IDC India Mobile Handsets Study 2006

According to the IDC India Mobile Handset Usage Satisfaction Study 2006, Sony Ericsson left behind all other mobile handset brands to grab the No. 1 spot in the handset user’s overall satisfaction, followed by Nokia, LG and Samsung at the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 spots respectively. According to this year’s study, current [...]

Nokia N91 launched in India

Nokia India launched its latest music smartphone N91 at a launch function in Chennai. Mr Gautam Advani, Director, Multimedia, Nokia India, presented the first phone to music composer Mr A.R. Rahman. The phone will cost about Rs 33,000, he said. The Nokia N91 is part of Nokia’s new media-centric N series: 2 megapixel camera 4GB [...]

Bharti net up 51% in 2005-06

Bharti announced its results for FY 2005-06, reporting a 51% rise in net profit to Rs 2258 crore and growth in revenue by 46% over the previous year to Rs 11,663 crore. With a market capitalisation of Rs 76,000 crore ($16.9 billion), Bharti Tele closed at a price of Rs 407.95 on the BSE. Bharti’s [...]

Bharti to invest $2 billion this fiscal

Bharti Airtel has capital expenditure plans to the tune of $1.8-2bn for the current financial year. The funding of the investments would be through internal accruals and any shortfall would be met through borrowings. There are no plans to raise additional equity. The company aims to expand its network to cover the entire lot of [...]

Sunil Mittal: Customer is the heart of business

Irving Wladawsky-Berger blogs about a talk given by Bharti’s Sunil Mittal at IBM’s 2006 Business Leadership Forum held in Rome. He explained that, with India’s annual per capita income only a bit over $600, cellular phone service has to be provided for the Indian market at a very low price, around 2 cents a minute [...]

Hutchison offers to buy out Hindujas for $450m

Hutchison Whampoa is believed to have offered to buy the Hinduja group’s 5.11% stake in India’s 4th largest operator Hutchison Essar for $400m, according to ET. A value of $400m for a 5% stake would thus mean a current valuation of $8 bn for Hutchison Essar. If the entity is subsequently listed, and the market [...]

MTNL net dips by 38%

For the year ended March 2006, MTNL registered a 38.3% fall in net profit to Rs 578.67 crore as compared with Rs 938.97 crore a year ago. Total income was down 4.9% for FY06 to Rs 5,785.57 crore as against Rs 6,084.10 crore last year. While MTNL was allowed a tax refund of Rs 1,233 [...]

Cellebrum launches Background Music in India

VAS solution provider Cellebrum has tied up with operators like Idea, Spice and Reliance Telecom at the national level and is also running a pilot programme for Airtel for its landline services in the Madhya Pradesh Circle. Over 170,000 Idea and Spice subscribers have tried the BGM service till now. With Background Music, you can [...]

Business World on Mobile VAS

The latest cover story of India’s top business magazine Business World is on Mobile VAS. Needless to say that these are boom times for the Indian mobile VAS industry. Rediff has syndicated the story and its a must read. Have captured some salient points. The article cites a Lehman Brothers report which puts the size [...]

Pantaloon gets into telecom retailing

Telecom retailing is attracting the biggies. Soon after Bangalore-based MobileNXT launched its first store in Gurgaon, players like Pantaloon Retail and Essar Group are also reported to be in the fray. Leveraging its already-established presence in the retail space, Pantaloon Retail recently launched its telecom outfit Convergem Retail India Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of [...]

keep looking »