Wataniya Telecom has reported that its customer base grew by 7.2 per cent over the past year to reach 19.6 million at the end of June.

First-half revenues amounted to KWD378.9 million (US$1.33 billion), up 2.9 per cent year-on-year.

Net profit for H1 fell by 11 per cent to KWD 42.4 million, and was put down to a highly competitive Kuwaiti market and the Tunisian operation, which has been affected by a still difficult economic situation and tax claims.

Wataniya Kuwait’s customer base was basically flat year-on-year at 1.94 million, while revenues fell by 8.4 per cent to KWD 104.6 million. Net profit more than halved to KWD 13.5 million, compared to KWD 29.1 million a year ago.

Qualcomm announced that its third fiscal quarter revenues rose by more than a third to US$6.24 billion, boosted by increased smartphone chip shipments.

Net profit was also up, by 31 per cent to US$1.58 billion. R&D expenses increased 36 per cent primarily due to an increase in costs to develop CDMA-based 3G, OFDMA-based LTE and other technologies for integrated circuit and related software products.

Mobile Station Modem chip shipments were up by 22 per cent at 172 million units.

UAE telco Du reported that Q213 revenues rose by 12 per cent over the year to reach AED2.66 billion (US$724 million), while net profits were up by 46 per cent to AED 474 million (US$129 million).

Mobile revenue increased 13.33 per cent year-on-year, while mobile data revenues rose by 44.8 per cent.

The mobile customer base rose by 16 per cent to end the period to reach 6.65 million, while the landline base rose by 5.7 per cent to 578,000 customers.

Du estimates its mobile market share is 46.5 per cent.

The company also announced it was making a special dividend payment to its shareholders of AED 1 billion.

Vodafone Qatar divulged its operating highlights for the quarter to end-June 2013, offering the following KPIs:

· 1,146,000 mobile customers as at June 30; an increase of 31 per cent compared to June 2012 and 5.7 per cent growth over the previous quarter

· Quarterly revenue of QAR459 million (US$126 million); 31 per cent growth over the same quarter last year and 5.5 per cent growth over the previous quarter

· Mobile ARPU was stable at QAR123

· EBITDA reached QAR99 million; an increase of 92 per cent year-on-year

· Distributable profit was QAR 16 million for the quarter and

· Net loss reduced to QAR 85 million; an improvement of 28 per cent over the same quarter last year.

Vodafone Qatar is a joint venture between Vodafone and the Qatar Foundation and has 55 per cent of its shares listed on the local stock market. Vodafone Group’s effective interest in the company in 23 per cent.

Apple has posted a net fall in its third fiscal quarter profits to June 29, although its revenues managed to rise only very slightly during the three month period.

The company posted revenues of US$35.3 billion, as compared to US$35 billion a year ago.

Net profit fell to US$6.9 billion from US$8.8 billion last year. The profit figure is even lower than Apple achieved back in 2011 when it booked a quarterly profit of US$7.3 billion

Gross margin was 36.9 per cent compared to 42.8 per cent in the year-ago quarter.

International sales accounted for 57 per cent of the quarter’s revenue, a decline on the 62 per cent of sales generated a year ago. The company saw particularly strong declines in China and Hong Kong, which the company’s CEO, Tim Cook admitted had been puzzling.

The company sold 31.2 million iPhones, a record for the June quarter, compared to 26 million in the year-ago quarter, beating most analyst expectations.

However, sales of the iPad tablets fell to 14.6 million, compared to 17 million in the year-ago quarter. The company sold 3.8 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter.