Mobile operators are comfortably and steadily beating the recession, according to the findings of a new report from global advisory and consulting firm Ovum.

Ovum's report – ‘Mobile operators in a recession: lessons and coping strategies' – tracked the performance of mobile operators across all regions in the world for 2008. Overall, operators maintained revenue and customer growth during the period, but the rate of growth is down. While most operators in emerging markets are yet to see any significant pressures on their performance, operators in countries such as the US and across Europe, where the recession has had dramatic impact, operators' revenues are holding out. Indeed, it is not about immunity from the recession per se, but rather, adaptability to the downturn, says Ovum.

"It is comforting that mobile operators have shown remarkable resilience", says Emeka Obiodu, senior analyst at Ovum and lead author of the report. "Whereas other industries have gone to the government with their begging bowls, mobile operators are actually pledging to invest billions to roll out a new high speed mobile network. In fact, after scouring the world, we are yet to find any mobile operator that is calamitously struggling solely because of the recession."

The report projected the three key mechanisms of how the recession affects mobile operators:
·   The threat to the number of revenue generating customers has yet to materialize as operators are generally still growing and adding customers.
·   While the fear that existing customers will reduce their spending is valid, mobile operators have taken steps to avoid or ameliorate drastic impact.
·   The biggest threat to mobile operators is that currency fluctuations reduces the value of the revenue they get. Lower value means it is difficult to maintain repayment on dollar or euro denominated debts and to fund new network investment.

The report warns that going forward mobile operators have to get back to worrying about competition and regulation, as these are the main challenges facing them. "It is no use bickering about the recession when rivals are positioning themselves to outsmart you. Neither is it savvy to fret about the fall in roaming revenues from business travellers when the EU can force roaming prices down easily", says Obiodu. "On many occasions where an operator has complained about the recession, it is possible to show a corresponding non-recessionary force at play."

However, Obiodu warns that the recession will force a change in future direction for operators. "While the short term impact is limited, the recession will ultimately engineer a paradigm shift in strategic thinking across the industry. On the ground, the basics of the industry will surely remain the same, but the approach to service delivery will eventually change."

Central Databank, (CDB), Ireland's channel exclusive B2B utility online offsite backup service provider and Funambol, a provider of mobile cloud sync and push email, today announced a partnership to bring Funambol's sync and backup service to Ireland. The partnership allows CDB to be the first managed service provider for mobile phone data in Ireland and, as a result, CBD is able to wirelessly sync PIM data, between mobile phones, the Internet cloud, and desktop apps.

"There is nothing to compare with the Funambol service in Ireland today. This is truly a unique service," says Dermot Mooney, managing director of CDB. "Mobile phone users, of all hues, can wirelessly sync their data, from SIM card and from the phone itself, onto an online service. Once registered, it only takes seconds to sync the phone and it is done without any cables. No one keeps phone cables anymore and most people save their data on a mixture of SIM and phone. These are the first two operational problems associated with mobile data capture solved in one fell swoop."

"We are applying the same rules to this service as we apply to our online off site back service" says Mooney. Funambol from CDB is hardware and operator agnostic. Set it up on your old phone, backup your data and then set it up on the new phone and restore onto a new phone, all without having to use a PC.

CBD offers its service lines exclusively through the reseller channel and specialist trade verticals of more than 45 IT companies across Ireland and overseas. In this role, companies have sought a solution for their mobile phone data and CDB researched all product offerings until he came across Funambol. "This over the air (OTA) service from Funambol is of the highest quality and matches our professional online backup service," says Mooney. "We expect to have more than 50,000 handsets backed up for business clients by the end of 2009 in Ireland during this phase."

Other equally compelling reasons for reluctance to backup mobile data online have traditionally been cost, security and reliability. The partnership between CDB and Funambol claims to offer an affordable, secure service that is reliable. "We are offering a business-2-business service though our growing reseller network," explains Mooney. "This service is aimed at professionals and is offered with full Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and a properly developed infrastructure to provide online backup. It is a robust and cost effective solution to the perennial thorny issue of mobile phone data backup."

Once users have registered with the CDB service, their data is protected and secure, regardless of what happens to the user's phone or SIM card. If they lose or damage the mobile component, they can still access the same saved data using a newly purchased phone or they can log into the web portal and view and or modify their phone data.

