Ericsson boosts speed and capacity in 3 Italia's network

Ericsson completing massive upgrade of 3 Italia's mobile backhaul network from Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to full-IP transport
The upgrade will increase the network's capacity and enable downlink speeds of up to 42Mbps
Upgrade to meet 3 Italia's customers' expectations for speed on all mobile devices
Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) will soon complete an extensive upgrade of 3 Italia's backhaul network. 3 Italia - a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, which pioneered the 3G era - will then be able to offer its customers downlink speeds of up to 42Mbps. Within the scope of the project, initiated in 2011, Ericsson is upgrading and evolving 3 Italia's network architecture and helping the operator migrate to an end-to-end, full-IP backhaul and access architecture.

Dina Ravera, Chief Operating Officer, 3 Italia, says: "Since our world-first launch of UMTS in 2003, we have taken a proactive approach to building and maintaining a state-of-the-art network for our customers. Consumers expect a fast and reliable 3G network that meets their requirements when accessing their voice, video, internet and mobile TV services via mobile devices. We have a long-standing relationship with Ericsson, which supplies us with radio-access networks (RANs) and services, and we are happy that Ericsson is now also our technology and services partner for our backhaul network."

Ericsson is the sole supplier of the upgrade, responsible for design, installation and system integration. The upgrade includes Ericsson's microwave MINI-LINK products, its optical Smart Packet Optical (SPO) 1400 products and its SmartEdge 600 Multi-Service Edge Router.

Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Region Mediterranean, Ericsson, says: "As data consumption grows due to the massive uptake of mobile broadband, network operators need to upgrade all parts of their networks - not just the radio access network. 3 Italia's backhaul upgrade will provide the operator's end-users with fast data services, improving the end-user experience on all devices. I am pleased that Ericsson is now involved in this part of 3 Italia's network."

The relationship between 3 Italia and Ericsson dates back to 2001, when the operator selected its UMTS suppliers. In 2005, the two parties signed one of the largest managed services contracts in the telecom industry. On June 5, 2009, 3 Italia awarded Ericsson a network transformation deal to upgrade its WCDMA/HSPA network and extending the managed services deal.

Operator opportunities in cloud service delivery – optimization and monetization

Everyone from content providers, to users, to operators can benefit from the network-enabled cloud and cloud service delivery. The current over-the-top model for cloud service delivery has some serious deficiencies – users, operators and content providers have their own priorities in terms of cost, efficiency, quality of experience (QoE) and as such want different things from the network-enabled cloud. With their network assets and existing relationships with users, operators are uniquely positioned to understand users’ needs for cloud services and meet those needs effectively.

Everyone can enjoy the benefits of the cloud services – users get access to content and content providers gain a means of global distribution. The problem – delivery – arises between the provider and the consumer. The current over-the-top delivery model for content and services raises a number of issues that are potential deal-breakers for migration to cloud services.

To differentiate, operators should aim beyond traditional cloud services and target premium cloud services instead, such as personalized video and real-time interactive gaming, where network performance, security and regulatory compliance are crucial.

The network-enabled, distributed cloud is an operator-specific approach to cloud that can be built on the key asset: the network. It addresses the network-dependent constraints of existing cloud solutions that affect performance of cloud-based applications.

By embracing the concept of the network-enabled cloud, operators can better control and profit from the provision of cloud services.

Researchers Ericsson found what consumers want from mobile operators

Report Ericsson ConsumerLab «optimal customer experience" has shown that users evaluate the operators in accordance with their standards of service and support, taking into account available to loyalty programs, as well as the quality of the systems of payment and billing. According to the research, consumers are becoming more demanding of the operator, which opens up possibilities for new types of services based on the individual needs of subscribers. The report notes that different groups of users rely on different factors when evaluating their satisfaction with the services of an operator. So for the elderly and not very technically savvy users a decisive factor in the consumer experience is the process of buying phone contract. Consumers are focused on a career, paying more attention to the clarity of their accounts and the system operator plazhetey. They expect the payment process, transparency in the financial aspects and the lack of excessive, unexpected or hidden fees. Young professionals are attracted loyalty programs, switching to a new tariff plan, more appropriate to their needs. For parents, the most important factor is the process of billing for services. They want to be able to control how its the end of account and the accounts of children - either online or using a special application. In order to study the consumer experience research lab Ericsson ConsumerLab interviewed nearly 3,000 people in the U.S., Brazil and Russia. According to ConsumerLab, the main reason why consumers are turning to the operator, - the need to either upgrade or change the tariff plan. 61% were associated with the operators for the last 6 months for this very reason. In addition, 58% asked for technical support, and 51% would like more information about new services or products.

Ericsson at Mobile World Congress 2012

Showcases latest developments in LTE and HSPA

·         Presents strengthened hetnet portfolio - the same services with half the spectrum and throughput gains of 2-10 times compared to using separate vendors  for the macro and the small cell layer

·         Launch of new services: Data Center Build and Optimization, Smartphone Network Optimization and Managed End-user Service Assurance

·         OSS/BSS solutions together with Telcordia

Mobile World Congress, the most important trade show for the telecommunications industry is starting next Moday at La Fira, Barcelona. From February 27 to March 1, visitors to Ericsson's (NASDAQ:ERIC) Hall 6 will be able to sneak a peek into the future of communications and the Networked Society.

Ericsson will launch new products and services, including a series world's firsts, in the areas of Mobile broadband, Operation and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) and Managed Services.

This year's highlights include:

LTE - Ericsson powers LTE Eco system at MWC 2012

Ericsson is the leading player in LTE technology and during the show it will demonstrate the latest developments in this technology.

It has also partnered with Qualcomm, LG, Sony, Renesas, Nvidia and ST-Ericsson to provide coverage for devices and chipsets built by these companies' chipsets  to fuel the LTE eco system

This collaboration allows the eco system partners to show their LTE products over live, state of the art Ericsson LTE infrastructure. The different UE vendors are all close partners with Ericsson, pushing the boundaries of the LTE eco system. Ericsson is doing this as part of our strategy to strengthening the build up of the LTE eco system and in particular powering the take of LTE based smartphones.

More than 30 LTE LTE eco system products are part of Ericsson LTE demonstration at MWC.

Voice over LTE (VoLTE GSMA IR.92) and video calling over LTE (GSMA IR.94)  will be demonstrated on  Samsung and LG devices. A live demonstration of the world's first LTE to WCDMA voice handover (SRVCC, Single Radio Voice Call Continuity) will be shown in collaboration with Qualcomm. Circuit switched fallback (CSFB) voice services will be demonstrated on LG LTE smartphones.

Services

As more Smartphones are sold with prediction showing that there will be 400 million sold this year and 4 billion deployed by end of year 2016, there will be a continued need for modernizing, transforming and rolling out new technology and services to secure a network's quality of service.

Three new Services offerings are presented; The Smartphone Network Optimization supports the operator to get ready in time for the data uptake and secures the quality of service in the network. Managed End-user Service Assurance - a concept for monitoring and visualizing the end-user quality of service for operators. And finally the Data Center Build and Optimization - to help operators with their cloud offering.

Ericsson showcases services that will help telecom operators to modernize transform and roll out new technology and services while ensuring quality of service for the consumers. With a combination of technology and services leadership that also transfers into adjacent industries, Ericsson unveils co-operation with car manufacturer Volvo on enabling electrical cars to be charged and billed to your account from anywhere.

A live feed from the stand to one of Ericsson's Global Network Operation Centers displays the global skill and scale in Ericsson's service delivery operations. Scale of the 56,000 services professionals Ericsson has proven skills in delivering services remotely from its four Global Service Centers, using standardized processes, methods and tools.

Today's transformation of networks from Telecom, IT, Broadcast and related content management systems puts very high demand on the project management as the projects are very complex with many several sub suppliers involved. Ericsson presented its leading project management capabilities, its experience of complex projects and multi technology and multi vendor projects.

OSS/BSS

Ericsson has the most comprehensive OSS/BSS portfolio in the industry, recently strengthened through the acquisition of Telcordia.

Ericsson will show how to empower operators to monetize, provide optimal user experience and innovate in the Networked Society by transforming business and supporting systems to leverage network investments and create business opportunities.

Ericsson offers its holistic operator view when transforming organizations and IT environments utilizing true real-time competence and creating configurable OSS/BSS solutions. This gives the ability to monetize and manage any opportunity with the trust of a global experienced partner.

Ericsson is putting customers' business benefits first by taking a holistic approach to people, process and technology aspects when defining and embarking on a modernization and consolidation path for an effective OSS and BSS architecture with leaner processes. Ericsson will demonstrate its approach to reach these kinds of achievements backed up by customer cases proof points such as OSS and BSS transformation reference cases.

High Definition Video Conferencing

Ericsson together with world's leading telecommunications operators, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, Telecom Italia and Telefónica and equipment vendors Italtel, Polycom and Quanta Computer, among others, will bring a demonstration of the new interoperable HD videoconference capabilities.  Samples of practical use will be demonstrated at the Telefónica (Hall 8), Ericsson (Hall 6) and Polycom's (Stand 2D01) stands, connecting to Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telecom Italia in Italy. The services shown will be based on 3GPP IMS and uses GSMA IPX to interconnect enabling point-to-point as well as multi-party HD video conferences, regardless of video user equipment, access network or country of origin and destination with a customer experience as easy as a phone call.

M-commerce
Ericsson will be showcasing its recently announced m-commerce portfolio, designed to provide the world's leading consumers brands with the infrastructure and solutions needed to create and connect m-wallets across a global m-commerce eco-system.

Ericsson Converged Wallet can unlock the potential of the m-wallet for operators and financial institutions by converting the accounts of over a billion consumers already on the Ericsson Billing & Charging Solution to m-wallets. Some 1.6 billion people worldwide who are already using a type of 'first generation' m-wallet voice accounts (pre and post-paid accounts), can now be easily converted to 'next generation' m-wallets through Ericsson Converged Wallet

The Ericsson Merchant Wallet service will help provide large Internet brands and merchants with a solution for payments including payments; virtual currency transactions, loyalty points.

