Thursday, April 25, 2013
MTN Adds Another 6 Million Subs
Pan-Africa mobile operator MTN said it added 6.12 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2013, taking the total to 195.4 million. MTN Group CEO Sifiso Dabengwa said: "This supported growth in
traffic volumes and local currency revenue. In South Africa, despite a slow start to the year, MTN maintained its market share and reviewed its
market offerings to be more competitive. In Nigeria, MTN continued to record a good performance in a highly competitive market.... The solid performance over the past quarter means we have maintained our guidance for net additions for the
full 2013 year at 21 million.” MTN also said that data revenues rose 42% year-on-year. source: MTN statement
Dogfight for Orange in France
France Telecom-Orange said its revenues fell 4.1% year-on-year on a comparable basis in the first quarter to 10.28 billion euros. It blamed 2.3 percentage points of that decline on regulation.
Mobile service revenues fell 8.1% in France and 9.7% in Poland as competition intensifies. The Paris-based group is responding by increasing capital spending. Capex was up 6.5% year-on-year to 1.15 billion euros in the first quarter, as the group accelerates the rollout of LTE and fibre in France. source: FT presentation
AT&T to Cut Back Capex
AT&T said that its revenues rose 0.9% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis in the first quarter to 31.4 billion US dollars. Total wireless revenues, which include equipment sales, were up 3.4% to 16.7 billion dollars, but total wireline revenues fell 1.8% to 14.7 billion dollars.
“Our wireless network performance continues to be terrific,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “And that helped drive our best ever first quarter for smartphone sales, improved wireless churn and strong growth in mobile data revenues. We also posted record sales of our U-verse high-speed IP service.
While it continues to expect capital expenditures for 2013 to be about 21 billion dollars, AT&T now expects capital expenditures for 2014 and 2015 each to be about 20 billion dollars, rather than 22 billion. The telco said it is achieving savings through greater integration efficiencies, accelerating LTE build in 2013 and other ongoing initiatives. source: AT&T statement
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Ericsson Sees Steady Growth
Ericsson said that it sales increased 7% year-on-year in the first quarter, stripping out the impact of currency movements, to reach 53 billion Swedish krona (8.02 billion US dollars). Sales in the networks division rose 7%, boosted by mobile broadband deployments in the US and Indonesia, while sales in the global services division climbed 9%. source: Ericsson statement
Apple Believes Revenue May Fall
Apple said it expects its revenue in the quarter ending June 30 to be between 33.5 billion and 35.5 billion US dollars. That suggests Apple believes its revenue will probably decline year-on-year for the first time in many years. Its revenue was 35 billion US dollars in the equivalent quarter of 2012.
In the quarter ended March 30, Apple's revenue rose 11% year-on-year to 43.6 billion US dollars. The California-based company sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 19.5 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter.
“Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. source: Apple statement
Monday, April 22, 2013
China Mobile Faces Intense Market Competition
China Mobile said its operating revenue climbed 5.7% year-on-year in the first quarter to reach 134.7 billion Chinese yuan (21.8 billion US dollars). That marks a slowdown from 2012 when group revenue rose 6.1% across the year. In the first quarter, average revenue per user fell to 63 yuan (10.2 dollars) from 71 yuan in the previous quarter, as it added a further 16 million connections taking the total to 726 million.
China Mobile said: "Faced with various difficulties and challenges arising from the increasing mobile penetration rate, unprecedentedly intense market competition and more apparent substitution of traditional communication business by new technologies and new businesses, the group persisted with the mantra of ‘‘customers are our priority, quality service is our principle’’."
It added: "Wireless data traffic in the first quarter of 2013 increased by 1.6 times compared to the same period of last year. Key businesses, such as Mobile Mailbox, Mobile Reading and Mobile Video, have maintained a favourable growth momentum." source: China Mobile statement
China Mobile said: "Faced with various difficulties and challenges arising from the increasing mobile penetration rate, unprecedentedly intense market competition and more apparent substitution of traditional communication business by new technologies and new businesses, the group persisted with the mantra of ‘‘customers are our priority, quality service is our principle’’."
