América Móvil Notches Up More Growth

América Móvil, the largest telecoms company in Latin America, said its third quarter revenues climbed 8.6% year-on-year at constant exchange rates to 167 billion pesos (12.8 billion US dollars) "buoyed by data services that expanded rapidly on both the mobile and fixed platforms and by PayTV revenues that climbed 58%."

The company said "mobile revenues increased 10.7% and fixed-line revenues 3.2%; in South America they were up 12.0% at constant exchange rates. Absolutely all our operations registered revenue increases from a year before, with growth rates in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru in the teens and that of Argentina slightly above 20%. Revenues of our U.S. operation, Tracfone, continued to expand rapidly—35% year-on-year." source: América Móvil statement

Smartphones Shift Gears At Samsung

Samsung Electronics said its telecoms sales climbed 37% year-on-year to 14.9 trillion Korean won (13.48 billion US dollars) in the third quarter of 2011, lifted by a 20% rise in handset shipments. Samsung said the growth was led by its smartphone portfolio, notably the Galaxy SII. source: Samsung presentation

Sprint Outlines High Cost of iPhone

Sprint, the third largest telco in the U.S., said its operating revenues rose 2% year-on-year to 8.3 billion US dollars in the third quarter, due to higher postpaid ARPU and growth in the number of net prepaid subscribers, partially offset by lower wireline revenues and lower wireless equipment revenues.

Sprint said that it expects to spend 11.5 billion dollars distributing the iPhone (in upgrades and handset sales) between 2011 and the end of 2015. It expects to earn 8.5 billion dollars back in profits from the iPhone over the same period. By 2014, it expects the iPhone to be a source of profits, adding 500 million dollars a year to OIBDA. source: Sprint presentation 

France Telecom Fights Slowdown

France Telecom said its revenues fell 2.1% year-on-year, on a comparable basis, in the third quarter to 11.28 billion euros. The Paris-based company said regulation cost it 188 million euros in revenue for the quarter, but it also acknowledged that it has seen an "anticipated slowdown".

France Telecom said its mobile data revenues climbed 14% year-on-year, boosted by a doubling in the number of smartphones on its networks to 14.2 million. source: France Telecom presentation

Nokia Opens the Windows

Nokia unveiled its first handsets to run the Windows Phone operating system. It described the flaghship device, the Nokia Lumia 800, as "stunningly social," adding that it features "one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9." The Lumia 800 also has a 3.7 inch AMOLED display, a 1.4 GHz processor and 16GB of internal memory.  The approximate retail price for the Lumia 800 will be approximately 420 euros, excluding taxes and subsidies, according to Nokia. source: Nokia statement

Ericsson's Sales Soar as Traffic Climbs

Ericsson, the leading supplier of mobile networks, said its sales increased 24% year-on-year, on a comparable basis, in the third-quarter to 55.5 billion Swedish krona (8.48 billion US dollars). Ericsson attributed the performance to strong demand for mobile broadband and the Swedish company saw sales rise 64% in Latin America and 49% in Northern Europe and Central Asia.

Ericsson said that more than 85% of the world's population  now has GSM network coverage and more than 40% has WCDMA/HSPA coverage.  However, it said that LTE networks "only covers a few percentages today. In five years time, it is expected that LTE will have roughly the same population coverage as WCDMA/HSPA has today."

The Stockholm-based firm also said  it expects approximately 30% of all handsets sold in the third quarter to be smartphones, compared to around 20% for the full year 2010. "However, out of the installed base of subscriptions worldwide only around 10% use smartphones," Ericsson added.

Global fixed broadband subscriptions reached about 550 million by the end of the second quarter 2011, mainly boosted by strong growth in DSL in China, according to Ericsson. source: Ericsson statement

Verizon Rides Wireless Data Wave

Verizon Communicatons said that its revenue rose 5.4% year-on-year in the third quarter to 27.9 billion US dollars, boosted by 20.5% growth in wireless data services and 18.5% growth in fibre-optic based services.

Verizon Wireless added that on October 20th its LTE service was available in 165 markets covering a population of more than 186 million, across the country.  During the quarter, the company introduced five new LTE devices: the Droid Bionic by Motorola, the Pantech Breakout, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, the Compaq Mini CQ10-688nr netbook and the HP Pavilion dm 1-3010nr notebooksource: Verizon presentation

AT&T Flatlines Despite Wireless Growth

AT&T said its consolidated revenues fell 0.3% year-on-year to 31.5 billion US dollars in the third quarter of 2011, dragged down by a 2.2% fall in "wireline" revenues. The giant U.S. telco said that wireless service revenues increased 4.3% to 14.3 billion dollars in the quarter, as the company posted a net gain in total wireless subscribers of 2.1 million, to reach 100.7 million in service. source: AT&T statement