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Orange Israel is on sale, too
It’s like everyone’s “trading Oranges” these days. Just recently, we’ve seen Three Austria acquiring the local branch of Orange and now Partner Communications is looking to sell its big stake (44.5%) in Orange Israel. The company has apparently already hired investment bankers to look at options to get as much money as possible for the mobile network. To sweeten the deal, one of the advisors, Deutsche Bank, said it will offer credit lines of up to $1 billion if necessary to the prospective buyer. Partner Communications’ stake is worth around … Read more
Dusan Belic
Hutchison Three Austria acquires Orange Austria
We told you consolidation is coming to Austria, and voila – the local branch of Hutchison Three has finally (started) acquiring Orange Austria, having agreed to pay 1.3 billion EUR to France Telecom which owns 35% stake and private equity investors Mid Europa Partners (65%). As part of the deal, Hutchison will sell frequencies, base station sites, the mobile phone operator Yesss! Telekommunikation along with certain intellectual property rights to Telekom Austria Group, immediately after the acquisition is completed. As usual, the transaction is a subject to the approval by … Read more
Dusan Belic
Apple has 8.7% of the mobile phone market, 75% of the profits
Apple continues its dominance when it comes to the world of mobile devices. The Cupertino-based company’s iPhone share of the market in terms of units shipped has grown from 3 percent in the second quarter of 2010 to 8.7 percent last quarter, according to Asymco‘s Horace Dediu. Even more impressive is that Apple’s profits in this space have risen from 39 percent to 75 percent. Wow. Of course, what’s great news for Apple is horrible news for other manufacturers, as Dediu’s chart of the eight largest OEMs above shows a vast difference in cash-flow. It turns … Read more
Charles West
Verizon, Comcast team to offer services in San Francisco
Verizon Wireless and Comcast are teaming up to offer San Francisco customers a package of video, phone, Internet and wireless services. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of these bundled packages being offered around the country moving forward. In the announcement, Verizon and Comcast said it will offer customers a Visa prepaid card for up to $300 when a user signs up for Xfinity service and a new Verizon smartphone or tablet plan. This offer enables the companies to offer the much-vaunted “quadruple play” where a customer gets their … Read more
Marin Perez
Kazuo Hirai named new Sony CEO
Kazuo Hirai has replaced Howard Stringer as the CEO of Sony and it will be interesting to see how big a role mobile will play under his leadership, especially now that Sony is poised to completely take over the Sony Ericsson phone-making business. “I believe his tough-mindedness and leadership skills will be of great benefit to the company and its customers in the months and years ahead. I look forward to helping Kaz in every way I can so that succession leads inevitably to success,” Stringer said in a prepared … Read more
Marin Perez
AT&T shuffles up executive management positions
AT&T is playing a bit of musical chairs with its senior executive positions and the move seems more like a reshuffling of the deck than a cleaning house move. According to AT&T, CEO and Chairman Randall Stephenson will stay on top and will have multiple lieutenants. Most importantly for this publication, Ralph de la Vega will continue on as CEO of AT&T Wireless. There was not any indication that de la Vega was on the hotseat but I guess it’s possible with the failed and costly acquisition of T-Mobile went … Read more
Marin Perez
Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million last quarter for Windows Phone
Nokia reported its quarterly earnings today and while most of us are wondering how many Windows Phone handsets it sold last quarter, our friends at PhoneScoop picked out an interesting fact: Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million in the quarter for “Platform Support Payments.” We had heard that Microsoft was paying Nokia billions to adopt Windows Phone as its main smartphone platform but this gives us a little insight into how this payment process is going to work. Microsoft licenses its Windows Phone software to handset makers but it’s clear that … Read more
Marin Perez
Rumor: Microsoft ditching its Microsoft Points virtual currency by year’s end
One of the banes of my existence has been the Microsoft Point system that’s used to purchase anything digital from a number of Microsoft’s online marketplaces including Zune, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Windows Phone Marketplace. According to a recent rumor published by insidemobileapps.com, it looks like Microsoft may finally be listening to its customers and plans to doing away with its horrid Microsoft Points system. If you’re unfamiliar with the Microsoft Points system, it’s a virtual currency that Microsoft decided to implement with the release of the Xbox 360 back … Read more
Daniel Perez
Verizon sold 15M Android phones, nearly 11M iPhones in 2011
Verizon announced during its earnings call today that 15 million Android phones were activated and nearly 11 million iPhones were sold. This news comes after the largest wireless carrier in the United States activated a record of over 4 million iPhones in the fourth quarter. Apparently these numbers weren’t too impressive as investors punished the company’s stock because costs associated with offering the iOS handset weighed heavily on Big Red’s earnings. Verizon pays a subsidy for iPhone ending up around $400, but the company makes that money back from consumers signing … Read more
Charles West
Google earnings: Stock down, Android way up in downloads, activations
Google just announced its Q4 2011 earnings and didn’t meet the expectations of investors. After announcing, the search giant’s stock plummeted down almost 9% ($58). That said, we’re not IntoFinance, so we were eager to hear a few nuggets of information pertaining to the mobile space. There wasn’t much to share but what was shared was rather impressive. To date, there have been more than 250,000,000 Android devices activated. Passing the quarter-billion mark must feel good for Mr. Andy Rubin and co. but we’re sure that number will only grow … Read more
Blake Stimac
Microsoft has great quarter but Windows Phone still stalling
Microsoft described its second-quarter earnings as “solid” but the company earned $20.89 billion for the three-month period ending Dec. 31, 2011 and it also posted $7.99 billion in profit – Nearly any other company would be ecstatic to have those numbers. Still, as a mobile site, it’s our duty to point out that Windows Phone continues to be a non-factor for Microsoft. The Entertainment & Devices Division, which includes Windows Phone, had revenue of $4.24 billion for the quarter but I’d put that more on the success of the Xbox … Read more