhone app might be worth checking out.The London-based mobile VoIP operator has offered the service since 2006 for the E or N series Nokia phones. An iPhone version of Truphone's service hit Apple's App store Friday.

The VoIP service lets people send text messages or make calls to anywhere in the world for a low fee.

Calling a landline costs 6 cents per minute, and dialing a mobile phone costs 30 cents per minute. SMS text messaging costs 20 cents. Calling another Truphone user is free in certain countries, including the United States, U.K., China, Australia and large parts of Europe. But you need to be in a Wi-Fi spot.

Calls can be made entirely over Wi-Fi and the Internet, bypassing the traditional GSM network operators. Not everyone has loved that.

In April 2007, Vodafone and Orange blocked Truphone's VoIP capability on its branded Nokia N95 handsets. In June 2007, T-Mobile in the U.K. followed suit, blocking calls from its customers to Truphone's mobile numbers. But only a month later, a U.K. court forced T-mobile to stop their blockade.

On the Nokia phones, Truphone usage isn't limited to Wi-Fi spots, but can also work over 3G. So far, this isn't possible with the iPhone.

source : http://www.download.com/

Sony Ericsson may buy Spice Mobile

The world’s third-largest handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson is in talks to acquire BK Modi’s Spice Mobile. Spice Mobile is the handset company of the Modi group and sells mobile phones under the Spice brand. Sources close to the development confirmed that the Modi group had demanded Rs 80-100 per share, which values Spice Mobile at around Rs 700 crore.

BK Modi directly owns about 64% in Spice Mobile. However, it is not clear if Sony Ericsson will accept this price. Spice Mobile shares closed at Rs 22.7 on BSE on Thursday, which gives the company a market capitalisation of around Rs 177 crore. In the last 40 days, Spice Mobile shares have lost one-third of the value, from a high of Rs 35.9 on May 29.

A top source in the Spice group confirmed the development and said that while talks were on, the deal had not been finalised. The source also added that initially, Spice Mobile had approached Sony Ericsson for a ‘wide-ranging collaboration and partnership’, but as the talks progressed, it was felt that an acquisition would suit both companies better. “If Sony Ericsson were to acquire more than 50% in Spice Mobile, it will have to make an open offer as per our regulations. They want to acquire a majority stake, but it has not yet been finalised if it will be a 100% buyout,” the source added.

If the deal goes through, this will mark yet another exit of the BK Modi group from the telecom sector. Just last month, BK Modi had divested his 40% stake in mobile service provider Spice Communications for Rs 2,700 crore. The BK Modi group also owns Cellebrum, a VAS company, and Hot Spot, a handset retail chain.

Sony Ericsson is currently the third-largest player in the Indian handset market after Nokia and Samsung. Market watchers also pointed out that it was only recently that Samsung had taken over the No 2 slot from Sony Ericsson in India. While Spice Mobile is a recent entrant in the Indian handset market, the company has been able to make impressive gains as it offers some of the cheapest handset models in the country.

Spice Mobile sources said that the company was registering sales of close to 200,000 handsets a month. Unofficial industry figures peg Sony Ericsson’s monthly sales at over 400,000 units and Samsung at about 4,50,000 handsets. A Sony Ericsson-Spice Mobile combine will be the second-largest handset player in the country.

Spice Mobile is setting up a manufacturing facility in Baddi in Himachal Pradesh. Currently, the company procures all its handsets from contract manufacturers in China and Taiwan. A Spice Mobile executive said the company had a large team that designed handset models and customised as per the needs of Indian customers, which are then manufactured abroad. Spice Mobile was recently in the news when Mr Modi launched what it termed as the ‘People’s Phone’, a low-cost handset, for Rs 599.

source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Charge the all-new Samsung Mobile Phone through Water

We have heard of eco-friendly mobile phones like Nokia’s Eco sensor and the Nokia Remade Concept Phone but here’s a new eco-friendly phones that tops the chart out of all. Samsung is working on making a very unique phone which will charge the device when placed in water.

Technology comes up with the most bizarre and the most innovative creations. Samsung is set to develop a micro fuel cell and hydrogen generator that charges up mobiles. In layman terms, this new-age mobile phone charges using water.