Ericsson Wallet Platform delivers software solutions and hosted services to enable secure and convenient mobile financial services, e.g. person to person money transfer, bill payment, merchant payments and micro loans

Ericsson M-commerce Interconnect acts as an eco system hub for money transfer; payment transactions and services between subscribers of Mobile Network Operators and other service providers (e.g. banks, money transfer organizations, payment service providers, Internet service providers)

Ericsson participates at "Picture today, Inspire tomorrow" initiative

Ericsson is the founding partner of "Picture today inspire tomorrow", a unique photography project, getting millions of people around the world to share and reflect on their own lives and learn from the lives of others. On May 15, 2012, people all over the world - amateur and professional photographers, photojournalists, artists, media groups, NGOs, educational institutions, social networks; anyone interested-will be invited to take photographs to illustrate the energy of one single day. The resulting gigantic photo collection will be given direction, structure and context, making it a relevant portrait of today, for tomorrow.

In the "Picture today inspire tomorrow" area in hall 6 Ericsson and Expressions of Humankind, the initiating foundation behind the project, will be available to discuss and present the project.

Flexible charging solution puts electric cars in the fast lane

Research partners developed a cross-industry platform allowing drivers to control charging of electric cars
Purpose is to increase usability for drivers and build an ecosystem making it easier to deploy electric cars around the world
Partners are Volvo Car Corporation, Göteborg Energi, Viktoria Institute and Ericsson
Through an innovative research project across several industries, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) will bring mobile connectivity to electric cars and put choice and control over the charging schedule into the hands of drivers.

The new architecture allows drivers to control charging of cars while they are plugged into any ordinary power outlet. Additionally, the system directs energy costs to the car owners' bill.  The driver sets the time and amount to charge on a console in the car or remotely via a smartphone or tablet.

Using the mobile network, the car then communicates with the grid so that charging is scheduled based on energy prices on the grid, reducing user costs. For the energy utilities, coordinating the charging of cars across the grid is more efficient and sustainable.

To provide a range of perspectives the concept was developed in a consortium involving Volvo Car Corporation, Göteborg Energi, the leading utility in western Sweden, Ericsson and Viktoria Institute, a non-profit IT research institute.

Per-Åke Olsson, CEO at Viktoria Institute, said: "Our mission is to take knowledge to market as innovations. This is a successful example of cross-industry collaboration with great business potential. We believe that this project will support global market penetration of electric vehicles, thus helping society towards sustainable mobility."

Göteborg Energi is taking an interest in the digitalization of the charging infrastructure, and the strategies and possibilities it creates. "Electric vehicles will be a key component both for a sustainable society and for a smart grid. We are committed to making the charging of the vehicles easy, as well as optimizing the use of the power grid at the same time," says Lotta Brändström, CEO Göteborg Energi.

The Volvo Electric C30, now in low-scale production for leasing customers in Europe, has been used during the project and equipped with the in-vehicle meter and software. Lennart Stegland, Vice President Electric Propulsion Systems, Volvo Car Corporation, said: "Our basic view is that the owner of an electric vehicle shouldn't have to sacrifice any of the properties he or she expects from a luxury car. This smart technology for charging in any outlet, and paying automatically via your own electricity bill, is an excellent example of how we do everything to make the daily use easier for the customer."

Ericsson's contribution to the project is to understand and influence how existing and future mobile networks, services and terminals can support new business concepts as well as services that benefit society. Ericsson is providing IT and communications expertise.

Paolo Colella, Head of Consulting and Systems Integration at Ericsson, says: "New solutions like these need to seamlessly and reliably coordinate multi-party machine-to-machine and human-to-machine interactions, where both people and machines are mobile, while allowing secure financial transactions. Our job is to make that simple."

Key points of the project include:

Using existing mobile networks and the grid
 Having the electricity meter in the vehicle which allows control of charging, either immediately or on a schedule set by the driver, with the costs being allocated against the driver's bill.
 A flexible model to adapt to different regulations around the world, and support for a variety of novel business models - some with new actors like over-the-top application providers.
The project has been financed by the four partners as well as the region of Västra Götaland and the research foundation of Göteborg Energi.
The specially equipped Volvo Electric C30 will be on display at Ericsson's Hall 6 at LaFira during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, from February 27 - February 29, 2012.

NOTES TO EDITORS                                    

Media kit is available here.

For more information about Viktoria Institute
http://www.viktoria.se

For more information about Göteborg Energi
http://www.goteborgenergi.se

For more information on Volvo Car Corporation

www.volvocars.com and www.youtube.com/volvocarsnews

Ericsson ConsumerLab identifies what consumers really want from their operators

Report reveals what people consider the most important factors in their relationships with operators
Efficiency in service and support, loyalty-building initiatives, and transparency in billing and payment are among the most critical factors for consumers
Career-minded consumers are most concerned with billing and payment, while young professionals want customized suggestions based on their usage patterns
A new report from Ericsson ConsumerLab, The optimal consumer experience, reveals that consumers judge operators according to their standards of service and support, loyalty-building initiatives, and billing and payment services.

Cecilia Atterwall, Head of ConsumerLab, says: "This report shows that consumers’ expectations of operators will increase, opening up the potential for new types of services that build on individual needs."

The report also reveals that different types of people have different needs.

For older, more senior and less tech-savvy people, the initial purchase process is the deciding factor in the consumer experience. Career-minded consumers, meanwhile, are most concerned with billing and payments. They expect the billing process to be transparent – regarding the financial aspects of their accounts – with no excessive, unexpected or hidden fees.

Young professionals are attracted to loyalty-building initiatives such as proactive suggestions to switch to a service plan that matches their usage patterns.

For parents, the billing process is the most important factor. Since they want to be in control, parents want to be able to monitor both their own usage and that of their children – either online or via an app.

Stefan Hedelius, Head of Marketing and Communications for Business Unit Support Solutions, says: "This study highlights several unmet consumer needs that can be addressed with the right OSS and BSS capabilities. For operators, there is a great opportunity to meet the demands and expectations on consumer experience and to capture the revenue potential."

In order to fully understand the consumer experience, Ericsson ConsumerLab interviewed nearly 3,000 people from the US, Brazil and Russia. In this way, ConsumerLab was able to gather unique findings that make it possible to measure consumer satisfaction and identify areas in which improvements can be made in order to optimize the consumer experience.


Figure: Importance level of the five touch point areas

ConsumerLab found that the leading reason for a consumer to contact an operator is to either upgrade or downgrade a service plan. Sixty-one percent of the interviewees had contacted their operators in the past six months for this reason. Meanwhile, 58 percent had contacted their operators to resolve a technical service or support problem, and 51 percent because they wanted more information about new services or products.

Interesting quotes from interviewees

"I got charged USD 10 for something. My mom was freaking out. I had to pay it. It wasn’t fair."
College student, Chicago

"I was disappointed when the trial price period changed without any notice and the rates went up. They’re poor at explaining prices, services, and options."
Young professional, Chicago

"I need a cellphone plan for my 15-year-old daughter who does texting but not much calling. I need more options. I’m paying for more than what I need. I need a customized plan but that doesn’t exist."
Parent, Chicago

Download the Report

Optimal Consumer Experience

Notes to editors

Our multimedia content is available at the broadcast room.

Ericsson is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators. Ericsson is the leader in 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technologies, and provides support for networks with over 2 billion subscribers and has the leading position in managed services. The company’s portfolio comprises mobile and fixed network infrastructure, telecom services, software, broadband and multimedia solutions for operators, enterprises and the media industry. The Sony Ericsson and ST-Ericsson joint ventures provide consumers with feature-rich personal mobile devices.

Ericsson is advancing its vision of being the “prime driver in an all-communicating world” through innovation, technology, and sustainable business solutions. Working in 175 countries, more than 90,000 employees generated revenue of SEK 203.3 billion (USD 28.2 billion) in 2010. Founded in 1876 with the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm and NASDAQ New York.

www.ericsson.com
www.twitter.com/ericssonpress
www.facebook.com/technologyforgood
www.youtube.com/ericssonpress
About Ericsson ConsumerLab

Ericsson ConsumerLab is a knowledge-based organization, our main offering is insight. We have more than 15 years’ experience in consumer research, which involves studying people's values and behaviors, including the way they act and think about ICT products and services. We provide consumer insight to influence strategy, marketing and product management within the Ericsson Group. Our knowledge helps operators develop attractive revenue-generating services.

We gain our knowledge through a global research program based on annual interviews with 100,000 individuals in more than 40 countries and more than 10 megacities – statistically representing the views of 1.1 billion people. We use both quantitative and qualitative research, and spend hundreds of hours on in-depth interviews and focus groups with consumers from different cultures. Our research includes general market and consumer trends and in-depth insights into specific areas.

To be close to the market and consumers, Ericsson ConsumerLab has team members in most of Ericsson’s market regions. Being part of the Ericsson Group gives us a thorough understanding of the ICT market and business models. This broad knowledge is unique and is the basis for our credibility and integrity. We see the big picture, understand where the individual fits in, and know what this means for future trends and services.

For further information, please contact

Ericsson Corporate Public & Media Relations
Phone: +46 10 719 69 92
E-mail: media.relations@ericsson.com

It all comes back to backhaul – solutions supporting superior end-to-end quality of experience (QoE) for heterogeneous network (hetnet) deployments

Backhaul plays a critical role in mobile broadband, and is rising in importance on account of the introduction of heterogeneous networks, known as hetnets. Deploying vast numbers of small cells to complement improved and densified macrocell layers will require a range of highly scalable, flexible mobile backhaul solutions that support superior user experience.

Knowledge and experience of matching the capacity and performance requirements of mobile-broadband radio networks with the appropriate backhaul resources is relatively well developed. With the arrival of small cells on the scene, backhaul requirements are once again in the spotlight. Overall, the backhaul should not limit the radio access network and should have sufficient end-to-end performance to meet the desired user quality of experience (QoE) everywhere. This is valid for backhaul of mobile networks today, and will be equally important for backhaul in both the macro and micro layers of a heterogeneous network – hetnet – in the future.

The introduction of heterogeneous networks (hetnets) will increase the number of radio nodes greatly. Backhaul, as a consequence, is crucial in a heterogeneous network (hetnet) scenario, as it constitutes a much larger share of the total cost of ownership.

LTE: what’s the story?

