Google Demos Driverless Cars to VIPs

A Fortune article on Larry Page opens with an anecdote showing the progress of driverless car technology. It reads: "When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Only this was no ordinary car. The Lexus SUV drove itself thanks to a slew of high-tech tools, including radars, sensors, and a laser scanner that takes more than 1.5 million measurements every second. For about 20 minutes, while navigating I-280 and the area's busy State Route 85, the car cruised on autopilot, making quick course corrections, slowing down here when traffic loomed ahead, speeding up there to get out of the blind spot of a neighboring vehicle. "It was pretty incredible," says Sorrell." source: Fortune article

Huawei Expects to Report Strong Revenue Growth

Leading telecoms equipment maker Huawei expects to report an increase in revenue of more than 10% to more than 35 billion US dollars for 2012. Guo Ping, Huawei's "rotating and acting CEO" said: "We have deployed over 130 LTE and over 70 EPC (evolved packet core) commercial networks worldwide, ranking number one globally in these two fields." However, he also noted: "There was a time when rapid growth was Huawei's priority and strong execution was Huawei's distinctive feature. These characteristics have contributed to our fast development, and at the same time created the lingering issue of extensive management at Huawei. As business growth becomes steady and moderate, we have to ensure reasonable profits to support our continuous strategic investment." source: Huawei statement 

Telcos Splurge on Dutch LTE Licenses

The Netherlands has raised 3.8 billion euros from an auction of LTE-compatible spectrum. The figure was far higher than the 400 million to 500 million euros budgeted by the government.  

Vodafone said it will invest 1.38 billion euros in the spectrum, while KPN will spend 1.35 billion euros. Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile will pay 910 million euros and Tele2, a new entrant to the Dutch mobile market, will invest 160 million euros. source: Dow Jones Newswires article

Gartner Rings the Changes in Capitalism

Considering the growing wealth gap between the top 1% and the rest of the world's population, research firm Gartner forecast that "social and mobile technologies will be used to build and manage two-way relationships between businesses and all their communities of interest. This use of technology will go way beyond the one-way, outward-looking, limited use of social media today. It really will bring the 99 percent inside the walls of the enterprise to become part of the organization."

Gartner predicted that the rise of the Facebook generation will change the way businesses operate: "While capitalism won't collapse, there are fundamental changes under way as it morphs to a new form that is more in tune with the technology and attitudes of the 21st century," said Nigel Rayner, research vice president at Gartner. "The coming capitalist era is that of the Facebook generation, in which the values and behaviors that pervade the Internet and social media will also be adopted by innovative and disruptive businesses. With half the world's population under the age of 25, this may happen sooner than many think." source: Gartner statement

Deutsche Telekom Cranks up Capex

Deutsche Telekom said it is "substantially stepping up investments in broadband networks and products over the coming three years in order to improve its competitive position in the long term."  DT said that annual group capex, including MetroPCS, will climb to about 9 billion to 10 billion euros.

DT said it plans to increase investment in Germany to 4.1 billion euros in 2014 and 4.5 billion euros in 2016, compared with an average of 3.6 billion euros in the preceding three years. This investment will be used to:

• Accelerate the LTE build-out in order to have 85% of the German population covered by 2016 with data transmission rates of up to 150 Mbps
• Build-out its optical fiber network (FTTC) to cover around 65% of the population by 2016

DT plans to spend 4.7 billion U.S. dollars on capex in the U.S. in 2013 and about 3 billion dollars for the two subsequent years, compared with 2.7 billion per year on average from 2010 to 2012. DT said the focus in the U.S. is on building out a LTE network, which will cost about 4 billion dollars.

DT added: "the Group's net revenue and adjusted EBITDA are scheduled to grow again from 2014," assuming that "the about-face in European regulatory policy recently announced will be adopted in national regulation." René Obermann, Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom, said: "Hesitation now means playing catch-up later. We are investing in the future – with resolve and a clear strategy." source: DT statement

Have European Telcos Had their Time in the Sun?

How some of the world's top telcos fared in the third quarter of 2012. Europe is not the place to be. (Note, the Vodafone figure is for service revenues)

Windows 8 Sees Strong Start

Microsoft said that it has sold 40 million licenses for its Windows 8 operating system for tablets and PCs in the first month of sales of the new software. source: Telecompaper article. Research firm Asymco estimates that approximately 350 million Windows devices are sold worldwide each year.

Wireless Infrastructure Market on the Slide

The global wireless infrastructure equipment market was worth 11.3 billion US dollars in the third quarter of 2012  - down 10.3% year-on-year, according to ABI Research.  The analyst firm said that Huawei was the leading vendor with 24.3% of the radio access network (RAN) market, followed by Ericsson with 22.9% and Nokia Siemens Networks with 22.4%. Alcatel-Lucent ranked fourth with 14.3% and ZTE fifth.

“There is no question that the RAN market has been squeezed in 2012, although we have seen improvements in Q3, being 8% down from the 14% decrease we saw in Q1,” said Aditya Kaul, practice director, mobile networks at ABI. “Even with Q4 bringing in the traditional Christmas cheer, 2012 will end up 10% down at the very least, which is bound to cause market share shifts, especially in the top three.” source ABI Research statement