Industry
Top 30 Telecom Operators – October 2009
Dec 6th
| Rank | Company | Country | Technology | Total Subscribers |
| 1 | China Mobile |  China (Mainland) |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 508,370,000 |
| 2 | Vodafone |  United Kingdom |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 427,990,000 |
| 3 | Telefonica / Movistar / O2 |  Spain |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 200,850,000 |
| 4 | America Movil |  Argentina |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 194,340,000 |
| 5 | Orange |  France |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 189,000,000 |
| 6 | Telenor |  Norway |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 172,000,000 |
| 7 | T-Mobile |  Germany |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 150,900,000 |
| 8 | TeliaSonera |  Sweden |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 143,900,000 |
| 9 | China Unicom | China (Mainland) |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 142,800,000 |
| 10 | Bharti Airtel |  India |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 116,160,000 |
| 11 | Orascom Telecom / WIND |  Egypt |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 110,600,000 |
| 12 | MTN Group |  South Africa |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 108,470,000 |
| 13 | MTS |  Russia |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 96,860,000 |
| 14 | Etisalat |  UAE |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 94,000,000 |
| 15 | Verizon Wireless |  USA |
cdmaOne | 89,000,000 |
| 16 | Reliance Communications | India |
GSM, GPRS | 88,930,000 |
| 17 | AT&T Mobility | USA |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 82,700,000 |
| 18 | Telkomsel |  Indonesia |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 79,770,000 |
| 19 | Telecom Italia / TIM |  Italy |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 71,500,000 |
| 20 | Zain |  Kuwait |
GSM, GPRS | 69,500,000 |
| 21 | VimpelCom | Russia |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 63,700,000 |
| 22 | Axiata Group Berhad |  Malaysia |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 62,820,000 |
| 23 | NTT docomo |  Japan |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 55,670,000 |
| 24 | BSNL | India |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 53,960,000 |
| 25 | Idea Cellular | India |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 53,350,000 |
| 26 | Qtel |  Qatar |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 52,540,000 |
| 27 | Tata Teleservices | India |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 51,730,000 |
| 28 | MegaFon | Russia |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 49,120,000 |
| 29 | Sprint Nextel | USA |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 48,300,000 |
| 30 | China Telecom | China (Mainland) |
GSM, GPRS, EDGE | 46,780,000 |
First, Facebook and Yahoo hook up, Now Twitter and Google do the same
Dec 3rd
Who will be the web’s primary identity platform?
An announcement from Google today shows that it’s trying to stay in the fight by integrating Twitter across its 9 million Friend Connect web sites. That means you can log into a Google Friend Connect site with your Twitter profile and share that new membership with your friends along with other interesting content.
Keep in mind that most of those 9 million member sites are part of Google Blogger, which automatically got included in the platform when it launched. This will help those sites find new audiences and promote the Friend Connect identity to others.
What’s interesting is the timing of Google’s announcement. It comes on the same day Facebook announced a massive integration with Yahoo’s properties, handing the social network an additional way to reach 500 million people. A big win. Yahoo users can use their Facebook log-ins to see what friends are doing on its properties and share that activity with their social network.
Google, however, doesn’t really have a large sharing platform. It has Orkut and Google Reader, but those haven’t found the same traction as Twitter or Facebook have with audiences closing in on half a billion users. It also wants to prevent the growth of closed or unfriendly ecosystems. So it’s turning to Twitter in a reactive move against its emerging competitor Facebook.
But this gives Twitter and Facebook more of a duopoly on data around our identities and social relationships. Is this ultimately what we want?
Intel 2010 Desktop Roadmap
Nov 30th
Charts purporting to illustrate Intel’s plans for its desktop processor range through 2010 have emerged, bringing with them talk of a frugal version of the Core i5 together with budget Core i3 CPUs. The chart also discuss the previously-leaked Core i9 processor, though that’s not expected to arrive until the second quarter of 2010 despite having already been caught in the wild.
Intel Desktop Roadmap
The budget range of Core i3 chips will offer four threads and still include HyperThreading support, and be based on the Clarkdale core technology; however they’ll lack Intel’s Turbo Boost functionality. As for the frugal Core i5 chips – which will use the “S” suffix – they’ll cut the TDP from 95W to 82W, which will hopefully mean less cooling is required, the system is quieter, and overall power consumption is reduced.
HP to acquire 3com
Nov 29th
HP is to acquire networking company 3com in a bid to take on Cisco’s market dominance.
HP is set to pay out $2.7 billion (£1.6 billion) for the company, which provides networking switches, routers and security solutions.
“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager for Enterprise Servers and Networking at HP, in a statement.
“By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry.”
Some analysts see this move as a direct effort to take on the recently announced Cisco/EMC/VMware joint venture.
Adam Jura, senior analyst for Ovum, said in a statement: “Unsurprisingly, Ovum believes this steps up the level of competition between HP and Cisco. While it may not be as confrontational as, say, SAP versus Oracle (Retek in particular), the implications could potentially be far reaching.”
“HP had already started to encroach upon Cisco’s market with its Procurve product line, however the acquisition of 3Com provides a serious boost to its data centre credentials,” he added.
Jura thinks the main thing to watch out for with this acquisition will be Cisco’s response, which could potentially involve a buy of its own.
“Cisco is currently holding around $4.7 billion in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet although this figure has dropped in recent quarters,” continued Jura.
“It does afford the company the opportunity to make an acquisition however Ovum does not expect anything immediately. The logical choice would be EMC and as such market rumours continue to abound. Regardless, Ovum expects the competition between HP and the network-dominant Cisco to continue to intensify particularly as network-centric technology solutions such as cloud computing continue to emerge.”
HP has confirmed the acquisition of 3com is set to be completed in the first half of 2010.