As we move toward the Networked Society, operators the world over are turning toward LTE to meet the demands of users in an all-connected world. A recent five-part Ericsson article series, which takes a closer look at LTE-related subjects of interest to operators, has been packaged into a handy brochure called "LTE: A global success story."

The twelve-page PDF publication starts with a look at one of the fundamental tenets of LTE: why good user experience requires and demands an end-to-end ecosystem approach.

Other articles focus on:

The range of services available within the umbrella of Ericsson’s LTE offering, including customer references.
The history of the technology, from its development in 2004 to its role as the world’s leading 4G solution.
The performance improvements end users notice in speed, quality and reliability of services from the moment their subscriptions are activated in an LTE network.
Ericsson’s dedication to continual development of the technology through research and development, consumer understanding, standardization, and working directly with customers to meet specific needs.

Validating voice over LTE end-to-end

Unlike previous 3GPP wireless technologies, LTE has no circuit-switched bearer to support voice, so carrying voice over LTE requires a migration to a voice over IP (VoIP) solution – commonly under the umbrella of IMS. Until this migration occurs, LTE-capable handsets need to revert to 2G or 3G for voice calls: an approach that is not ideal in the long term. Driven by major operators, the voice over LTE (VoLTE) ecosystem is maturing rapidly and tracking well to target commercial timelines.

Efforts to validate voice over LTE (VoLTE) from an E2E perspective, which have been under way for more than a year, have the key objective of retaining users.

The industry is progressing rapidly in terms of KPIs, measurement practices and, ultimately, the performance of early voice over LTE (VoLTE) solutions. While some improvements remain to be made, particularly in relation to jitter buffer management (JBM) in the terminal and implementation delays from internal processing in the terminal, the current performance level is already close to, and in some cases superior to the target objectives. LTE schedulers are likely to become more sophisticated in terms of managing mixed voice and data traffic, while ensuring good battery performance.

In short, voice over LTE (VoLTE) works and is ready for widespread adoption.

Wi-Fi integration - Easing hotspot issues

People want to be able to use their smartphones, laptops, tablets and other devices everywhere, and so they need access to 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi. Now that mobile broadband and mobile multimedia services are so popular, subscribers are beginning to expect broadband access to be available wherever they go – not just at home or in the office. People want to be able to connect from their cars, on the train, in aircraft, from remote locations, in the urban jungle and even from areas where it is difficult to provide access, such as in mines, tough terrain or subway tunnels.

Subscribers downloading and watching video content, and using video-communication services are expected to be the primary drivers of this tenfold increase in mobile data-traffic over a five-year period. The strong growth in Wi-Fi-enabled handsets with SIM-based authentication provides additional opportunities to capture residential and hotspot services – such as those often available at airports that use web-login techniques. As with most types of growth, this development represents both opportunities and challenges for operators to inte-grate Wi-Fi – allowing them to increase mobile-broadband reach while maintaining convenience for subscribers.

In Ericsson’s vision for Wi-Fi integration in fourth-generation IP networks, traffic from SIM-based terminals can be routed through the mobile service-delivery cluster – PGWs, GGSNs and other value-added services – to enable mobile service-logic to apply for subscribers using Wi-Fi. This approach maximizes an operator’s existing investment in packet core and enables authenticated subscriber access over the fixed network.

Smartphone Final Numbers 2011 - All the stats including Q4 by handset brands, operating systems and installed bases

Time to do the final count for 2011 smartphone numbers. This is the one big blog about all the smartphone numbers you could ever hope for.. So please mark this page for your reference in the future and do send your colleagues here too. If you blog or write about smartphones, you may want to link here.


As always, this Quarterly and Annual blog article series is as heavily based on global stats and facts as possile. So each of the major smartphone manufacturers has provided their Quarterly results for Q4 (not all provided the numbers we hoped to receive) and the big 4 analyst houses (Gartner, IDC, Canalys and Strategy Analytics) have each given their count of total smartphone sales (or shipments, depending on their methodology). As usual, I use the average of the big 4 as the starting point, then use the best available info to calculate or closely estimate the actual numbers for each individual brand. If you want to see last year's numbers and analysis, they are here.

So while my own analysis suggested somewhat a larger number of smartphones sold in Q4 when adding all of my individual data points, the total we have to live with for Q4 is 155.1 Million units sold. And yes, we have now celebrated the first full year when smartphones have sold more than all types of personal computers (including tablet PCs like the iPad) combined. I do a separate calculation of the biggest computer makers by units sold, when smartphones are included in the count. Last year's top manufacturer list is here.

This blog article is also my official estimate (and that of my company, TomiAhonen Consulting) of the market shares both for Q4 of 2011, and as we finished the full year, this is also the final count for the full year 2011. As I started to do a year earlier, in 2010 the 'Year of the Bloodbath' in smartphones - I also will grade each major smartphone maker for the quarter and full year, for their performance with some commentary for this ended year 2011 which I called 'Year 2 of the Bloodbath, the Electric Boogaloo'.

I know some want the big picture numbers so here they are, first the full year - what will be most useful in the longer run - and then the Q4 results:

2011 FULL YEAR SMARTPHONE SALES STATISTICS


Rank . Brand . . . . 2011 units . Market Share . 2010 units . Market Share

1 (3)  . Apple  . . . . 93.1 M . . . 19.1% . . . . . . . 47.5 M . . . . 15.9%
2 (5)  . Samsung  . 90.9 M . . . 18.7% . . . . . . . 24.0 M . . . .   8.0%
3 (1)  . Nokia . . . .  77.3 M . . . 15.9% . . . . . . 100.3 M . . . .  33.7%
4 (2)  . RIM . . . . . . 52.5 M . . . 10.8% . . . . . . . 48.0 M . . . . 16.1%
5 (4)  . HTC  . . . . . 44.6 M . . .   9.2% . . . . . . .  24.6 M . . . .  8.3%
6 (7)  . Sony . . . . . 26.8 M . . .   5.5% . . . . . . . .  9.5 M . . . .  3.2%
7 (8)  . LG  . . . . . . 23.3 M . . . . 4.8% . . . . . . . .  7.0 M . . . .  2.4%
8 (-) . . Huawei . . . 20.0 M . . . .  4.1% . . . . . . . . 5.0 M . . . .  1.5%
9 (6)  . Motorola . . 18.6 M . . . .  3.8% . . . . . . . 13.7 M . . . . . 4.6%
10 (-) . ZTE . . . . .  12.0 M . . . .  2.5% . . . . . . . . 3.5 M . . . . . 1.2%
Other . . . . . . . . . . 26.5 M . . . .  5.6%
TOTAL . . . . . . . ..486.0 M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .297.8 M

Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated

The overall industry grew by 63.2% in just one year. Apple did incredibly well growing by 96% and taking top honors for the year. Samsung had an even more monsterous year, more than tripling in size growing by 279% and coming within a hair from the top. Past master, Nokia which was bigger than its two nearest rivals put together just a year ago, had a horrid year, declining by 23% for the full year and tumbling from the top to third place and losing more than half of its market share within one 12 month period - this is a world record fall for a market leader in any industry ever, in a period of only one year. RIM was also often called for a lousy year, but at least they managed to grow a bit, with 9% growth for the year and falling in rankings from 2nd to 4th. HTC, ZTE, SonyEricsson - since rebranded to only Sony - and Huawei had strong growth years. Motorola had a bad year and was bought by Google. Sharp and Fujitsu fell out of the top 10 chart replaced by ZTE and Huawei.


2011 FULL YEAR OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . .  2011 units . market share . 2010 units . market share
1 (2) . .  Android  . . .  .  208 M . . . . 43% . . . . . . . . . 54 M . . . . 18%
2 (4) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . . 93 M . . . . 19% . . . . . . . . . 48 M . . . . 16%
3 (1) . .  Symbian . . . . . .  81 M . . . . 17% . . . . . . . . 116 M . . . . 39%
4 (3) . .  Blackberry . . . . . 52 M . . . . 11% . . . . . . . .   48 M . . . . 16%
5 (7) . .  bada * . . . . . . . . . 9 M . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . 3 M *  . . . 1% *
6 (8) . .  Windows Phone * . 5 M . . . .  1% . . . . . . . . . . 2 M * . . . . 1% *
7 (5) . .  Windows Mobile . . 4 M . . . .  1% . . . . . . . . . 11 M . . . . . 4%
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28 M . . . .  6%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . .  486 M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 M

Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated
* - the two operating systems, bada by Samsung and Windows Phone by Microsoft were launched at the end of 2010, so the full year-to-year comparison is not valid. See analysis below by each brand of smartphone OS

In the operating system wars, Symbian and Android essentially swapped places, Symbian fell from 39% to 17% while Android went from 18% to 43%. In the second battle, Apple's iPhone iOS pulled strongly ahead from its near rival Blackberry OS and iOS even passed Symbian in the process. Among the backmarkers, Microsoft's new Windows Phone finally passed its older and incompatible sibling, Windows Mobile but still lingers in the 1% range. Samsung's bada has pulled well away now being almost twice the size of Microsoft's best. Among the others we find past major platforms that died like Palm Web/OS, Maemo and LiMo, as well as the orphaned new Nokia and Intel OS MeeGo among many others.

Please remember, I am only counting smartphones. So for example iOS has a larger number of new sales (and installed base) due to iPads and iPod Touch devices. Same true for many of the platforms, Android is increasingly also on tablets etc. The data in this blog is always only about smartphones, not all possible digital devices that might use that platform.


2011 SMARTPHONE OS INSTALLED BASE

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . .  . 2011 base . market share . 2010 base . market share
1 (1) . .  Symbian . . . . .  314 M . . . . 35% . . . . . . . . 346 M . . . . . 49%
2 (4) . .  Android  . . . . .   247 M . . . . 27% . . . . . . . . . 61 M . . . . . . 9%
3 (3) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . 149 M . . . . 16% . . . . . . . . . 77 M . . . . . 11%
4 (2) . .  Blackberry . . . . 106 M . . . . 12% . . . . . . . .   95 M . . . . . 14%
5 (5) . .  Windows Mobile . 20 M . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . 48 M . . . . . . 7%
6 (7) . .  bada . . . . . . . . .  13 M . . . .   1% . . . . . . . . . . 3 M . . . . . .  0%
7 (8) . .  Windows Phone . . 7 M . . . . . 1% . . . . . . . . . . 2 M . . . . . .  0%
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 M
TOTAL  . . . . . . . . . . . . 910 M  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700 M

Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2012

This data may be freely used and repeated

Symbian still rules the world in the installed base of smartphones, benefitted also by the strong second-hand appeal of Nokia smartphones in Africa and less affluent parts of Asia and Latin America. Android's strong growth will move it past Symbian shortly in the installed base. Apple and RIM fight for the title of third and fourth biggest OS by installed base. And two years from launch, Windows Phone is nowhere near the reach of its older incompatible cousin, Windows Mobile and continues to be overshadowed by Samsung's bada.