It added: "Wireless data traffic in the first quarter of 2013 increased by 1.6 times compared to the same period of last year. Key businesses, such as Mobile Mailbox, Mobile Reading and Mobile Video, have maintained a favourable growth momentum." source: China Mobile statement
Saturday, April 20, 2013
American Music Downloads Hold Up
Apple had 63% unit share of the U.S. paid music download market in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to research firm NPD Group, followed by AmazonMP3 with 22%.
According to NPD’s surveys of consumers, 44 million Americans bought at least one song track or album download last year. The research firm said: "That number has remained relatively stable over the past three years, despite the rapid growth of Pandora and other music-streaming options." NPD estimates that average per-buyer spending on music downloads increased 6% year over year "due largely to increases in music purchasing by teens, along with an increase in the number of consumers purchasing both single song tracks and full albums." source: NPD statement
According to NPD’s surveys of consumers, 44 million Americans bought at least one song track or album download last year. The research firm said: "That number has remained relatively stable over the past three years, despite the rapid growth of Pandora and other music-streaming options." NPD estimates that average per-buyer spending on music downloads increased 6% year over year "due largely to increases in music purchasing by teens, along with an increase in the number of consumers purchasing both single song tracks and full albums." source: NPD statement
Friday, April 19, 2013
Home is where the Future Is
This post is sponsored by the Enterprise Mobile Hub and Blackberry
Enterprises can learn from Facebook Home and Google Now
Facebook Home has polarised industry commentators. Some love the idea of Facebook feeds taking over the home screen of their smartphone, some hate it.
But the concept of highly-relevant, real-time information being pushed to a smartphone's home screen is basically sound and should be more widely adopted by enterprises. Highly-selective updates pushed to employees could take friction out of many organisational processes.
In time, such systems could become a standard part of an enterprise mobile solution, but they won't be easy to implement well. Consumers' reactions to Facebook Home and other attempts to push timely and personlised info, such as Google Now, will give some pointers as to how this might be done effectively.
First let's look at the value proposition from a CIO's perspective. The beauty of a Facebook Home style newsfeed is that it overcomes inertia and laziness - rather than requiring employees to log into an IT system and search for specific data (a pull approach), it pushes info to the employee. In some respects, the concept emulates the effortless elegance of the original Blackberry experience - your emails came to you.
Removing friction in the field
For a field engineer working for a utility, live updates on how the overall electricity grid is performing could help him or her tackle a specific outage. Their personalised newsfeed could also alert them to the location and telephone number of another engineer working on the same problem. In the public sector, health workers could get real-time updates on health scares, flu outbreaks and vaccination programmes, while police officers could benefit from status updates on the whereabouts of colleagues and which cases they are working on.
The home screen newsfeed for CFOs, CMOs and their staff could include regular updates on key performance metrics - how many orders for a new product or the footfall in stores. Ideally, the newsfeed will link to some kind of data visualisation system, such as that built by startup Captain Dash, that clearly shows the trends behind the figures. If they bump into the CEO in the lift, the CMO will then be able to give him or her a snappy update, rather than saying "I'll get back to you."
Relevant, very relevant and even more relevant
Of course, these kinds of home screen newsfeeds will only work if everything on them is highly-relevant - they can't be like email, Twitter or Facebook, where a few valuable nuggets can be swamped by dross. The analytics engines behind these newsfeeds will need to be very, very selective and their timing has to be spot on. For a sales representative, breaking news on a client they are about to meet is valuable, but real-time info on a client they are going to meet tomorrow could distract them from the client they are meeting today.
Moreover, the analytics engines will need to learn, prioritising items that the employee clicks on and demoting those that get ignored. Different employees work in different ways - some people are information junkies, while others will only want three updates a day - these newsfeeds need to adjust to that.
All this won't be easy, but Google Now, in particular, shows how cloud-based systems can draw on many different data sources to provide people with relevant and timely info. Google Now pulls in data from WiFi, GPS, search queries, email, calendars and other sources to provide people with timely information, such as the time of the next bus or train or the exchange rate when you arrive in another country. It is far from perfect, but Google Now is a pointer to the future.
Must have mobile security
Finally, in an enterprise context, mobile security will obviously be key. The newsfeed will be carrying sensitive info - it shouldn't be appearing on the lock screen, where anyone might see it. The feed should be on the home screen, protected by a PIN. Smartphones may also need to be equipped with cases that obscure the screen to anyone not looking at the device square on. Highly sensitive newsfeeds may need over-the-air encryption and there should be a remote wipe feature in case the handset is lost.