Christian Marsch, Funambol Vice President, also expressed his satisfaction with the new partnership. "For businesses, the security and reliability of mobile data is as important as the service itself. By partnering with CDB, we can offer this extra step, this extra layer of service which is vital for businesses, large and small. They cannot afford not to backup mobile data but they also cannot afford to have it compromised."

Acision, a messaging specialist, today announced that, in addition to the recent contract wins with 3 in Australia and Austria, it has also been awarded a contract for messaging services for 3's networks in the UK and Ireland. Acision's solution will be deployed to deliver voicemail services.
 
Acision's IP based architecture will provide 3 with a base that can be used to deploy additional voicemail services such as voice to text, celebrity caller greetings, visual voicemail and enhanced voice message notification features. The service is also claimed to enable 3 to reduce the voicemail hardware footprint in its data centers across the three countries by as much as 80%, providing long term savings, high performance and scalability.
 
Rory Buckley, Chief Executive of Acision, added: "Acision advanced messaging solution is an open platform that enables operators to integrate new and improved voice services, without comprising service quality."

According to a new report from Juniper Research, direct and indirect revenues from mobile applications are expected to exceed $25bn by 2014, with growth fuelled by a raft of store launches targeting both high-end and mass market handsets. .

The mobile applications report found that, while the overwhelming majority of application (app) revenues are currently accrued from one-off downloads, the increasing utilization of in-app billing to enable incremental revenues from additional mobile content will see value-added services (VAS) providing the dominant revenue stream by 2011. It also noted that many Tier 1 operators would seek to deploy their own app stores in a bid to maintain content revenue share.

However, the Juniper report stressed that in the longer term, the greatest benefits to operators would be derived from data revenues associated with app usage rather than from the retail price of apps and content – providing that the operators rejected the walled garden approach. According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, "Data revenue growth is dependent upon operators embracing policies which enable open access – a policy which also involves facilitating app stores which compete with their on-portal offerings."

In addition, the report noted that, given the fact that app stores currently cater exclusively for smartphones, then operators, developers and content providers would be unwise to ignore opportunities from traditional app and content distribution and monetization channels.

Other findings from the Juniper report include:

      •   Games will remain the largest category in terms of overall app downloads and revenues, although Multimedia & Entertainment apps will attract the greatest share of VAS revenues from 2009 onwards

• App stores present a significant challenge to traditional content aggregators who may be obliged both to expand the range of their content portfolios and to amend their business models to remain viable

Nujira has announced that a major global OEM has signed a purchase agreement for its Coolteq-1 handset development platform, the first since the technology was announced at Mobile World Congress in February. The name of the OEM, one of the world's top five handset makers, was not disclosed.
 
Prior to purchasing the development platform, the OEM conducted an in-depth assessment of Nujira's Coolteq technology; the results of this assessment matched Nujira's own claims for the technology. Commenting, Tim Haynes, Nujira CEO said, "This is the first time Coolteq-1 has been independently assessed by a major handset OEM and we are delighted that our own measurements of the power consumption and bill of materials advantages have been confirmed by our customer. Since announcing our handset technology at MWC we have experienced enormous levels of interest from multiple areas of the handset supply chain including the OEMs themselves and expect other deals to soon follow."
 
Test results show that a handset PA using Nujira's Coolteq-1 with embedded HAT technology is twice as power efficient during HSUPA transmissions, and 1.5 times as efficient during W-CDMA transmissions compared with the same PA without Coolteq-l. The benefits are even more pronounced as data rates increase and the technology is thus highly applicable for future LTE handsets, says Nujira.
 
Nujira Coolteq-l enables the creation of an efficient wideband RF front end, covering three to five times the bandwidth of a standard design with up to double the efficiency. Only two PAs (power amplifiers) would be needed to design a front end covering all of the fourteen different frequency bands defined in the 3GPP for LTE and all of the operating modes (GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, HSUPA and LTE), compared with seven or more without Nujira's solution thus achieving a significant reduction in the handset Bill of Materials. 
 

According to Opera, in March 2009, more than 23 million people used Opera Mini, a 12.1% increase from February 2009 and more than 157% increase from March 2008. Those users viewed more than 8.6 billion pages in March 2009 and, since February, page views have gone up 17.4%. Year over year, page views have increased 255%, says Opera.