The vice president of Samsung’s research centre, Oh Yong-soo explains, “When the handset is turned on, metal and water in the phone react to produce hydrogen gas. The gas is then supplied to the fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power,”

Currently the water charged phone provides a battery life of 10 hours, since there is yet a need for a higher battery life, Samsung is trying its best to pump up the battery life to higher levels. The phone’s production is set to start only by 2010 so till then we will have to console ourselves with the other eco-friendly phones.

source : http://www.mobiletor.com/

Cubans queue for mobile phones as sales ban is lifted

LONG queues stretched outside shops in Cuba this week as the new government allowed citizens to sign up for mobile phone services for the first time.
The contracts cost about £60 to activate – half a year's wages on the average state salary. And that does not include a phone or the credit to make and receive calls.

But most Cubans have at least some access to US dollars or euros thanks to jobs in tourism, with foreign firms or money sent by relatives abroad. Queues formed before the stores opened, and waits grew to more than an hour.

"Everyone wants to be first to sign up," said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her queue moved at all.

Getting through the day without a mobile phone is unthinkable now in most developed countries, but Cuba's government limited access to them and other so-called luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of life on the communist-run island.

The president, Raul Castro, has done away with several other small but infuriating restrictions, and his popularity has surged as a result – defusing questions about his relative lack of charisma after his ailing older brother Fidel formally stepped down in February.

An article on Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said it was Fidel Castro's idea all along to lift the ban on mobile phones, and that he was also behind recent government orders easing restrictions that had prevented most Cubans from staying in hotels, hiring cars, enjoying beaches reserved for tourists and buying DVD players and other consumer goods.

"They are part of a process initiated and called for by Fidel," Granma said of the recent changes.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public
since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, but he has continued to write essays every few days and recently criticised DVDs, mobile phones, the internet, e-mail and Facebook, asking: "Does the kind of existence promised by imperialism make any sense?"

Mobile phones on the island can make and receive calls from overseas, a key feature because the overwhelming majority of Cubans have relatives and friends in the United States.

Cuba's state-controlled telecommunications monopoly, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, charges £1.35 per minute to call the US. Making or receiving local calls costs 15p a minute.

Ms Astorga said she planned to buy about £30 in credit – enough, she hopes, for three months of very brief conversations. "You can't talk all day because it's too expensive," she said. "It's only, 'hello, I'm here. Goodbye.' Or 'where are you?' and hang up."

source : http://news.scotsman.com/

Motorola unit on Videocon radar

Videocon hires top global banker to convey interest in handset biz.

The Videocon group has expressed interest in buying telecom giant Motorola’s struggling mobile handset business, which is being split into a separate company.

“We have hired one of the world’s top three investment bankers who will convey our interest to buy out the mobile handset business of the US company,” Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot told Business Standard.

Explaining why he was bidding for Motorola’s handset business, Dhoot said his group was ready launch its pan-Indian GSM mobile operations at an investment of Rs 6,000 crore.

Also, it has a consumer durables retail chain under the brand name “Next” with over 1,000 stores across the country that stock mobile phones too.

“The Indian market for mobile phones is around 120 million units a year and we have our own retail chain stories that we can leverage. Also, we can transfer the manufacturing plant to India to leverage cheap labour in the country,” added Dhoot.

source : http://www.business-standard.com/

Nokia N96 will be possibly getting xenon flash: True or False

According to Phones Review who got there information from another source they are saying that the super smartphone Nokia N96 will possibly getting xenon flash, maybe this is true but then again maybe it is false, we will have to wait and see.

Obviously this is not official but we are going on what we have heard, a Nokia Rep apparently has said “the delays are due to them adding (at the last minute) a Xenon flash, ala N82! Finally, an all in one phone with almost nothing (bar BlackBerry) missing, from what I can tell of the marketing stuff he left for the N82, Xenon flashes seem to be Nokia’s next big push from now on, which is fine by me.”

So when you think about it that the Nokia N82 has it, you must wonder that surely the Nokia N96 should have xenon flash.

source : http://www.product-reviews.net/

Mobile contract complaints on the rise

Complaints about mobile phone contracts could be up by over a quarter on last year’s figures if they continue at their current rate.

So far this year, only second-hand cars have generated more complaints than mobile phones, according to figures obtained by Mobile .

A total of 32,496 calls were made about contracts during the whole of 2007, and if complaints continue at the current rate they will hit just over 43,000 by the end of the year.

Government watchdog Consumer Direct received 7,239 calls from unhappy consumers about mobile phone service agreements during the first two months of 2008.

The only sector with more complaints was second hand cars, which generated 11,093 calls.

Calls about mobile phone hardware reached 4,029 during January and February.

source : http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/