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Iliad shares drop 4 pct as mobile phone growth slows


PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in France's Iliad fell more than 4 percent after the low-cost telecoms operator founded by billionaire Xavier Niel reported slower growth at its mobile phone business Free.

Iliad said the number of new mobile customers fell to 640,000 in the third quarter from 720,000 in the second, suggesting that a price war with more established mobile operators is making it harder for Iliad's Free Mobile service to lure away their customers.

It was the slowest quarterly increase in customers for Free Mobile since its launch, although the third quarter is traditionally a slower period.

Some analysts had anticipated the slowdown and had expected Iliad to launch a new commercial formula to boost sales.

"Be patient. We will launch new offers in the months ahead, when the time is right," Iliad finance chief Thomas Reynaud told Reuters.

Iliad said in a statement that Free had 7,435,000 mobile customers at the end of September, for a mobile market share of more than 11 percent, up from 10 percent at the end of June.

Mobile now generates a third of the company's revenues, which rose 23 percent to 2.77 billion euros ($3.73 billion) in the January-to-September period.

Third-quarter revenue was up 15 percent to 944 million euros. Analysts from Barclays, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan had expected quarterly revenue of between 927 and 935 million euros.

"These solid results demonstrate Iliad's ability to deliver results, even if does not beat expectations by as much as in earlier quarters," a Paris-based trader said.

Free's no-frills deals - which cost 2 euros or 19.99 euros a month without a phone or long-term contract - have forced larger competitors France Telecom, Vivendi's SFR and Bouygues Telecom to cut costs to compete and accelerate construction of superfast 4G networks to offer a better service than Iliad.

"When the time is right, we too will offer 4G," Reynaud said, adding that competitors' 4G launches had no impact on Free mobile's growth.

Shares in Iliad are up nearly 30 percent this year, after a 36 percent rise last year, and are in line with a broader rally by a European telecoms sector index this year.

The company has a market capitalization of 9.7($1 = 0.7430 euros)

(Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Mark Potter and Tom Pfeiffer)


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Smartphones 55 percent of global mobile phone sales in third-quarter


By Harro Ten Wolde

FRANKFURT Thu Nov 14, 2013 5:55am EST

Syrian refugees look at photos of their missing and believed to have drowned compatriots on a smartphone, at the Hal Far open centre for migrants in Hal Far, outside Valletta, October 22, 2013. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

Syrian refugees look at photos of their missing and believed to have drowned compatriots on a smartphone, at the Hal Far open centre for migrants in Hal Far, outside Valletta, October 22, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Darrin Zammit Lupi

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Smartphone sales accounted for 55 percent of global mobile sales in the third quarter as customers in China and Latin America swapped their old phones for the higher end of the range gadgets, research firm Gartner said on Thursday.

Worldwide smartphone sales rose nearly 46 percent from last year to 250.2 million units, it said, while overall mobile phone sales were up less than 6 percent at 455.6 million.

"Sales of feature phones (normal handsets) continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much closer to the ASP of affordable smartphones," said Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta.

He said he expected smartphone sales of just below 1 billion devices for 2013.

Samsung kept the top spot in the smartphone segment, with a 32.1 percent market share, selling 80.36 million smartphones, up from 55 million in the same quarter last year, helped by its Note 3 large display smartphone.

Apple sold 23.2 percent more smartphones at 30.33 million, but its market share dropped to 12.1 percent from 14.3 percent.

Sales of Apple's new iPhone 5S and its low-cost iPhone 5C model had a modest impact on sales as both phones went on sale in September, the last month of the quarter.

Lenovo took the third spot with a 5.1 percent market share in the smartphone segment, just ahead of LG Electronics and Huawei, with market shares of 4.8 percent and 4.7 percent respectively.

All the companies are in especially fierce competition in the Chinese market, where customers are still replacing their old models with smartphones.

Of the smartphones sold, 81.9 percent were running on Google's mobile platform Android, while 12.1 percent used Apple's iOS and 3.6 percent were on Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Gartner said.

Blackberry saw its user base drop to 1.8 percent from 5.2 percent from the third quarter last year, it added.

(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde; Editing by Gareth Jones)


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British regulator proposes fee hike for mobile network operators


LONDON | Thu Oct 10, 2013 3:39pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Mobile network operators may face a four-fold hike in licence fees to rent the radio spectrum in Britain, under plans unveiled by telecoms industry regulator Ofcom on Thursday.

Ofcom said the proposed new fees for certain spectrum bands used by mobile network operators for voice calls as well as third and fourth-generation mobile data signals reflected market value based on other countries.

The proposals come after Britain earlier this year raised a less-than-expected 2.34 billion pounds ($3.7 billion) in a 4G spectrum auction for airwaves to carry high-speed mobile Internet traffic.

Currently Vodafone, Telefonica's O2, EE - a joint venture of Deutsche Telekom AG and Orange, and Hutchison's H3G pay about 64.5 million pounds in total for using the 900 megahertz and 1800 megahertz spectrum bands.

