Vodafone CEO finds wireless too complicated
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Why can't things be more simple like when I were a lad? Mobile World Congress Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin today called for wireless unity, saying it's now so complicated it would be better if everyone just stopped using different operating systems and network technologies.â¦
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Mobile developers around the world are in an uproar over a change Vodafone Group PLC has made in the U.K. that dramatically decreases the quality of their products and that they fear could prevent new and innovative mobile services from reaching the market.
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The world&#39;s largest mobile phone manufacturer and Europe&#39;s largest wireless operator have launched an initiative to simplify Java standards for mobile devices in a move aimed
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Mobile telephone operator Vodafone said it had appointed Shiro Tsuda as president and chief executive of Vodafone KK, its struggling Japanese unit.
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The U.K. mobile giant wants to find a way to disentagle the Czech wireless and fixed-line businesses.
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US telecom giant AT&amp;T is not considering a bid for British mobile phone operator Vodafone, but is likely to make smaller acquisitions to better meet the needs of multinational companies, the company&#39;s chief executive said in an interview published Tuesday.
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New Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has lots of choices as he&#160;takes over the ailing mobile carrier&#160;and looks for problems to start solving.Sprint, the third-biggest wireless operator in the U.S., is&#160;losing subscribers as it keeps working through the merger of Sprint and Nextel, which occurred in 2005. On Tuesday,&#160;Sprint announced Hesse is taking over immediately for Gary Forsee, who was forced out by the company&#39;s board in October. Hesse, 54, previously led Embarq, the local wireless carrier Sprint spun off as part of the Nextel deal.Sprint needs to both distinguish itself from competitors and get its own house in order, according to mobile industry analysts.&quot;They couldn&#39;t go on without someone who&#39;s willing to set a direction,&quot; said Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. Sprint could try to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&amp;T Wireless on price, or with more flexible terms of service, or bring out more innovative devices, but it&#39;s failed so far to choose, according to Greengart.&quot;Their brand right now doesn&#39;t stand for anything,&quot; he said.One thing the Sprint name has been associated with recently is disappointing customer service. Reporting on the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company blamed accelerating customer &quot;churn&quot; to other carriers in part on longer help calls and waits for those calls. The introduction of simplified bills, expected to continue until the middle of 2008, boosted the number of those calls, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sprint also noted new handsets at rival carriers, clearly a reference to AT&amp;T&#39;s Apple iPhone.Meanwhile, thanks to about 700,000 subscribers quitting the aging Nextel network, Sprint&#39;s subscriber base as a whole declined by a net 337,000 in the quarter. The carrier said it had about 54 million subscribers on Sept. 30.What could most set Sprint apart is also its biggest gamble, the WiMax wireless broadband network it plans to build across the U.S. at an estimated cost of US$5 billion. Though the WiMax network is likely to be in place first, set to reach 100 million people by the end of 2008, Sprint&#39;s main rivals plan to have their own high-speed data offerings using a similar technology, LTE (Long-Term Evolution). And WiMax won&#39;t fix Sprint&#39;s long-overdue need to harmonize its cellular operations, currently split between CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and Nextel&#39;s older iDEN technology, Greengart said.If it goes ahead with WiMax -- interim CEO Paul Saleh said this month the business might be spun off -- Sprint will have to convince skeptical investors it&#39;s making the right move, said Yankee Group&#39;s Phil Marshall. It will also need to find a way for WiMax to truly complement the cellular business, Marshall said. So far, Sprint has painted WiMax as a mobile service distinguished from its conventional voice offerings by the promise of an any-application, any-device model. A better plan would be to push WiMax as an alternative to wired broadband that&#39;s bundled with Sprint&#39;s cellular service, Marshall said.However, in the short term, Hesse just needs to get the company to run its existing businesses better, Marshall said. Cleaning up customer service would be one key move, he added. Judging from Hesse&#39;s previous performance -- he once headed AT&amp;T Wireless -- the new CEO is qualified to do this, according to Marshall.&quot;He&#39;s very pragmatic and systematic in his management style,&quot; Marshall said.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - Despite theÂ buzz around mobile advertising, end users and eager advertisers may have to wait a while for widespread deployments as the mobile industry sorts out the requirements for it. "The problem is, today we are highly fragmented," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, the global trade group for GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) operators. He spoke Tuesday morning at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone Group, agreed. Despite the interest from advertisers in using mobile phones to deliver ads, the mobile industry needs to create a consistent framework. "If we went to Proctor and Gamble and said, this is how Vodafone does it but Orange is different, they will find it hard to move their ads onto mobiles," Sarin said. "If we don't move together we will have a fragmented medium and user base instead of a single valuable medium that reaches two billion people." A common framework would include specifications for the appropriate size of banner ads and length of video ads as well as a reporting mechanism to help advertisers measure the success of their campaigns. The GSM Association has recently established the Mobile Advertising Forum to begin to define such a framework. The group hopes to include a wide variety of interested parties, including advertisers, aggregators and content providers to set the parameters. Some end users are interested in the concept of mobile advertising because it can enable free or low-cost services in exchange for viewing advertisements. In addition, the mobile industry promises that it can offer advertisements that users may be interested in based on their location, for example. "It's about engagement with consumers," Conway said. "We will tailor-make ads for the taste of consumers." Mobile phones represent an enticing platform for advertisers who already eagerly address the 1.4 billion TV sets and 1 billion PCs in the world, said Sarin. With 2 billion mobile users on the planet, "we're clearly an important area," he said. Not all those users phone users, however, would be able to receive mobile ads. They must subscribe to a data service that enables the delivery of such content and a capable phone too, he said. Â
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Most mobile phone users will still  have to wait some time for Internet telephony company Skype's  mobile service because of technical hurdles and a lack of  suitable handsets, Skype's chief executive was quoted as saying  in a Finnish newspaper on Thursday.
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VODAFONE posted what chief executive Arun Sarin described as &quot;a robust set of half year results&quot; on Tuesday. * Group turnover of Â£16.8 billion.
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Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer was in the UK for barely 24 hours this week, squeezing in meetings with the recently-appointed head of egovernment Ian Watmore and Vodafone Group chief executive Arun Sarin.
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Most mobile phone users will still   have to wait some time for Internet telephony company Skype's   mobile service because of technical hurdles and a lack of   suitable handsets, Skype's chief executive was quoted as saying   in a Finnish newspaper on Thursday.
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Business & money: Â· Auction poses threat to established networksÂ· Ofcom wants spectrum from Vodafone and O2
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Shhh, don't tell the terrorists Vodafone is telling customers that VoIP services are insecure - even as Sky News is reporting that VoIP calls threaten our war on terror because such calls can't be intercepted.â¦
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British mobile phone operator Vodafone said it has brought in an executive from Japanese rival NTT DoCoMo to head up its struggling Japanese unit, Vodafone K.K.
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Vodafone  Chief Executive Arun  Sarin is expected to be opposed by several large investors at  the mobile phone giant's annual meeting on Tuesday, though he  will almost certainly be re-elected to the board.
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The wireless-infrastructure leader is connected to a profitable future.