ZTE's western revenues surge despite US hurdles
ZTE's bid to reduce its reliance on Chinese business seems to be succeeding, as a strong rise in overseas sales drove it to a 32 per cent leap in full year profit, up to $494m for 2010. The fourth quarter was particularly strong, with net profit up 49 per cent year-on-year. Full year revenue was $10.67bn, up 17 per cent on 2009's figure, and CFO Wei Zaishen said recently that he expected the company's growth this year to be at least as great as in 2010.
RIM in war with operators over m-payments data
As Wall Street looks for double-digit growth when RIM reports its fourth quarter results on Thursday, the company has reportedly picked one of the first big fights in the boom area of mobile payments. According to the Wall Street Journal, RIM is "locking horns" with operators over control of data as smartphones take on electronic wallet functions. The carriers and RIM have different viewpoints on where the user's payment credentials - the data held in the magnetic strip of a credit card - should be stored on a handset. The carriers believe this data should be encrypted and stored in the SIM card, which they control, while RIM says it should be in a secure area of the phone. The dispute highlights the fight among different players in the m-commerce chain to take pole position, and own the main customer relationship.
O2 Switches On "Superfast" London Network
O2 UK has revealed that it switched on a new “superfast” 3G network across London last week, having gained permission to reuse the 900MHz spectrum for 3G services from Ofcom, the UK Communications Regulator, back in January. O2 is the first UK operator to take advantage of the change to its 900MHz network licence and says the new 3G900 network layer in London is expected to deliver a 50 per cent increase in capacity to its existing 3G network. The 900MHz frequency band was previously only licensed for 2G services in the UK, but it offers the capability to significantly improve the potential of 3G services. Since being granted its new network licence in January, O2 has deployed 3G900 services in key cities across the UK, including Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester, with other cities set to follow in the coming months.
Whitepaper Examines Prospects for NFC
SJB Research has published a report and free whitepaper, NFC Business Models, looking at the prospects for the technology. The whitepaper sets out the latest thinking from around the world on what successful NFC services will look like; the building blocks that will need to be put in place in order to drive adoption of NFC services; the roles and responsibilities of each of the numerous players in the value chain; and the business strategies that are most likely to succeed.
Orange takes its Book Club store to Android smartphones
Orange has launched its Book Club e-books store as an Android app, following its debut last year for BlackBerry, Symbian and Java phones. The app went live yesterday alongside the announcement of this year's longlist in the Orange Prize for Fiction. The app has a catalogue of 23,000 e-books and audiobooks, with one-click purchases using carrier billing. Like Amazon's Kindle apps, Orange Book Club allows its users to read their purchased e-books on multiple devices, including handsets, tablets and PCs. Mobcast is responsible for the service.
Orange Kenya partners with ZTE for 3G rollout
Orange will partner with ZTE to roll out its 3G network in Kenya. The investment, valued at €33m, will see Orange launching services in the first half of this year as part of the telco’s drive to double its subscriber base to more than 4.5 million in 2011. Orange is currently the third-largest operator in Kenya, well behind market leader Safaricom, which claims a massive 77 per cent share of the market through its almost 17 million subscribers and is currently the only commercial 3G service provider in that country.
Mobile phones are not for calls
British people are not using their mobile phones to make calls any more. According to mobile comparison site Dialtosave.co.uk, the number of minutes UK consumers want from a mobile phone contract has more than halved in less than a year. Your average mobile phone user would be happy barking into their handset for just 10 minutes per day, or 300 minutes per month. More than three times as many consumers want 300 minutes per month as require 600 minutes a month. Hardly anyone wants a contract for 900 minutes. Over a year ago it was average for a person to be looking for 600 minutes. What they replace it with is SMS. Richard Cappin, DialToSave's founder said that punters want to surf, use their social networks, and send texts, much more than they want to talk.
How to slay a cellphone with a single text
Attacks that crash most older cellphones are frequently compounded by carrier networks that send booby-trapped text messages to the target handset over and over. In other cases, they're aided by a “watchdog” feature embedded in the phone, which takes it offline after receiving just three of the malformed messages. The so-called SMS of death attacks were unveiled late last year at a hacker conference in Berlin. They use special binary characters and overflowed headers to temporarily crash most older models made by manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, and Micromax. Carrier networks often aggravate the attacks by bombarding the target with the same malicious message, making them an inexpensive way to take a phone completely offline.
BBC World Service to sign funding deal with US state department
The BBC World Service is to receive a "significant" sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China. In what the BBC said is the first deal of its kind, an agreement is expected to be signed later this month that will see US state department money – understood to be a low six-figure sum – given to the World Service to invest in developing anti-jamming technology and software. The funding is also expected to be used to educate people in countries with state censorship in how to circumnavigate the blocking of internet and TV services.
Twitter offers encryption to beat hackers
The measure is particulary designed to defend those who access Twitter via unsecured public Wi-Fi networks, which can make it easy for hackers to steal their passwords. If activated, the new option in users' account settings means that whenever a they log on, their browser will connect to Twitter's servers via HTTPS, an encrypted version of the basic web protocol. Virtually anyone trying to spy on the traffic will see only packets of completely unintelligible data. "This will improve the security of your account and better protect your information if you’re using Twitter over an unsecured Internet connection, like a public WiFi network, where someone may be able to eavesdrop on your site activity," said Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner.
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