Q4 NUMBERS

That was the full year. But the smartphone bloodbath was indeed quite tumultuous in year 2011 and the Q4 numbers will be much more indicative of where the race stands today, than the full-year picture which is obviously somewhat lagging. So lets do Q4 results

SMARTPHONE Q4 SALES BY BRAND


Rank . Brand . . . . Q4 units . Market Share . Q3 units . . . .  Market Share

1 (2)  . Apple  . . . . 37.0M . . . 23.9% . . . . . . . 17.1 M . . . . 14.4%
2 (1)  . Samsung  . 35.4 M . . . 22.8% . . . . . . . 25.1 M . . . . 21.2%
3 (3)  . Nokia . . . . 19.6 M . . . 12.6% . . . . . . . 16.8 M . . . . 14.2%
4 (5)  . RIM . . . . .  14.1 M . . . . 9.1% . . . . . . . 10.6 M . . . .  8.9%
5 (4)  . HTC  . . . . .  9.5 M . . . . 6.1% . . . . . . . 13.2 M . . . . 11.1%
6 (6)  . Sony . . . . .  9.0 M . . .   5.8% . . . . . . . . 7.6 M . . . .  6.4%
7 (8) . . Huawei . . . . 7.5 M . . .   4.8% . . . . . . .  5.4 M . . . . 4.6%
8 (7)  . LG  . . . . . . . 7.3 M . . . . 4.5% . . . . . . .  6.2 M . . . .  5.2%
9 (9)  . Motorola . . .  5.3 M . . . . 3.4% . . . . . . .  4.8 M . . . .  4.1%
10 (10) ZTE  . . . . . . 3.8 M . . . . 2.5% . . . . . . .  3.0 M . . . .  2.5%
Other . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 M . . . . 4.5%
TOTAL . . . . . . . ..155.1 M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118.5 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated

The fight was tight between Samsung and Apple as we expected. As Samsung didn't release official numbers, I used the average as reported by the Big 4. But none of the four had Sammy ahead of the iPhone so we can safely trust that this ranking order is correct. Yet it was close. Nokia continued its slide after the Elop Effect. RIM and HTC reversed positions with Blackberry having a resurgence. Sony (ex SonyEricsson) is making a strong showing of fighting into the Top 5. And in the bottom half of the Top 10, Motorola continues its slide and Huawei is growing strongly. LG and ZTE are keeping pace with the industry.

Q4 OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . .  Q4 units . market share . . Q3 units . market share
1 (1) . .  Android  . . . . . 76 M . . . . 49% . . . . . . . . . 56 M . . . . 48%
2 (3) . .  iOS . . . . . . . .  37 M . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . 17 M . . . . 15%
3 (2) . .  Symbian . . . . . 18 M . . . . 11% . . . . . . . . . 18 M . . . . 15%
4 (4) . .  Blackberry . . .  14 M . . . . . 9% . . . . . . . . . 11 M . . . . . 9%
5 (5) . .  bada . . . . . . . .  4 M . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . 3 M . . . . . 2%
6 (6) . .  Windows Phone  2 M . . . . . 1% . . . . . . . . . . 1 M . . . . . 1%
7 (-) . .  MeeGo . . . . . . .  2 M . . . . . 1% . . . . . . . . . (launched Q4 of 2011)
8 (7) . .  Windows Mobile  1 M . . . . . 0% . . . . . . . . . . 1 M . . . . . 1%
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 M . . . .  1%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated

Android continues to dominate, and nears the half-level of all smartphones sold. Apple's iOS took a solid second place and Symbian continues to crash. Blackberry held steady. In the small ranks we have bada the strongest outside the top 4. Windows Phone saw the first 600,000 phones sold by Nokia under its Lumia series in Q4 which turned the long decline of Windows Phone into a modest growth. Still, the brand new MeeGo from Nokia, even with its very limited launch availability almost tied all Windows Phone sales by all brands. I have Windows Phone at 1.8 million units and MeeGo at 1.75 million. Thus within Nokia, MeeGo and the N9 outsold all Microsoft Windows Phone based Lumia phones by.. 3 to 1. And Windows Mobile is doing its slow death. Again even the combined sales of both Microsoft platforms, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone did not match Samsung's bada sales.

ANDROID, WINDOWS PHONE MANUFACTURER SHARES

I have also been providing the market shares for the various operating systems that had more than one manufacturer, where it was 'relevant'. Recently the only OS worth monitoring was the Google Android OS family with Symbian shrinking to being mostly only Nokia and Windows Mobile shrinking overall to oblivion, but now that Nokia has launched its Lumia series, I will also give my measure of Windows Phone OS family market shares for Q4.

ANDROID FAMILY MARKET SHARES Q4
Samsung . . . 41%
Sony . . . . . .12%
HTC . . . . . . 11%
Huawei . . . . 10%
LG . . . . . . .   9%
Motorola . . . . 7%
Others . . . . . 9%
TOTAL . . . . 76.0 Million

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated


WINDOWS PHONE FAMILY MARKET SHARES Q4
HTC . . . . . 39%
Nokia . . . . 33%
Samsung . 17%
Others . . . 11%
Total . . . .  1.8 Million

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting 2012
This data may be freely used and repeated


These are approximate market shares, to fit the overall numbers as best as possible. I do not find any particularly 'glaring' problem with any of those numbers for this past quarter (sometimes some number does not seem to be right, these are reasonable).


GRADING FULL YEAR 2011 PERFORMANCE

So, we come to the end of 2011, in the Bloodbath it was Year 2, Electric Boogaloo. We expected carnage and intrigue but the year got even more of a roller-coaster ride when Nokia suddenly committed market share suicide with the Elop Effect (combining the Ratner Effect with the Osborne Effect). As I predicted when giving a preliminary analysis of what it would cause - Nokia's market share crashed - my first prediction on February 15, when I said Nokia would end in Q4 having 12% market share haha.

The Nokia give-away was a once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity for the swift to capitalize, and move quickly, to steal market share. The fastest to take advantage were Samsung, Apple, ZTE and Huawei. Surprisingly the usually nimble HTC didn't manage to capitalize and RIM utterly failed in its chances, unfortunately putting all its attention to the tablet PC they launched which failed miserably in the market as well. But lets look at each brand now, and a quick analysis of how well they fared in the Electric Boogaloo. As usual, I will grade each contestant by the order of their finish starting from the biggest.

APPLE - 93M, 19% - Grew unit sales strongly and grew profits strongly - Grade A

Apple had a monster year. Yes, its iPhone 4S was delayed by more than a quarter, but even then the 4 sold well and once the 4S came along, Apple had a phenomenal Christmas. More than half of Apple's income now comes from the iPhone and Apple generates easily most of the profits of the handset industry. Even while making only smartphones, Apple has crashed into the Top 3 biggest handset makers, ahead of LG and behind only Nokia and Samsung, all three of which of course make most of their phones as 'dumbphones'. What an achievement!

For Q4 Apple is doing even better, selling 24% of all smartphones sold on the planet, so Apple's trajectory is even stronger than its annual performance. And while Samsung was briefly the biggest smartphone manufacturer in Q3, Apple took back that title in Q4 - giving us a different leader in the smartphone race every Quarter of the year. Congratulations Apple, perfect year, I give you an A.

SAMSUNG - 91M, 19% - Grew sales explosively and made huge profits - Grade A+

Samsung did the nearly impossible - it had an even better year than Apple in smartphones. Before you say 'but but' - remember, Apple only doubled its sales in smartphones, Samsung more than tripled its smartphone sales - all while also being very profitable. Samsung was briefly the biggest smartphone manufacturer in Q3, partly because the iPhone 4S was delayed, and now gave the lead back to Apple. But Sammy is growing far faster than Apple and is destined to run away with the smartphone crown for the full year 2012. The race will be close still in Q1 but from Q2 Samsung should be clear of Apple...

Samsung's Q4 was also strong growing well faster than the industry and holding 23% market share. Samsung sells most of its smartphones on the Android platform, but also sells on bada and Windows Phone (and is developing Tizen with Intel for the future). The Galaxy series is synonymous with industry tech leadership currently. I grade Samsung an A+

NOKIA - 77M sales, 16% market share - lost sales massively and generated huge losses - Grade F-

Nokia's Annus Horribilis was a self-induced wound. Not a wound. A self-induced serial crippling. Yes, a year of torture by the CEO. A year of water-boarding in fact. A year ago Nokia grew by 48% and made a proft. This year as the industry grew 62% Nokia sales crashed 23% and produced massive losses. Nokia's market share in 2010 was 34%. By Q4 it was just above 12%. Nokia had scared away 65% of its customer base in just one year! We witnessed the establishment of a world record in market share destruction - not only in telecoms but in all industries. Stephen Elop will go into the Business Hall of Shame as the all-time costliest CEO. The biggest loss ever, for a current market leader. Nokia was twice as big as Apple exactly one year ago. Today (based on Q4 sales) Apple is almost exactly twice as big as Nokia in smartphones. That is a total comprehensive collapse. Nokia was doing just fine through the middle of February of last year - had an excellent early year in China sales for example, as we saw from its Q1 results - but then from February 9, Nokia's CEO had his brain-freeze and insanity took over. I have chronicled enough of the carnage on this blog, suffice it to say that his Elop Effect and the year of lunacy caused total damages so severe, Nokia destroyed a Blackberry-sized slice of Nokia's business, and yes, the CEO's moronic actions caused 3.9 Billion dollars of damage to Nokia last year. So yes, for those who remember, Siemens died fast in dumbphones, as did Motorola. Palm died fast in smartphones, as did Windows Mobile. Those market share disasters were child's play compared to what Nokia did last year. That was epic. The biggest damage to any global leader ever. EVER. Any industry. ANY INDUSTRY. Not like New Coke, not like the BP oil spill, not like British Airways Terminal 5 fiasco, etc etc etc. The biggest damage to any company in any one year, EVER.

