China Mobile to Invest in 3G – Gets Better Subscribers

World’s Largest Telecom Company China Mobile added 26.4mn 3G subs (averaging 8.8mn per month), which is more than double that of its domestic rivals. Management attributes the strong subs growth to enriching TD-SCDMA smartphone models, falling prices and effective promotion. The parent company will build more than 100,000 3G base stations to increase the total … Read more

Nokia wins injunction against HTC One in MicroPhone Case

The Amsterdam District Court has granted Nokia’s request for a preliminary injunction against HTC regarding the microphone technology that HTC uses in its current flagship model, the new HTC One.

Nokia claims the microphone components were invented by and manufactured exclusively for Nokia. HTC said in an official statement “HTC is disappointed in the decision. We are considering whether it will have any impact on our business and we will explore alternative solutions immediately.

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Reliance Jio Advances Launch of 4G LTE With Airtel Deal

Reliance Jio Infocomm has entered into an agreement with Bharti Airtel under which the latter will provide a dedicated capacity to RIL’s telecom arm on its i2i submarine cable linking India and Singapore. This deal along with the infra-sharing deal with RCom announced earlier this month provides RIL with access to significant infrastructure, both at … Read more

Vodafone India Summer Roaming Pack – Pre-Paid

Vodafone India Ltd., leading telecommunications service providers, today launched a new attractive national roaming plan for its pre-paid customers. Roaming Pack Cost – Rs 26 to Rs 47 depending on your circle Incoming calls while roaming on Vodafone network at 30p/minute, across the country. Outgoing call rates at 1.5p/sec for all local & STD calls, … Read more

AAC Riding the SmartPhone Boom with Innovation

AAC the Mobile / Tablet Sound Solutions operations appear to have seen some improvement but it is still undergoing restructuring. While Sound Solutions should be better placed than a year ago, regaining meaningful share may prove to be challenging given uncertainties over ongoing restructuring. We believe that AAC is maintaining its lead with its competitive … Read more

Salora launches android calling tablet ‘Fontab’ at Rs 6,899

Salora International (SIL) has added another dimension to its product portfolio with launch of its android calling tablet ‘Fontab’ at Rs 6,899, its third in the tablet series. The tablet sports a 17.7-cm (7-inch) display and runs Android 4.1 aka Jelly Bean version out-of-box. The slate is powered by a 1.5 GHz processor, coupled with … Read more

What is Lenovo’s Mobile / SmartPhone Strategy ?

Lenove Mobiles IndiaLenovo has identified SmartPhones and Tablets as the Next Growth Center for its Products. On this front, it is working to improve margin: 1) enlarging scale, 2) increasing mid-to-high-end product offerings and 3) increasing sales in higher-margin open channel.

Lenovo’s smartphone business just turned profitable in the last quarter. However, we expect part of the profits it earned from China’s smartphone markets will be reinvested in developing smartphone business overseas, such as Southeast Asia and Russia.

Scale We project Lenovo’s smartphone shipments to deliver substantial growth of 50%+ YoY in F2014. Lenovo’s smartphone market share in China has reached 13% in C4Q12 from merely 1% in C1Q10.

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Is Tablet PC Cannibalizing PC Sales ?

The weak 1Q PC shipment data have sparked the market’s concern about whether the tablet PC cannibalization as seen in mature countries will be replicated in emerging markets, such as China’s low-tier cities, due to the surge in low priced tablet PCs. We argue that the PC slowdown in China is more cyclical (macro slowdown + government transition) than structural (tablet PC cannibalization).

The weakness in PC shipments has come mainly from the consumer and SMB segments, which have been affected by macro slowdown. The government and education segments were particularly weak in 2012,

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Social Advertising yet to be leveraged fully

In our view, a majority of current social ads are just “ads on social platforms” rather than “social-enabled ads”. These advertisements seem to boast no prominent differences with display ads on other online platforms (e.g. portals), which are primarily delivered on the back of user reach and visits. Currently, social-oriented platforms still do not seem to have efficiently leveraged the social / interest analytics graphs of their users, although some pioneers (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) have been actively testing new ad formats to target better.

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