This week HP grabbed Palm, Google did a U-turn on Nexus One and China passed a new law to protect state secrets.
HP emerged as the surprise buyer of Palm, agreeing to pay $1.2 billion in cash in order to get hold of the loss-making handset firm’s WebOS platform.
Google abandoned its strategy of competing in the sales channel with operators, announcing it would sell the Nexus One in Europe solely through carrier partners.
China passed a new state secrets law that would require ISPs and telcos to report any loss of state secrets and terminate transmissions “immediately.”
India’s DoT told operators to stop buying Chinese-made network equipment.
Telstra planned to cut another 900 jobs, lost international chief Drew Kelton to Bharti and appointed former FarEasTone boss Joseph O’Konek as the new CSL chief.
India added another 20 million mobile subs in March.
Thai operator AIS said it was running out of capacity and called on the government to advance its 3G timetable.
RIM showed off its new touchscreen-based BlackBerry OS, set to launch in the third quarter. Nokia unveiled the N8, the first device based on the open source Symbian 3 platform, after details had been leaked to a Russian blogger.
With the iPhone claiming 72% of Japan’s smartphone market, Japanese handset firms joined with NTT DoCoMo to develop their own mobile apps platform.
In a lengthy blog on why Apple would not use Flash in the iPhone, Steve Jobs said the software was 100% proprietary, consumed battery life and made the device crash.
In its first quarterly filing China Telecom said income had fallen 9.1%, while ZTE boosted net 40% on the back of higher handset sales and a tax rebate.
Strong iPhone sales helped the Softbank Group beat expectations with a 124% rise in full-year profit. NTT DoCoMo’s profit also rose 120%, thanks to lower handset subsidies, while lower margins drove down earnings 8% for Indian mobile leader Bharti Airtel.
Motorola returned to the black with a $69 million quarterly profit as smartphone sales beat forecasts.
AT&T sold its 7% stake in Indian outsourcing firm Tech Mahindra for $147 million.
And Sony said that after nearly three decades it would stop making floppy disks.