In March 2009, Opera Mini is said to have served 148 million MB of data to handsets worldwide. Since February, the data consumed went up by 19.3%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed 90% on average and, according to Opera, if this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed nearly 1.4 PB of data in March. Since March 2008, data traffic is up 319%.

Opera says that the mobile Web is booming in Latin America. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall page views in the top 10 countries listed increased 673%. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall unique users in the top 10 countries listed increased 164%. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall data transferred in the top 10 countries listed increased 510%.

Examining the top sites, Google, Live and Facebook all do well in Latin America. Orkut remains the dominant social network in Brazil and Paraguay. Smaller social-networking sites, such as hi5, are also strong in several Latin American countries.

The mobile Web continues its rapid growth worldwide. For the first time, Opera's State of the Mobile Web report profiles page-view and user growth in the top 10 countries, finding triple-digit page-view growth in most countries, with double-digit user increases in all countries. Nigeria is the exception to both as it experienced more than 4,000 percent page-view growth and almost 1,500 percent user growth since March 2008.

"A mobile phone will be the device most people use to access the Web," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "As millions of people each month discover the Web through Opera Mini, content providers have an incredible opportunity to seize competitive advantage in this new medium. By simply ensuring their content works on any device, they will open themselves to the next generation of Web users."

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), a global association for the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies, today announced that it has gained 28 more members since February. The new members come from all segments of the mobile marketing industry, from brands looking to incorporate mobile into their marketing strategies to agencies, mobile service and technology providers. The new member companies also represent a diverse geographical range from South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia to Europe and North America.

The latest companies to join the MMA include:

• 24.com
• Adfortel BV
• Advertising Database, Inc.
• Banco Citibank
• Be-Mobile
• BIG Evolution (ANARESPA S.A.)
• Breeze Tech UK Ltd.
• Crispin Porter + Bogusky
• Discover Financial Services
• Ez Texting, Inc.
• Foundation Media Group
• Indiagames Ltd.
• InMarkit
• Media 24: Emerging Markets
• Mobile-research.at
• Mobilize Systems
• Neo Network USA, Inc.
• Netcore Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
• Omniture
• One2Many.BV
• PlayNetwork, Inc.
• PT. Monstermob.com Indonesia/KapanLagi.com
• Ryan iDirect
• Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Synovate
• Telcordia Technologies, Inc.
• WAPJA.NET
• Xipto, Incorporated

"The solid month to month growth that we've seen serves to demonstrate the desire of all involved in deploying mobile marketing strategies to play an active role in how the industry evolves, and that mobile continues gaining global recognition," said MMA President and CEO Mike Wehrs. "The increase in members from our Middle Eastern, South American and Asia-Pacific regions is also testament to the MMA's global reach."

According to a new study from Ovum, the global economic downturn depressed valuations and dealmaking in the telecom sector in 4Q08. Based on Ovum's report, Financial Deals Industry Insight – Telecommunications (4Q08 edition),M deal count was 129 in 4Q08, from 192 in 4Q07, with only four deals valued above US$1B, from 10 in 4Q07.

Public stock offerings dried up, from 14 deals in 4Q07, to just two in 4Q08: both from carriers based in the relatively robust Middle East  Africa region. Private placements also fell, from 25 deals in 4Q07 to just six announced in 4Q08: five small ones, and a large one in Asia Pacific: Telenor's $1.2B for a 60% stake in India's Unitech Wireless. Venture financing was flat year-over-year in 4Q08 (deal count and value), with most funds targeting US-based vendor start-ups.

Matt Walker, Ovum principal analyst and author of the report, says "the financial market turmoil resulted in the acceleration of some deals, but uncertainty was the dominant factor. While this uncertainty lasts, there is incentive to sit and wait, until expectations and valuations stabilize. Preliminary analysis of 1Q09 results confirms this view, but finds activity picking up in some areas."

Noting that telecom is a huge industry worldwide, with service revenues of roughly US$1.4 trillion in 2008, and network capex of $200 billion, Walker says it was inevitable that the industry be impacted by macroeconomic conditions. However, he adds, "Telco financial health is stronger than several years ago. The industry has a variety of funding mechanisms available, and it is still perceived as central to economic growth".

Further, in several large markets – such as China, the US, Germany and Australia – telecom players are receiving government support (e.g. direct subsidy, tax breaks, and so on) aimed at offsetting the recession's impact on telecom's fortunes.