But yes, what of that wonderful promised 'third ecosystem' fantasy by delusion-boy Elop? There were some who thought Microsoft plus Nokia would be a sure winner. There were others who felt that partnership was a case of two turkeys who will not make an eagle. It was sheer speculation until we got to see the Lumia launch. The Nokia CEO had total control of the most important new phone series launch in Nokia's history. Elop could control every aspect of it, from the design of the phones, to where they would be marketed and offered to what carriers/networks, to the pricing, to the promotion. Total control of the launch of what Nokia branded the Lumia smartphones that run on Windows Phone. The previous comparison point was the launch of Nokia's previous new operating system based smartphones, the S^3 platform of Symbian with the flagship smartphone N8, one year ago for Q4. Those sold 4 million units. Just counting for the growth in the industry of 62% Nokia should have easily sold 6.4 million Lumia smartphones under any reasonably bright CEO, without the extra effort of the most important launch ever. And Nokia threw the biggest marketing push for this smartphone series, ever. And on top of that, Microsoft came in and threw hundreds of millions of dollars more in marketing support - including giving away free Xbox 360 videogaming consoles to buyers of the Lumia800 for example in the UK. How many sales did Nokia do of all Lumia phones in Q4? More than 6.4 million? No. Not even close. 600,000 is what Nokia managed. Literally they managed only one tenth the level they did a year ago (when adjusted for industry growth in the past year). That is utterly horrid performance and the signs were all there. The Lumia is not succeeding, and will not succeed. Anyone who hopes or thinks or expects that Lumia and Microsoft can rescue Nokia, has now facts - it will not. The Lumia launch is a total dud. And major analyst houses like Morgan Stanley see Nokia struggling far more this year, that market share of 12% will end at 8% according to Morgan Stanley's projection by the end of this year.

There is a ray of hope, it is called the N9 and MeeGo (And the N950 and other MeeGo devices either designed or otherwise MeeGo compatible like the N900). MeeGo outsold Lumia by 3 to 1 (more about MeeGo below). But Nokia's psycopathic CEO refuses to let the highly desirable N9 to be sold in Nokia's major markets - to the degree in Germany the biggest newsmagazine, Der Stern actually recommended to its readers to drive to Austria or Switzerland to go buy the N9 rather than Lumia smartphones. And bizarrely he refuses to sell the sister device, the N950 anywhere! Highly desirable 'hit' phones are very rare in this industry and Nokia dearly could use one right now. Only a fool as CEO refuses to sell a hot product globally. Only a fool. As long as Elop is in charge, Nokia is continuing its death-dance and has to sell its best assets just to survive. For the company that set the world record for market share destruction in a year, and going from big profits to huge losses, Nokia deserves the worst grade ever given. Unfortunately I can only fail Nokia and give it an F-

RIM - 53M units, 11% market share - grew modestly and remained modestly profitable - Grade C+

Blackberry maker RIM had a bad year. The Blackberry had grown market share every year up to 2009. Then their sales stalled, and Android (not the iPhone) started to eat into Blackberry's share. This year they were uniquely poised to steal most of Nokia's collapsing sales of its E-Series QWERTY based business-oriented smartphones. RIM should have had an easy time taking at least 6 million Nokia customers without batting an eyelash. And in a year of 62% growth, if RIM otherwise held steady for the year, they should have been in the scale of 84 million units of Blackberry sales. Yet they didn't. RIM launched its doomed tablet PC - which took the focus away from the management. RIM's strong profits vanished and in its panic, the co-CEO's fired tons of valuable sales and marketing (and design) staff which were needed right then to capture the slice of the Nokia customer give-away. And then the OS was delayed and Blackberry's troubles just compounded. No wonder the co-CEO's were both replaced by the end of the year.

In Q4 we see a rebound, strong sales on paper, but actually the growth in Blackberry sales from Q3 is only on par with the strong growth of the overall Christmas period Q4, so RIM actually only kept pace with the industry. However, as the previous two quarters had seen actual sales declines (not just market share declines), the turn-around was welcome and signals a possibly recovering RIM for 2012. Still, for their 2011 performance, I grade Research in Motion with a C+

HTC - 45M sales, 9% market share - grew unit sales strongly and made profits - Grade C

Taiwanese HTC had a good year, inspite of the bad press. Their smartphone sales grew stronger than the industry, by 81% in fact - and HTC did report a profit every quarter. They issued a series of downgrades to their forecasts, which has been more the source of the bad press. But they outgrew the market in one of the most dynamic big industries ever seen, and they grabbed market share in a very topsy-turvy year. HTC sold smartphones on Android and both Windows based platforms.

In Q4 we see HTC stumbling quite badly and falling in market share down to 6%, so the current trend is perilous for HTC, even as it manages profits. So I find it a reasonable and kind of 'average' mid-fielder performance, I grade HTC at a C.

SONY - 27M sales, 6% market share - grew unit sales but was in and out of profits - Grade B-

The long partnership saga of Sony and Ericsson was finally ended in 2011 and Ericsson exited the handset industry (focusing only on the infrastructure side of telecoms hardware). That leaves us a potentially far stronger Sony - consumer electronics powerhouse - and owner of a slew of consumer electronics brands led by PlayStation and a vast catalog of content from movies to music. Sony(Ericsson) grew sales strongly close to 3x in size, and took a lot of market share. The partnership was notoriously poor in profitability and slipped in and out of profits in the year. As Sony(Ericsson) shifted away from Symbian and Windows Mobile to focus on Android, with its Xperia series Sony became highly desirable. The company sells about 80% of all of its handsets now as smartphones and said it will complete the transition to 100% smartphones this year. That would make Sony the first legacy handset maker to achieve that major transformation of its business (and surviving it too, haha, many rivals like Siemens, Motorola and yes, Ericsson, didn't survive that transition).

For Q4 Sony grew a little slower than the industry so its market share gains are stalling, but still for the full year, I grade Sony at a B-

LG - 23 M sales, 5% market share, grew strongly but made losses - B-

LG seems to have had an almost identical performance as Sony. LG more than tripled its sales for the year, but like Sony, LG also was both in and out of profits in its handset unit. LG offers smartphones on Android and a few token Windows Phone units. The last quarter saw worse performance from LG with the company slipping in the standings. But as it did grow strongly and is borderline in profits/losses, I grade LG with a B-

HUAWEI - 20 M Sales, 4% market share, grew explosively and made profits - Grade A

Huawei is better known for its major business of telecoms networking infrastructure (like Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent) than its handset unit, where its close sibling Chinese rival ZTE is more reversed, doing more in handsets than infrastructure. But in smartphones, Huawei has leaped ahead of ZTE and had a monster monster year. Huawei mainly offers Android based smartphones and usually at the low end of the price range. For Q4 they again grew faster than the industry. I find no fault in a perfect year for Huawei and grade them with a solid A

MOTOROLA (GOOGLE) - 19 M units, 4% share - grew modestly but continued big losses - D+

Motorola was bought by Google last year or more precisely, Google announced its intention to buy Moto, and they are now in the legal process to complete that deal. I will for now continue to call its Motorola unit as Motorola. So Moto-Moto, what have you done for me lately? Not much. Was yet another under-par year for the former giant known for the Razr. So how did it go in the Electric Boogaloo? Moto grew sales yes, but less than the rate of the industry, so they lost market share. Motorola had abandoned Symbian already a while back and also ended its use of Microsoft based operating systems, concentrating only on Android. They were 'thanked' by Microsoft with a lawsuit on patent infringements.. (Microsoft simply doesn't 'get it' that lawsuits in mobile will only make you more hated and the major players in this industry have very long memories). For Q4 Motorola continued its slide, growing less fast than the industry. So when you bleed market share, and do that unprofitably, that is bad business. I grade Motorola year 2011 at a D+

ZTE - 12M units, 3% market share, grew massively while making a profit - A-

Just like its bigger brother Huawei, ZTE also grew enormously in 2011, more than 3x bigger. They made a profits. They only provide Android handsets. Their only minor blemish was that in Q4 they grew a little less fast than the industry overall while not enough to lose market share. That is why I grade them an A-

FUJITSU - out of Top 10 - F

Fujitsu promised they will re-enter the global market and did launch in some Asian markets. So far their record is poor for 2011 and they fell out of the Top 10. I score them an F

SHARP - out of Top 10 - F

Sharp had already started on their come-back to the world stage, but that had its series of stumbles and bumps (they were the manufacturer of Microsoft's Kin series, a pair of youth phones that established a world record for new launch and market removal of 6 weeks in 2010). As they made some Android based moves to some markets around the world, their sales did not keep them in the Top 10. I grade them an F


OPERATING SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

Now lets do the operating systems. Two died in 2011 (Palm Web/OS by Hewlett Packard and LiMo by the Linux Foundation). Two more had their deaths announced (Symbian and MeeGo). One new OS launched (MeeGo). Two more were announced (Tizen and Meltemi). And Android continued to roll as the huge steamroller of the OS wars while Microsoft Windows Phone - then the 8th ecosystem - convinced Nokia to join in the propaganda to promote the Windows Phone as supposedly the 'Third Ecosystem' haha. What a laugh. But like with the phones, lets do these in size from biggest to smallest.