This would increase to about 309 million pounds under the proposed changes.

"Spectrum is a valuable and finite national resource, and charging for it can incentivise the optimal use of frequencies," Ofcom said in a statement.

The British government had asked Ofcom to recalculate the fees to reflect "full market value" and Ofcom said the new rules were expected to take effect next year after a consultation period that ends in December.

Operators had expected a price rise but Vodafone said it was disappointed by the scale of the increase. The other operators have yet to respond to Ofcom's report.

Ofcom's proposed hikes depend on the amount and the quality of the airwaves held by operators. O2 and Vodafone would each pay 83.1 million pounds a year, up from 15.6 million pounds.

EE would see its licence fees rise to 107.1 million, up from 24.9 million pounds, while H3G would see fees rise to 35.7 million pounds from 8.3 million pounds.

Vodafone said it was reviewing the details of Ofcom's proposals before responding to the regulator.

"We are however disappointed that Ofcom is proposing a 430 percent increase in the fees we pay for our existing spectrum at a time when we are investing more than ever in vital national digital infrastructure," a spokesman said in a statement.

"The regulator should be encouraging such private sector investment in infrastructure and new services like 4G, which will benefit consumers, businesses and the wider British economy for many years to come."

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Pravin Char)


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EE to partner BT in mobile services


An Everything Everywhere (EE) mobile phone store sign is seen in London February 20, 2013. REUTERS/Neil Hall

An Everything Everywhere (EE) mobile phone store sign is seen in London February 20, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

LONDON | Thu Oct 10, 2013 7:53am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's EE is to provide mobile services to BT, the country's leading fixed-line group, after it signed a deal to replace rival Vodafone after a nine-year partnership.

EE, the country's largest mobile operator which is jointly owned by France's Orange and Germany's Deutsche Telekom, said on Thursday it would be BT's exclusive mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) partner.

BT currently provides a range of mobile services, primarily to large corporates, the public sector and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Vodafone withdrew from talks about continuing its MVNO partnership earlier in the year, sources told Reuters in May.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Kate Holton)


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Mobile security software maker Lookout raises $55 million


BOSTON | Thu Oct 10, 2013 3:54pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - Lookout, one of the world's biggest providers of mobile security software, said on Thursday that it has raised $55 million in financing.

The round was led by Deutsche Telekom AG.

Qualcomm Inc's venture capital arm, Greylock Partners and Mithril Capital Management also participated, as did current investors Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

Lookout's security software is installed on some 45 million devices running Google Inc's Android operating system and Apple Inc's iOS.

Telecommunications firms such as Deutsche Telekom and Qualcomm are growing increasingly interested in mobile security products because cyber attacks on mobile devices have grown exponentially in recent years as sales of smartphones and tablets have surged to consumers and businesses alike.

Lookout said in a statement that it plans to enter the corporate security market later this year, which would put it in competition with older, more established software makers including Symantec Corp and Intel Corp's McAfee security division.

San Francisco-based Lookout, founded in 2007, has raised $131 million to date.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Nick Zieminski)


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Qualcomm Is Developing Mobile Processors That Learn Like Human Brains


Qualcomm is developing a new line of Zeroth processors designed to help devices think and sense just like human brains and bodies.

This isn't just an attempt at mimicking the behavior of human intelligence, but rather, an attempt at replicating the underlying biology that drives behavior. Oh, and Qualcomm wants to stuff all that complex computation into a chip that fits in your phone.

Above, Qualcomm illustrates what it calls "biologically inspired learning," which basically meas replicating the process of how humans learn. In the video, the robots learn to go only to the white squares on a grid. It's simple enough to teach a robot to do this with lines of code. The more complicated problem that Qualcomm manages to solve? Teaching the robots to go to the white squares by using positive reinforcement—building a 'bot that can respond intelligently to stimuli in this way means that they can learn to do new things, even if they've never been explicitly told to. In order to interact and respond to the world the way a human does, Qualcomm has developed a complex models of neural networks that work by transmitting electrical pulses—much like human neurons.

Though the problem of replicating human brain function is quite the challenge on its own, Qualcomm wants to take it step further. Traditionally, researchers trying to replicate brains with complex computation have relied on massive supercomputers to do the number crunching. That's all fine and well, but Qualcomm wants to build up an entirely new processor architecture that fits in power- and size-constrained spaces like a smartphone chip. Next to the central processing unit and graphics processing unit on your smartphone, Qualcomm's Zeroth processors will have a neural processing unit to do brain-like computation.

Now, this all sounds like a super fun science project, but the whole point of shrinking this type of function down to a mobile-friendly size is to derive real tangible benefits for everyday people using the technology. According to the Qualcomm, the idea is that in the future, devices will see the world the way we do—so that they can anticipate our needs.

Just think: One day your smartphone might be able to sense that your blood sugar is about to bottom out—and then inform you that should eat some pizza, lest you lash out at your co-workers in a fit of hanger. [Qualcomm]

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