PLDT says mobile phone business growth to ease in 2005
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Dominant telecoms operator Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) said it expects the growth of the domestic mobile phone business to ease in 2005 as the subscriber base tops 40 percent of the population.
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Cingular Wireless LLC, the nation&#39;s largest cell phone company, will cut about 10 percent of its 68,000 jobs over the next 12 to 18 months as it combines operations with the recently acquired AT&amp;T Wireless, Cingular&#39;s chief executive said Tuesday.
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Market researcher IDC expects growth  in the global market for mobile phones to slow to single digits  from this year onwards after unit sales rose 11.6 percent last  quarter, it said in a statement on Friday.
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With most technical issues resolved and giants like Vodafone Plc signing up customers, 2005 could be the year when third-generation (3G) mobile services finally gain a global audience.
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Update: The handset division is Motorola's biggest business, but has had no big wins since the Razr.
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Analysts predict growth in mobile phone sales will drop below 10 percent this year.
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Vodafone KK President Shiro Tsuda has said the company will stop offering new second-generation cell phone handsets in 2005 to force customers to switch to 3G handsets.
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India's booming cellphone market is adding 1.7 million customers every month and will grow between 15 percent and 20 percent annually, a senior industry official said.
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(InfoWorld) - New research has confirmed that India's mobile phone market is set for a period of fast growth, with revenue from cellular services expected to jump by more than 18 percent each year for the next five years. Most of the growth will come from rural areas, where only 2 percent of the population have access to mobile phones today, said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner, which conducted the research. Service providers have already started to focus on rural markets, with aggressive rates and handsets priced at under $25, he said. Cellular service revenue in India will increase at a compound annual rate of 18.4 percent between this year and 2011, to reach $25.6 billion, Gartner estimated. Cellular revenue last year was $8.9 billion. As call rates fall from their current level of 2.6 cents per minute to rates comparable to fixed lines, which are about 0.9 cents per minute, a broad swathe of additional users will start using mobile phones, Gupta said. "The fixed-line infrastructure in India is not that good, which is giving enough of space for mobile wireless to move in," he said. Revenue from data will outpace that of voice services and contribute to about one fifth of revenue in 2011, more than double its share last year, although most of that growth will come from urban markets, Gartner said. As they expand into rural areas, operators will see their average revenue per user (ARPU) fall to $59.50 per year by 2011, from $82.1 last year. Successful operators will be those that make up for the falling ARPU through economies of scale, Gupta said. Operators are likely to collaborate by sharing infrastructure and outsourcing their network management to equipment vendors, and possibly system integrators, he added. For example, Bharti Airtel, a large Indian service provider, said Wednesday it had awarded a contract worth $2 billion over two-years to Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, to expand its network in rural areas and provide capacity management. The service providers should not be short of funds for expansion.Â Vodafone Group's acquisitionÂ in May of a controlling interest in the Indian operator Hutchison Essar, for $10.9 billion, has increased the valuation of all Indian service providers, and is helping them to attract private equity and other investments, Gupta said. The rural demand will come from businesses expanding into these areas, as well as from local businesses. Some individuals will own mobile phones, although the predominant model is likely to be a communally-owned handset, a concept already tried in some areas, Gupta said. India added 15.5 million mobile subscribers in the first quarter of this year, taking the total to 165.1 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Gartner expects 58 percent of the rural population and 95 percent of the urban population to be covered by mobile networks by 2011. That year, the total number of mobile connections in India will have increased to more than 462 million, according to Gartner. India's total population at that time will be close to 1.2 billion, according to some estimates.
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Nokia Corp. reported a 13 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings Thursday, but said it had recovered some market share, revenue had increased and it predicted more growth in 2005.
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Down 3.7% from last year The German mobile market will experience sluggish growth in 2006, according to a report from analyst Telecompaper.â¦
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Several companies ease burden of using Internet via cell phones.
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Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. has more than 13.5 million 3G mobile phone customers worldwide, but the rate at which it adds new users has slowed substantially.
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Mobile phone security is bad now, but it is only going to get worse, a security firm said Wednesday as it laid out this year&#39;s attack timeline to demonstrate the quickening pace of exploits.
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The service sector of the economy showed slower growth in January, as the rate of expansion in both employment and inflation pressures softened, the Institute for Supply Management said Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone Group had almost 200 million customers by Dec. 31, but continues to face challenges in the competitive and saturated European market. The operator's European business stagnated, with fourth-quarter revenue growing just 0.9 percent year on year, excluding the effect of acquisitions. Worldwide, its growth excluding acquisitions totalled 6.1 percent. The company accounts for revenue from partly-owned subsidiaries in proportion to its holding. Vodafone said that despite low growth in Europe, some of its new calling plans, such as one that offers users a lower price for calls made within their home area and others that include fixed-line broadband Internet access, are attracting new customers. Price competition, however, is offsetting that growth. Revenue from Vodafone's operations outside Europe, excluding acquisitions, grew 14.4 percent compared to a year earlier. Egypt, Romania, South Africa, and Turkey showed particularly strong growth during the period, Vodafone said. The operator offered no further insight into itsÂ negotiations to buyÂ a controlling interest in Indian operator Hutchison Essar. The board is continuing to investigate the possibility and will only agree to a deal that meets Vodafone's financial criteria, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said during a conference call to discuss the results. U.S. operator Verizon Wireless, in which Vodafone owns a stake, also did well during the quarter, with Vodafone's share of the business acquiring one million new customers. Vodafone is still pleased with its stake in Verizon Wireless, although the company uses a different wireless technology to that used by Vodafone's holdings elsewhere in the world. "There is no concept of our selling our interest there," Sarin said. While rumors have surfaced regularly over the past few years that Verizon Wireless might be considering a major technology change, that's still doubtful, Sarin said. Even Apple'sÂ much anticipated iPhone, which operates on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the technology that competes with Verizon's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network, is unlikely to encourage Verizon to make a change, Sarin said. The migration to fourth-generation networks, which operators will begin to make in the next few years, will probably cement Verizon's choice. "That's the time Verizon Wireless will think about what next generation of technology that they can deploy and of course they'll try to deploy a technology that is as backward compatible as they can," he said. Data services are also paying off for Vodafone. Non-voice average revenue per user was up 62 percent for the quarter compared to the year earlier. Vodafone has attracted 50 percent of its total customers to sign up for Passport, a plan that offers reduced rates on roaming. The European Commission is proposing a regulation that would require operators to reduce their roaming rates. Vodafone doesn't expect the commission to make a final decision until this summer, said Sarin.
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Your mobile phone may be one of the last  spots around that's relatively free of advertising -- but not  for long.