ANDROID - 208 M units, 43% market share - grew explosively - Grade A

Google's Android is now three years of age and it has taken the world's most competitive global industry ever, and is on the brink of having captured half of it (some analyst houses have jumped the gun and claim Android is already past 50% in smartphones in Q4 but Google's own activation numbers do not support that view). Android grew almost 4-fold in 2011 from 54 million to 208 million units per year. Android features smartphones made by Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, Huawei, Motorola (Google) and ZTE out of the Top 10 plus many smarpthones outside the Top 10 like Fujitsu, Sharp, Mi-Fone, etc. In Q4 the sales growth slowed a bit but was still well faster than the industry growth rate. All in all, perfect year for Android. I grade them an A

iOS - 93 M units, 19% share - grew strongly - Grade A-

Apple's iOS grew very strongly in 2011, nearly doubling in size and taking a lot of market share. Not much more to report. Sold only on Apple iPhones in the smartphone races (plus some other Apple products). The Q4 was a stellar quarter but Q3 was under-par due to the late launch of the iPhone 4S. Still a near perfect year for the iOS platform, I grade it an A-

SYMBIAN - 81 M units, 17% market share - collapsed - Grade F

What can I say? Symbian towered over its rivals a year ago  Now its a shadow of what it was and while Nokia's delusional CEO Stephen Elop first promised Nokia would produce another 150 million more Symbian smarphones when he said Nokia would transition to Microsoft - and most analysts said that was a ludicrous pipe-dream - today Elop has admitted it was a futile attempt and has reneged on that promise. If I was a Nokia app developer partner, I could not imagine a more disasterous year from Nokia, from abandoning the replacement platform MeeGo and the promised migration path to it via Qt, to badmouthing Symbian and the ecosystem, to unbranding the Ovi store, to shifting Nokia handset production to outsourced Taiwanese Compal, to switching away from Nokia staple components, to abandoning Nokia standard (and industry-leading) features - to now turning back on the solid promise of 150 million more Symbian devices. Yes, only a year ago, in January 2011, Nokia's Ovi had become the world's second biggest app store by downloads - and was rapidly catching up to Apple. Now all that is wasted..

So yes, while the industry grew 62%, Symbian saw sales crash by 31%. The last Symbian partners were solidly committed for big sales of Symbian, in particular in Japan, and very importantly NTT DoCoMo the biggest carrier/operator of Japan, but that all died in February of last year with the dual death-nails of the Elop Effect. By Q4 Symbian's death-spiral is only accelerating - with now the third straight decline of Symbian sales. Not decline of market share, but true decline of sales. This from a platform so strong, it grew 44% just the year before. If you lose actual sales in a year when the industry grows 62% - then you have failed and I grade Symbian an F

BLACKBERRY - 52 M units, 11% market share - anemic growth - C-

Blackberry did grow, but barely for the year. RIM is the only manufacturer making Blackberry compatible smarpthones (but interestingly and perhaps ironically, they are migrating to be compatible with Nokia's Qt developer tools - the ones that Nokia itself is now moving away from as Qt is compatible with Symbian and with MeeGo but not with Windows Phone). For Q4 they had a little bit of a come-back but only still grew at the pace of the industry, not more. Thus for the year I grade the Blackberry OS with a C-

bada - 9 M sales, 2% market share - massive growth - A-

Samsung's bada is the biggest and best-growing of the three new operating systems, and where Microsoft sells the fantasy of Windows Phone being somehow a 'third' ecosystem, in reality bada is very legitimately now the 5th ecosystem. bada only powers Samsung based smartphones and Samsung stepped into the place vacated by Nokia with the MeeGo partnership, to join Intel to develop Tizen as the next open source based smartphone OS to power not just Samsung but many other brand smartphones. Note that the comparison between 2011 and 2010 data is not comparable, because bada launched in the last quarter of 2010, so the right comparison is only Q4 of 2011 to Q4 of 2010 where the growth was 3.5x ie truly massive. bada grew ever consecutive quarter and once again in Q4 it grew faster than the industry. This is excellent for a new OS platform - I grade bada at A-

Windows Phone - 5 M sales, 1% market share - declining sales - grade D+

Note just like bada, Windows Phone data cannot be compared directly between 2011 and 2010, because Windows Phone launched at the end of 2010 so the sales number is not for full year 2010 but only Q4 of 2010. And when we compare Q4 2011 to Q4 2010, Microsoft's brand new Windows Phone OS sales have.. yes.. declined. In Q4 of 2010, Microsoft's Windows Phone shipped 2 million units (most of which were free early trial smarphones) By Q4 of 2011, Windows Phone sold only 1.8 million units which included the launch of Nokia and its Lumia smartphones, which accounted for 600,000 out of the Windows Phone totals or exactly one third. The others came mostly from HTC and Samsung. Note that Windows Phone lost unit sales for three quarters straight, Q1, Q2 and Q3 and then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fired the Windows Phone President (sorry, no he was not fired, he was demoted). Ballmer himself expressed frustration time and again in 2011 how Windows Phone sales were declining and disappointing. In Microsoft's best market, the USA, even in Q4 the older and obsolete (and incompatible) Windows Mobile OS still outsold Windows Phone! And Microsoft started to hide the true division by making a big marketing PR push to call now all Windows Mobile smartphones also Windows Phone (which they obviously are not) and each of the big 4 analyst houses have stopped separating the two OS platforms, calling it simply Microsoft. The performance of Windows Phone is dismal and I grade it at D+

WINDOWS MOBILE - 5M sales, 1% market share - declined sales - C-

Yes, Windows Mobile did decline more than Windows Phone - but Windows Mobile was announced dead more than two years ago, and it simply refuses to die. Like I said, in the USA, Microsoft's best market, it still stubbornly outsells Windows Phone in Q4 of 2011. For the full year, Windows Phone lost almost two thirds of its sales and its market share fell into the toilet from 4% to 1%. But it just refuses to go away, to Microsoft's great dismay. Yes its about to vanish and yes it fell massively, but I salute the attitude of refusing to go quietly, and I give that spunkiness a bit of respect and grade good ole WinMo with C-

MEEGO - 2M sales, 0% market share - new launch OS first quarter - B+

The newest and hottest of the three new operating systems, MeeGo by Nokia and Intel, is also already a dead-man-walking. In a bizarre decision by the delusional Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, he announced in the summer, that even if the sales of the N9 - the first MeeGo handset - were exceptionally good - he would not authorize any more MeeGo devices to be made by Nokia (beyond the N9 and its sister N950 which was already announced). So Nokia took all the trouble to create a fully functional touch-screen optimized smartphone OS, which by all reviews is excellent - and which is open source, Linux based, and compatible with Qt, Nokia's developer tools - and which does not cost one cent to Nokia to use in any handsets - and which works on Nokia's standard components and can be manufactured in Nokia's mostly idling massive factories (so badly idling, Nokia has already been forced to shut down and/or sell 3 of them just because of the collapse of Nokia sales last year). And then Nokia announce it will replace MeeGo with Windows Phone, which is not open source, is not Linux based, is not compatible with Qt, and for which Nokia has to pay a license to Microsoft for every handset ever sold, which does not work with Nokia standard components, and at least the first Lumia phones were made in Taiwanese factories of Compal, not in Nokia's own (idling) factories. And this OS, MeeGo, the CEO says he won't ever use again? What is wrong with him? I can see if the alternate was 'not open' or 'expensive to use ie needs a royalty payment' or 'not compatible with Nokia's tools' but where MeeGo is in every way better than Windows Phone - I didn't even mention how many ways Windows Phone is not compatible with Nokia standard features and functions (but MeeGo of course is)..

So, we have an excellent launch Quarter for Nokia's MeeGo - a launch which was totally abandoned by the CEO who spent all the money on the Lumia Windows Phone launch (simultaneously). The N9 was the only handset sold (bizarrely, the N950 also on MeeGo is manufactured yes, but in tiny numbers. Mad!) and the N9 is only sold in obscure or tiny countries. Like New Zealand or Nigeria or Kazakhstan - no offense to my friends in any of those countries haha.. MeeGo did about 1.75 million units of sales - three times as many as the two Lumia smartphones in the same Quarter - and the one handset N9 alone almost matched all Windows Phone smartphones made by HTC, Nokia, Samsung and the other Windows Phone partners in Q4, which were obviously sold in most of the biggest smartphone countries and definitely the most affluent countries. Considering that Nokia gave it no support and deliberately prevented the N9 from being sold in any major countries - I mentioned the German magazine actually telling readers to drive to another country to buy it, that it is so good - I grade 1.75 million sales - and a 1% market share for its launch quarter a good performance at B+

PALM WEB/OS - terminated in 2011 - F

Hewlett-Packard bought Palm when its Web/OS and the latest Palm smartphones were rated second best on many tech sites behind only the iPhone. HP could have 'easily' turned its Palm asset into what the iPhone is to Apple - to deliver half of sales and most of profits - and help push the company to the top of the most profitable companies on the planet - as the Palm purchase was optimally timed if HP - already a maker of smartphones - wanted to capitalize on the massive smartphone industry expansion. It utterly failed, rather than using the existing Palm devices and rebadging them with HP and rapidly flooding the market with a hot smartphone - instead HP decided that a smartphone is a pocket PC and tried to make a business tool out of its Palm unit. That silly adventure ended last year when the Palm Web/OS unit was turned into an open source project. Palm is for all practical purposes dead now. Hence, if you die in the year that the industry grew by 62% - you failed. Miserably. I grade Hewlett-Packard's Palm misadventure as an F

For those interested to quote these numbers - you may fully use any analysis, and any numbers - and the tables - freely. I ask you list as your source if it is a printed document like book, article or white paper or infographic or for example powerpoint slide etc - please list source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2012. If you quote info from here on a website or blog or Facebook, Twitter etc mentions, please include web link to this page. I have also created an easy short permalink on Tinyurl for you to copy-and-paste if you prefer to this page, which is:


http://tinyurl.com/FoneStats

Also note, you may freely recreate the above tables into better form, including any diagrams and graphs if you like as long as you mention the source.


IF YOU WANT MORE INFO

I have published the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2010 about the mobile phone handset industry statistics and data up to the end of year 2010. It has 98 tables and charts about the handset industry, including cameraphone resolutions, browsers, bluetooth, 3G, etc and regional data and user data and all sorts of facts. It is only available as an eBook with pages formated for the small screens of smartphones, so you can carry the pdf file with you to have the stats everywhere. The Phone Book costs only 9.99 Euros so it won't damage your budget. See more at this link TomiAhonen Phone Book 2010.

