Three of South Korea’s leading telecommunication players have been hit with stinging fines for their role in illegal handset subsidies. The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) publicly announced that it has issued fines to SK Telecom, KT and LG U-plus.
Chinese handset vendor Xiaomi has scored a big success in India following confirmation that it has displaced South Korean colossus Samsung as the country’s No.1 smartphone manufacturer.
China suffered its first ever annual smartphone decline, with shipments down 4% from 2016 to 459 million units in 2017, Canalys research indicates. This drop was partly due to China having one of its worst year-on-year performances in Q4 2017, with shipments plummeting by over 14% to just under 113 million units.
Qualcomm has signed MoUs with four Chinese mobile vendors - a deal worth around $2 billion over three years – who have expressed interest in Qualcomm’s RF Front End (RFFE) components, designed to enable original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to rapidly build mobile devices at scale for easy global expansion.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated held the 2018 Qualcomm China Tech Day in Beijing. At the event, Qualcomm Technologies and leading Chinese manufacturers expressed interest in working together in an initiative to support China’s smartphone industry for the global opportunities that will be made available by 5G and introduce 5G New Radio (NR) standard-compliant commercial devices expected as early as 2019, announced as the “5G Pioneer” Initiative.
Qualcomm released a statement on January 24 confirming it will appeal a massive fine imposed by the European Commission for alleged market dominance abuse. Earlier that day, the European Commission said in a statement it had decided to fine Qualcomm €997 million ($1.2 billion) for payments it made to Apple in order to secure its leading market position for LTE baseband chipsets.
India’s smartphone market has finally seen a change at the top, with Chinese vendor Xiaomi now leading with shipments close to 8.2 million units in Q4 2017, according to research firm Canalys. Despite annual growth of 17%, South Korea’s Samsung failed to maintain its lead, shipping just over 7.3 million smartphones to take second place.
The 3GPP TSG RAN Plenary Meeting in Lisbon successfully completed the first implementable 5G NR specification on December 21. Global telecom players, including operators, vendors, and manufacturers, made a statement that the completion of the first 5G New Radio (5G NR) standard has set the stage for the global mobile industry to start full-scale development of 5G NR for large-scale trials and commercial deployments as early as in 2019.
Indian telecommunications operator Idea Cellular has suffered more financial woes ahead of a proposed merger deal with Vodafone India. Idea Cellular disclosed its financial report for Q4 and it makes for grim reading. In fact, it’s the largest ever quarterly loss posted by the operator, which has been attributed to a rapid decline in interconnection revenue.
Finnish telecommunications colossus Nokia has announced that it has sealed a major deal to supply 5G base stations to Japan’s largest mobile operator NTT Docomo. The agreement represents the vendor’s first large-scale 5G contract since the first formal 5G New Radio (NR) standard was established and subsequently approved in last month.
