Ericsson’s incoming CTO Ulf Ewaldsson has told Mobile World Live that the company expects to see further consolidation in the mobile network equipment market and claims the Swedish vendor knows what it needs to do to stay on top of a highly competitive sector. Read more...
Ryuji Yamada, chief executive officer and president of Japan’s largest operator, has told Mobile World Live of NTT DoCoMo’s strategy for migrating its 3G customers to faster LTE services. Read more...
Christian Salbaing, Deputy Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa (Europe) Ltd – parent company of 3 – has told Mobile World Live that the mobile industry has learnt lessons from previous 3G rollouts and must now ensure that the same mistakes are not made with LTE deployments. Read more...
Hong Kong operator CSL claims the industry’s move away from unlimited data offerings is a positive step for the carrier community and can point to success from its recent launch of LTE services to back up its viewpoint. Read more...
India’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel is keeping an open mind on future domestic acquisitions as the country’s government seeks to relax rules for mergers and acquisitions in the telecoms sector to facilitate consolidation in the crowded 15-player market. “Bharti as a company has grown both through organic and inorganic forms of growth. So we are not averse to acquisition, but every acquisition has to be evaluated on its merits,” CEO Sanjay Kapoor told Mobile World Live. Read more...
The new Director-General of the GSMA has spoken of her belief that operators must strengthen partnerships with all companies in the mobile industry if they are to remain at the forefront of a market that has seen the emergence of major new players in recent times. Read more...
Legendary music manager Peter Jenner has told Mobile World Live that the digital music industry is still struggling to figure out how best to capitalise on the huge potential offered by mobile devices. Read more...
Australian LTE pioneer Telstra is aiming to launch smartphones supporting the new network within the next quarter period. Read more...
Angry Birds developer Rovio is aiming to hit 1 billion ‘fans’ for the game as it continues to expand its presence around the world. Read more...
Dubbed the “agent of disruption” by Forbes, Sean Parker has undoubtedly fuelled some of the most disruptive companies of the last decade. In the run up to last week’s Facebook/Spotify partnership Mobile World Live spent time with the enigmatic entrepreneur. Read more...
Legendary music promoter, producer and manager Harvey Goldsmith believes mobile technology can play a big role in improving the live music experience, but warned that improvements must be made in the way operators and vendors offer such services. Read more...
Singapore operator StarHub is planning a range of innovative data tariff strategies to support roll-out of its new LTE network next year, CEO Neil Montefiore has told Mobile World Live in an exclusive video interview. Read more...
Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is looking to introduce controls on data network usage as it moves ahead with plans to expand availability of content-intensive smartphones across its international base. Read more...
Spectrum for LTE services in South Africa is unlikely to be allocated until 2012, pushing back the launch of next-generation mobile technology in the country. That’s according to the Honourable Obed Bapela, deputy minister of communications for South Africa, who was interviewed by Mobile World Live last month. Bapela said the country is still undecided on the best method of allocating such spectrum and, although he hopes that decisions can be taken this year, he admits recent moves have meant th Read more...
South African market leader Vodacom has warned against the prospect of new operators joining the country’s competitive mobile market. With four players – Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom’s 8ta – already battling it out in a saturated market, Vodacom’s Chris Ross told Mobile World Live that too much competition may not necessarily be a positive move for the market. Read more...
The CEO of South Africa-based Fundamo – acquired by Visa earlier this month for US$110 million – believes that mobile money services should be available to one billion people in the next five years if the industry is to achieve its full potential. In an interview with Mobile World Live, Hannes van Rensburg said the market is “coming of age… growing out of a teenager into an adult,” but “has only activated five percent of what is possible… we need to get that up to twenty percent.” Read more...
Vodafone has dismissed any notion that operators are being sidelined in today’s mobile world by the likes of Apple and Google, with the world’s second-largest operator claiming that talk of carriers becoming just ‘dumb pipes’ is no longer relevant. “I’m not sure that it was ever really relevant, it’s a terminology that we tend to not express at Vodafone,” Lee Epting, director of content services at Vodafone Group, tells Mobile World Live in a new video. “We tend to actually talk about Read more...
Swedish network vendor Ericsson is cautiously optimistic it can grow its 50 percent-plus market share of the nascent LTE sector. In an interview with Mobile World Live, CTO Håkan Eriksson said the firm will aim to strengthen its early dominance of the LTE network contract market. “I think we have probably a chance to do that,” he commented, adding that Ericsson’s share of the ‘older’ 2G and 3G network market is around 40 percent. Read more...
Qualcomm believes that its Brew Mobile Platform (Brew MP) is well placed to be a major player in the handset space despite booming demand for Android-based devices. In an exclusive interview with Mobile World Live, Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm’s Internet Services division, said the two platforms are targeting very different markets. “Brew MP and Android really aren’t competitive – they are really in different tiers,” he said. Read more...
Sony Ericsson has revealed it will rely on the open-source Android platform to help it climb back up the handset vendor rankings, effectively dropping Windows Phone for at least the rest of the year. In an exclusive video interview with Mobile World Live, filmed last week at Ericsson's Business Innovation Forum in California, CTO Jan Uddenfeldt said the smartphone vendor’s main strategy will be Android. Read more...