The actual implementation is also going to depend on the smartphone operating system. While Facebook Home has shown how it is possible to completely take over the home screen of an Android device, Apple isn't going to allow a third-party to hijack the iPhone experience. Still, I suspect consumer and enterprise demand will mean iOS is going to have to provide better support for real-time newsfeeds on the home screen.
Done well, push can be better than pull.
This post is sponsored by the Enterprise Mobile Hub and Blackberry
Enterprises can learn from Facebook Home and Google Now
Facebook Home has polarised industry commentators. Some love the idea of Facebook feeds taking over the home screen of their smartphone, some hate it.
But the concept of highly-relevant, real-time information being pushed to a smartphone's home screen is basically sound and should be more widely adopted by enterprises. Highly-selective updates pushed to employees could take friction out of many organisational processes.
In time, such systems could become a standard part of an enterprise mobile solution, but they won't be easy to implement well. Consumers' reactions to Facebook Home and other attempts to push timely and personlised info, such as Google Now, will give some pointers as to how this might be done effectively.
 |
| Facebook Home |
First let's look at the value proposition from a CIO's perspective. The beauty of a Facebook Home style newsfeed is that it overcomes inertia and laziness - rather than requiring employees to log into an IT system and search for specific data (a pull approach), it pushes info to the employee. In some respects, the concept emulates the effortless elegance of the original Blackberry experience - your emails came to you.
Removing friction in the field
For a field engineer working for a utility, live updates on how the overall electricity grid is performing could help him or her tackle a specific outage. Their personalised newsfeed could also alert them to the location and telephone number of another engineer working on the same problem. In the public sector, health workers could get real-time updates on health scares, flu outbreaks and vaccination programmes, while police officers could benefit from status updates on the whereabouts of colleagues and which cases they are working on.
The home screen newsfeed for CFOs, CMOs and their staff could include regular updates on key performance metrics - how many orders for a new product or the footfall in stores. Ideally, the newsfeed will link to some kind of data visualisation system, such as that built by startup Captain Dash, that clearly shows the trends behind the figures. If they bump into the CEO in the lift, the CMO will then be able to give him or her a snappy update, rather than saying "I'll get back to you."
Relevant, very relevant and even more relevant
Of course, these kinds of home screen newsfeeds will only work if everything on them is highly-relevant - they can't be like email, Twitter or Facebook, where a few valuable nuggets can be swamped by dross. The analytics engines behind these newsfeeds will need to be very, very selective and their timing has to be spot on. For a sales representative, breaking news on a client they are about to meet is valuable, but real-time info on a client they are going to meet tomorrow could distract them from the client they are meeting today.
Moreover, the analytics engines will need to learn, prioritising items that the employee clicks on and demoting those that get ignored. Different employees work in different ways - some people are information junkies, while others will only want three updates a day - these newsfeeds need to adjust to that.
All this won't be easy, but Google Now, in particular, shows how cloud-based systems can draw on many different data sources to provide people with relevant and timely info. Google Now pulls in data from WiFi, GPS, search queries, email, calendars and other sources to provide people with timely information, such as the time of the next bus or train or the exchange rate when you arrive in another country. It is far from perfect, but Google Now is a pointer to the future.
 |
| Google Now |
Must have mobile security
Finally, in an enterprise context, mobile security will obviously be key. The newsfeed will be carrying sensitive info - it shouldn't be appearing on the lock screen, where anyone might see it. The feed should be on the home screen, protected by a PIN. Smartphones may also need to be equipped with cases that obscure the screen to anyone not looking at the device square on. Highly sensitive newsfeeds may need over-the-air encryption and there should be a remote wipe feature in case the handset is lost.
The actual implementation is also going to depend on the smartphone operating system. While Facebook Home has shown how it is possible to completely take over the home screen of an Android device, Apple isn't going to allow a third-party to hijack the iPhone experience. Still, I suspect consumer and enterprise demand will mean iOS is going to have to provide better support for real-time newsfeeds on the home screen.
Done well, push can be better than pull.
This post is sponsored by the Enterprise Mobile Hub and Blackberry
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