Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Sony Ericsson posts 1Q06 net profit tripling to €109m on sales rising 55% to €2bn, beating expectations. Samsung Electronics reported 1Q06 net income of $2bn (+22%) on revenues of $14.5bn. Samsung shipped about 29m mobile handsets in the quarter (+18%)....

Verizon is expected to bid as much as $50bn to take control of Vodafone' s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless. KPN shareholders have voted against a new mechanism to prevent a hostile takeover. KPN has become a target in Europe's consolidating telecoms market....

Sprint Nextel announced plans to form a cable venture to market cable TV and mobile phone services. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications are among the first participants in the venture. Time Warner could consider selling its AOL Europe ISP entity....

Vodafone has extended its Partner Network Agreement with Bite Latvija. Belgacom is interested in buying Vodafone' s 25% stake in Proximus (Belgium). Tata Group has sold its 48% stake in Idea (India) to Aditya Birla Group for nearly $1bn. BT has selected...

Russia: MTS subscriber base stood at 45.8m as of March 31; VimpelCom' s at 44.8m users and MegaFon at 24.1m. Pakistan currently has 27m mobile users or a teledensity of 22%.

Russian mobile operators reported a 35% increase in 2005 revenues to $10.5bn, with MTS accounting for 35%, Vimpelcom 29% and Megafon 23%.

MTS announced it CEO Sidorov is leaving the company. UTStarcom COO Mike Sophie resigns.

Games & Mobile Forum 26/04/ 2006 New York www.gamesandmobile.com Africa Telecommunication and ICT Conference. 13-17/05 2006 Nairobi, Kenia www.nepadcouncil.org ICIN2006 Advance Programme 29/05-1/06 Bordeaux (France) www.icin-conference.com and icin2006@adera.fr...

A few set of market information released this week: According to In-Stat, the number of cellular phones with multimedia capability will double in the next two years. According to Maravedis, the number of broadband mobile connections in Brazil, such as...

According to GSMA, 75% of 3G mobile operators have committed to HSDPA, with already 14 offering a commercial offer, such as in Austria, Finland, Germany, Portugal, South. Africa and the US.