If you like this information about smartphones but are more interested in the overall mobile telecoms industry from data services to subcribers to revenues to advertising to consumers etc, I publish an annual statistical volume, called the TomiAhonen Almanac with 94 tables and charts. It has of course one chapter on handsets and the above data in this blog article is part of that chapter. The current edition is from year 2011 but I am about to release the 2012 edition within literally days from now with all data current to January 2012. So if you buy the 2011 edition today as we are less than one month from the next edition, I will actually deliver to you both, so that 2011 edition immediately, and the new 2012 edition when it is released, for the same low price of 9.99 Euros. Please do not buy the wrong eBook, as they have some overlap! See more including table of contents at TomiAhonen Almanac 2011.

source

Ericsson launches Telecom CRM

Ericsson Telecom CRM is an integrated billing and customer relationship management product developed to meet the specific needs of the telecom industry
Based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and pre-integrated with Ericsson's convergent billing solution
Helps operators meet the dual challenge of delivering a superior customer experience while driving efficiency and reducing operational expenditure
Thanks to mobile broadband, an ever-increasing number of people and devices are connected. This phenomenon provides more opportunities for operators, but also means they must seek new ways to differentiate themselves and build loyalty with their users by providing a higher quality and more personalized customer experience. To meet this need, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has launched a new product called Ericsson Telecom CRM, which integrates customer relationship management (CRM) and billing.

The launch is the result of the strategic alliance between Ericsson and Microsoft that was announced at Mobile World Congress 2011.

Ericsson Telecom CRM will help operators increase customer satisfaction - particularly in the areas of sales and customer care - by reducing the number and length of customer interactions. The product seamlessly renders valuable billing and subscriber data and functionality in an intuitive user environment. This helps operators to more efficiently address the needs of customers who place support calls, thereby reducing opex.

Ralf Guckert, Head of Solution Area BSS at Ericsson, says: "Integrating billing and CRM systems is a common IT objective for many operators. But it is also clear that chief information officers are under pressure to reduce systems integration costs. I am really excited about the launch of Telecom CRM because it meets the need that so many operators have for a highly intuitive, telecoms-specific CRM system that is integrated with billing."

Dennis Michalis, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, says: "Operators are facing unprecedented change in how their customers want to do business, and the ability to provide outstanding customer service can make all the difference in attracting and keeping customers. "By combining their deep industry expertise with the flexibility and value offered by the familiar, intelligent and connected experiences of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Ericsson can now provide a better solution to help operators stay competitive in today's economy."

Ericsson Telecom CRM 1.0 is a customer relationship management product tailored to meet the needs of the telecom industry, based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and integrated with Ericsson's BSCS Ix convergent billing solution. This product is one of the ways that Ericsson and Microsoft are realizing their goal of integrating customer relationship management and business support systems, an objective that was mentioned when the companies announced their alliance in February 2011.

Smarter self-organizing networks – intelligent support to address the mobile-broadband growth challenge

Growth presents many opportunities for operators, where the challenge is to maintain excellent user experience – a task that is becoming highly complex, time-consuming and, ultimately, costly. The techniques and features of self-organizing networks deployed in nodes and management systems can address this complexity, freeing up operators to focus on their business objectives.

Deriving the maximum benefit from the functionality of self-organizing networks (SON) involves more than just installing a couple of automation and self-organizing features in various parts of the network. The true benefits of self-organizing networks (SON) will only be fully realized when all network components are organized into a complete system ensuring vertical interworking for all radio-access technologies – a concept referred to as smart simplicity.

Self-organizing networks (SON) functionality is an essential enabler of affordable, desirable mobile-broadband services owing to its support of leaner service and network management, and of optimized coverage, capacity and high-quality rollouts through heterogeneous network deployments.

World's first microwave connection between LTE main and remote radio units

Ericsson performs demonstration of microwave connection between LTE main and remote radio units for the first time
Alternative for situations in which use of optical fiber is not ideal, can be used to add small cells to existing networks, thereby creating heterogeneous networks (hetnet)
Innovative solution provided microwave capacity of 2.5Gbps
Until now, operators have been restricted to using optical fiber to connect main and remote radio units (RRUs) in their networks. However, there are situations - such as in dense urban environments - when using fiber for this purpose can be difficult, costly and limiting. Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has now successfully demonstrated that it is possible to connect the main and remote radio units with a microwave link, thereby offering operators greater flexibility.

In the tests, conducted at the Ericsson premises in China, the microwave connection between the main unit and the remote unit was provided by a MINI-LINK PT, working in the E-band (70-80GHz). The microwave link provided capacity of 2.5Gbps, which is sufficient for a wireless main-remote system in compliance with Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) standards. This is one example of new applications with high-capacity packet microwave products.

Since the MINI-LINK PT is compact and easy to install outdoors, this solution will allow for rapid connection of RRUs - including small RRUs that can be used to add small cells to existing networks, thereby transforming them into heterogeneous networks (hetnets) and boosting overall capacity.

Ola Gustavsson, Head of Product Line Microwave and Mobile Backhaul at Ericsson, says: "In situations where optical fiber isn't the best option due to cost or time to market, it is great that we now have an alternative - in the form of microwave - that will allow operators to connect the main and remote radio units in their networks. Making it easier for operators to do business is our primary business.

Ericsson triples HSPA uplink capacity

Uplink speed increasingly important as social media services and cloud solutions drive data upload stream
Unique combination of technologies triples HSPA uplink capacity, greatly improving user experience for content uploading
No need to upgrade cell phones or consumer devices.  Achieved by combining Ericsson's leading commercial Interference Suppression software with 4-antenna radio base stations
Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has developed a unique solution that triples uplink capacity in HSPA networks. This allows operators with a large number of end users to offer high uplink data speeds.

HSPA is a key means of delivering high-speed, high-capacity mobile broadband, allowing operators to cost-effectively meet user demand for advanced internet services - anywhere, anytime. However, as the number of smartphones connected to a network increases and usage of heavy data-generating applications surges, uplink capacity is becoming more and more important. This is the next important step to meet global smartphone service demands.

On January 25, 2012, Ericsson demonstrated that over-the-air uplink throughput for simultaneously active devices in a cell was increased from around 4Mbps to more than 12Mbps.The demonstrated capacity is an unprecedented figure for a 5 MHz WCDMA carrier.

This was made possible by combining Ericsson's commercially available receiver technology, Ericsson Interference Suppression, with 4-antenna radio base stations. There is no need to upgrade cell phones or consumer devices in order to achieve this gain.

Interference Suppression is the industry-leading base station receiver technology for WCDMA/HSPA that can vastly improve uplink speeds by increasing the network capacity. This is done by using advanced software algorithms in the base station that greatly reduce the negative effects of uplink interference that is today the bottleneck in many HSPA networks.

The gains were further enhanced by the use of base stations configured with four antennas per cell. This combination delivers a leap in end user experience and uplink capacity.

Improving uplink capacity with these technologies offers operators an elegant way to further serve a greater number of customers, who increasingly choose to upload information from mobile devices to cloud services for example sharing photo over social networks

Nils Viklund, Director WCDMA RAN at Ericsson, says: "We have proven that Ericsson's unique Interference Suppression is a giant leap forward and it will be the new reference for WCDMA uplink performance for years to come. This can even be further enhanced by combining it with multi-receive antenna technologies. Because these technologies work with existing devices, operators that implement them will instantly benefit from the attractive gain."

In all parts of the world, people are adopting more advanced mobile devices that enable connectivity anywhere, anytime. This trend is moving us toward a society where places, people and devices are constantly connected - a Networked Society. As Ericsson's latest Traffic and Market Data report revealed, mobile broadband subscriptions increased by 60 percent year-on-year in 2011, and are expected to number almost 5 billion in 2016.

Ericsson is committed to helping operators not only cope with increasing amounts of data traffic, but also to realize the opportunities that come with it.

Visit the Ericsson booth in Hall 6 at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona for a demonstration of this solution.

Interim Traffic and Market Data Report covers growth in subscriptions, voice traffic and mobile data

If further evidence were needed of the development of mobile broadband, it is provided in the first interim update for Ericsson’s Traffic and Market Data Report, with data in the monitored networks rising by 18 percent during a single three-month period in 2011. Some 60 percent of the world’s population also now has a mobile subscription.

These statistics are tasters of some of the data and findings featured in the interim report – now available to download as a pdf. The update contains bullet-point information on data growth, mobile subscriptions (with a regional breakdown), voice traffic and smartphone ownership.

For several years, Ericsson has been conducting measurements and collecting data in a large number of networks around the world. As we move towards the Networked Society, we believe this data has become more important than ever in helping all stakeholders prepare for and shape an all-connected world.

In November 2011, we shared our findings, trends and analyses through the first Traffic and Market Data Report. That report attracted a lot of media and industry interest. This interim report is the first update. Ericsson expects to release the next full edition of the report during the second half of Q2, 2012.

Ericsson’s latest figures show that global mobile subscriptions now at around 6 billion

Global mobile penetration reached 85 percent in Q4 2011 and mobile subscriptions now total around 6 billion
Mobile subscribers reached around 4.1 billion in Q4 2011, meaning that nearly 60 percent of people alive today have at least one mobile subscription
Data traffic doubled between Q3 2010 and Q3 2011. The quarterly growth between Q2 and Q3 2011 was 18 percent
Full Ericsson Traffic and Market Data Report to be published in the second half of Q2 2012
In an interim update to the Traffic and Market Data Report published in November 2011, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) today showed that global mobile penetration reached 85 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, and mobile subscriptions now total around 6 billion.

Though there are now around 6 billion mobile subscriptions, this figure equates to around 4.1 billion subscribers, since many subscribers have several subscriptions. Nevertheless, nearly 60 percent of people alive today now have at least one mobile subscription.

India and China together accounted for approximately 35 percent of the estimated 180 million new subscriptions added in the fourth quarter of 2011 Brazil, Indonesia and Bangladesh follows in terms of new subscriptions.

Overall, mobile subscriptions increased by around 13 percent year-on-year and 3 percent quarter-on-quarter. Around 75 percent of total subscriptions are GSM, while 15 percent are WCDMA/HSPA.

Mobile broadband subscriptions increased by around 60 percent year-on-year and now number close to 1 billion. There continues to be strong momentum for smartphone uptake in all regions. Approximately 30 percent of all handsets sold in 2011 were smartphones, compared to around 20 percent in 2010. However, smartphones account for only around 10 percent of the worldwide installed base of subscriptions, which suggest there is still considerable room for further uptake.

The growth in mobile data traffic continues. Data traffic doubled between the third quarters of 2010 and 2011, matching the annual growth rate recorded between the second quarters of 2010 and 2011. Quarterly growth between the second and third quarters of last year was 18 percent.

