South Africa based Vodacom is facing a court battle in the Democratic Republic of Congo as it seeks to sell its majority 51 per cent stake in the company.

The minority shareholder, Congolese Wireless Network (CWN), which owns the other 49 per cent, is seeking a legal ruling to block the sale claiming that there are unpaid fees due.

Vodacom and CWN have had a fraught relationship ever since Vodacom invested in the company in May 2002. It has been reported recently that rival South African operator, MTN is interested in taking over the investment from Vodacom.

"We’ll send a letter to all the main shareholders and we’ll block the sale," a CWN spokesperson told Bloomberg in an interview in the DRC capital, Kinshasa

Vodacom and CWN went to arbitration last year following a dispute over investment funding for the mobile network.

Vodacom Congo counted 4.2 million subscribers at the end of March.

Nokia has posted a 13 per cent fall in its revenues for the third quarter of 2011, to €8.98 billion (US$12.4 billion). Sales of mobile devices were down by 25 per cent year-on- year.

The handset manufacturer posted a net loss of € 151 million) for the three months to September, from a €322 million profit in the same period last year.

Nokia also reported an operating loss for the quarter, of €71 million, compared to an operating profit of €403 million last year.

Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop commented: "I am encouraged by the progress we made during Q3, while noting that there are still many important steps ahead in our journey of transformation."

"In summary, in Q3 we started to see signs of early improvement in many areas, but we must continue to focus on consistent progress so that we can move Nokia through the transformation and deliver superior results to our shareholders."

The company reiterated its plans to launch its first Windows Phone based device in select countries later this quarter, and then to systematically increase the number of countries and launch partners during the course of 2012.

On a year-on-year basis, the decline in total Devices & Services volumes in the third quarter 2011 was driven by lower smartphones volumes that more than offset the increase in mobile phone volumes.

Ericsson has reported a 17 per cent rise in its third-quarter sales year-on-year of SEK55.5 billion (US$8.4 billion) while net profit rose six per cent to SEK 3.8 billion.

Gross margin in the quarter was down year-over-year to 35 per cent. A higher proportion of coverage projects along with accelerating network modernisation projects in Europe impacted gross margin negatively. Sequentially the increased share of services business also had a negative impact.

Networks sales grew 25 per cent year-over-year, and a decrease of three per cent quarter-on-quarter due to seasonality and reduced CDMA sales in North America.

Sales in Global Services grew seven per cent year-over-year and sequentially, while Professional Services, currency adjusted, grew by 13 per cent year-over-year. Managed Services showed good development with increased sales of 12 per cent sequentially, following 24 new managed services contracts reported in the second quarter. Multimedia sales grew 11 per cent year-over-year and eight per cent sequentially, with good traction also this quarter for revenue management in Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

Apple posted a sharp rise in its third-quarter revenues to US$28.27 billion compared to US$20.34 billion a year ago. Profits also rose, to US$6.62 billion compared to US$4.31 billion a year ago, but were lower than industry analysts had expected.

Gross margin was 40.3 per cent compared to 36.9 per cent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 per cent of the quarter’s revenue.

The company sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 21 per cent unit growth over the year-ago quarter – but again below the 20 million expected by analysts. The missed target being explained by the delays in rolling out the iPhone 4S.

Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, a 166 per cent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

The company sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 per cent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 per cent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

"We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to US$108 billion and growing earnings to US$26 billion," said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. "Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline."

UAE telco Du has announced its strategic alliance agreement with Akamai Technologies aimed at bringing a new dimension in efficient and secure delivery of e-business services to its business customers.

Leveraging Akamai’s global EdgePlatform, the agreement will provide Du’s business customers with a worldwide content reach and the ability to significantly enhance the customer experience of their end users.

Du will thus be able to offer faster delivery of secure cloud based delivery services such as HD video streaming, application, and site delivery to its business customers via Akamai’s globally distributed delivery platform. The content will be sourced from the nearest cloud of Akamai’s geographically distributed 95,000+ servers, within over 1,000 networks of Akamai coverage in 75 countries.

Furthermore, access to content of Du’s corporate clients will be much faster to their end users for any kind of media, both online as well as on mobile devices.

Earlier this year Ericsson entered a strategic alliance with Akamai, a leading content deliverer, to bring to market mobile cloud acceleration solutions aimed at improving end-user Internet experiences such as mobile e-commerce, enterprise applications and Internet content, is a clear indication of Ericsson’s intent to be relevant across the entire cloud delivery chain.