Mobile voice traffic has doubled over the past four years and continues to increase at a steady pace. This is especially true in regions where there has been a considerable increase in subscriptions, such as in the developing nations in Asia.

The traffic generated by mobile PC users varies widely between individuals and markets, but Ericsson estimates that the global average is now around 2GB per month.

Ericsson will release its full Traffic and Market Data Report in the second half of Q2 2012.

A group of Telco Industry leaders announce an open solution for standardised videoconference services

This open industry initiative will help drive the delivery of high quality, easy to use, interoperable videoconferencing and videocall services for the benefit of consumers, retail and corporate customers alike
The companies supporting this initiative will demonstrate three examples of its practical use at the stands of Telefónica, Ericsson and Polycom in the next MWC 2012

A group of the world’s leading telecommunications operators (Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, Telecom Italia and Telefónica) and equipment vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Italtel, Nokia Siemens Networks, Polycom and Quanta Computer) have selected a common set of capabilities based on existing 3GPP and GSMA standards to demonstrate an open solution for videoconference services which allow inter-operability among them.

This initiative will lead to the creation of an open, interoperable and multi-operator environment that supports easy to use services across networks and video equipment, regardless of the country of origin or destination of the call and overcoming the need for support of an operator’s service center.

Up to now, the growth of the videoconferencing market has been constrained by the lack of interoperability among networks and manufacturers. Current videoconference services only work in closed solution environments and face significant difficulties when switching between networks and/or video equipment from different manufacturers located in different countries. For this reason, available videoconferencing solutions often target high-profile corporate customers via sometimes costly single vendor solutions which have to be managed by the operator’s own service centers.

The companies involved in this initiative will bring a demonstration of the new interoperable HD videoconference capabilities to MWC 2012 held in Barcelona from the 27th of February to the 1st of March. Samples of practical use will be demonstrated at the Telefónica (Hall 8), Ericsson (Hall 6) and Polycom’s (Stand 2D01) stands, connecting to Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telecom Italia, in Italy. The services shown will be based on 3GPP IMS and uses GSMA IPX to interconnect enabling point-to-point as well as multi-party HD video conferences, regardless of video user equipment, access network or country of origin and destination with a customer experience as easy as a phone call.

This initiative is open to all operators and vendors so we all turn videoconferencing into a fully interoperable mass market service that can connect everything from mobile phones and tablets to large telepresence rooms into one globally supported network.

According to Scott Morrison, Managing VP, Gartner: "Personal devices such as tablets are significantly accelerating the adoption of videoconferencing softclient solutions, and we expect video softclients will be pervasively deployed on all multifunction tablet devices used in the enterprise — whether enterprise supplied or employee-owned. But for the proliferation of personal video to take off, the cost of providing video connectivity will need to dramatically decline from where it is today"*

* Gartner,” Market Trends: Videoconferencing, Worldwide, 2011” by Scott Morrison, 28 April 2011

Ericsson to acquire North American carrier grade Wi-Fi company BelAir Networks

Acquisition of BelAir Networks will enable Ericsson to complement its heterogeneous network (hetnet) offering with carrier grade Wi-Fi
Ericsson's hetnet with carrier grade Wi-Fi integrated into the networks will enable operators to further improve the mobile broadband user experience
Ericsson to offer a leading carrier grade Wi-Fi solution in combination with its global presence of mobile solutions and service capabilities
Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in the privately-held Canadian Wi-Fi company BelAir Networks. Through this transaction, Ericsson will acquire a strong carrier grade Wi-Fi portfolio, technological expertise, IPR, and established customer contracts and relationships. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Wi-Fi technology is an important part of the overall mobile broadband user experience and is rapidly becoming a standard feature in smartphones, PCs, tablets and in other consumer electronics devices.

The demand for Wi-Fi technology in mobile networks will continue to grow over the coming years. This is brought on by the growth of mobile broadband as well as the increase in cloud-based services and other high data-consuming functions and features. To meet this growing demand, Ericsson launched its Network Integrated Wi-Fi solution in September 2011.

Ericsson is now taking the next step towards a truly integrated network. The combination of Ericsson's mobile infrastructure technology leadership and BelAir Networks' leading position in carrier grade Wi-Fi equipment will accelerate the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular technologies. The acquisition of BelAir Networks will be part of Ericsson's heterogeneous network (hetnet) strategy to improve the mobile broadband experience by managing the co-existence of mobile technologies and Wi-Fi.

The BelAir Networks' indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi systems enable service providers to build scalable, high performance Wi-Fi networks. The company develops mobile networking solutions that are deployed by service providers including AT&T and Comcast.

BelAir Networks has a clear focus on carrier grade Wi-Fi where the company today holds both a market and technology leading position. Established in 2002, BelAir Networks is based in Ottawa, Ontario and has approximately 120 employees. BelAir Networks' employees will join Ericsson's global organization.

"Ericsson will lead the way in the growing converged Wi-Fi and cellular market where improved end-user experience is the driving force. By integrating BelAir Networks' market-leading products and competence into Ericsson's existing radio portfolio, we will be able to do this more quickly. We welcome 120 highly skilled people into the company," said Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson.

"By focusing on the needs of leading service providers, BelAir Networks has achieved industry leadership with our unique portfolio of carrier-grade Wi-Fi" said Bernard Herscovich, CEO of BelAir Networks "This transaction is a natural step in the continued development of BelAir Networks and we believe that Ericsson presents a strategic and cultural fit."

The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Our multimedia content is available at the broadcast room: www.ericsson.com/broadcast_room

Ericsson is the world's leading provider of communications technology and services. We are enabling the Networked Society with efficient real-time solutions that allow us all to study, work and live our lives more freely, in sustainable societies around the world.

Our offering comprises services, software and infrastructure within Information and Communications Technology for telecom operators and other industries. Today more than 40 percent of the world's mobile traffic goes through Ericsson networks and we support customers' networks servicing more than 2 billion subscribers.

We operate in 180 countries and employ more than 100,000 people. Founded in 1876, Ericsson is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2011 the company had revenues of SEK 226,9 billion (USD 35.0 billion). Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm and NASDAQ, New York stock exchanges.

www.ericsson.com
www.twitter.com/ericssonpress
www.facebook.com/technologyforgood
www.youtube.com/ericssonpress

Ericsson announces new m-commerce portfolio ahead of Mobile World Congress 2012

·         Launch of new services within extended Ericsson M-commerce portfolio brings next generation m-commerce closer

 ·         Ericsson M-commerce portfolio designed to speed time to revenue, increase stickiness, cost efficiency and performance for Mobile Network Operators  and financial institutions

 ·         Ericsson first technology enabler to integrate a charging system and money services solution

 ·         Foundation to unlock the potential of the m-wallet with strategic partners

Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2012, Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) unveils its new extended suite of m-commerce solutions and services, designed to accelerate access and interconnection between the emerging m-commerce eco-system and the financial world to fast track the next generation of mobile financial services.

Ericsson is launching two new services within its m-commerce portfolio - Ericsson Converged Wallet and Ericsson Merchant Wallet.  Both new services will be showcased at Mobile World Services in Hall 6 in addition to Ericsson Wallet Platform and Ericsson M-commerce Interconnect.

Ericsson M-commerce services portfolio is designed to provide the world's leading consumers brands with the infrastructure and solutions needed to create and connect m-wallets across a global m-commerce eco-system. The portfolio of services will speed time to revenue, increase adoption and stickiness, cost efficiency and performance for mobile network operators, financial institutions, internet gaming companies and retailers.

·         Ericsson Converged Wallet can unlock the potential of the m-wallet for operators and financial institutions by converting the accounts of over a billion consumers already on the Ericsson Billing & Charging Solution to m-wallets. Some 1.6 billion people worldwide who are already using a type of 'first generation' m-wallet voice accounts (pre and post-paid accounts), can now be easily converted to 'next generation' m-wallets through Ericsson Converged Wallet

·         The Ericsson Merchant Wallet service will help provide large Internet brands and merchants with a solution for payments including payments; virtual currency transactions, loyalty points.

·         Ericsson Wallet Platform delivers software solutions and hosted services to enable secure and convenient mobile financial services, e.g. person to person money transfer, bill payment, merchant payments and micro loans

·         Ericsson M-commerce Interconnect acts as an eco system hub for money transfer; payment transactions and services between subscribers of Mobile Network Operators and other service providers (e.g. banks, money transfer organizations, payment service providers, Internet service providers)

The new services within Ericsson's m-commerce portfolio follow on from the launch of Ericsson M-commerce Interconnect showcased at MWC 2011. Following last year's event the Interconnect service went live in the Philippines connecting through partnerships with operators Globe Telecom (GCash) and Smart Communications (Smart Money) m-wallet schemes.  

Adam Kerr, Head of M-commerce, Ericsson, says: "This is an exciting time for the m-commerce industry, which is expected to process over USD 800 billion globally by 2016*.  At Ericsson M-commerce we are in a unique position to work with strategic partners to kick-start the next wave of growth of the M-commerce eco-system."

"Right now we are very focused on providing services that give our partners across the eco-system a fast route to provide their consumers with more m-wallet and platform independent services and greater payments choice. Through our enhanced suit of services we will enable partners to get closer to their customers through differentiated wallet services that connect and add value to their consumers," he adds.

·         Weighted statistic from Ericsson based on a consolidated view comprising of analysts and Ericsson calculations

NOTES TO EDITORS

Ericsson at MWC 2012

http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/events/mwc2012

Our multimedia content is available at the broadcast room: www.ericsson.com/broadcast_room

Ericsson is the world's leading provider of communications technology and services. We are enabling the Networked Society with efficient real-time solutions that allow us all to study, work and live our lives more freely, in sustainable societies around the world.

Our offering comprises services, software and infrastructure within Information and Communications Technology for telecom operators and other industries. Today more than 40 percent of the world's mobile traffic goes through Ericsson networks and we support customers' networks servicing more than 2 billion subscribers.

We operate in 180 countries and employ more than 100,000 people. Founded in 1876, Ericsson is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2011 the company had revenues of SEK 226,9 billion (USD 35.0 billion). Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm and NASDAQ, New York stock exchanges.