Telkom South Africa has confirmed that it is in talks with South Korea’s KT Corp regarding a possible investment by the Korean firm.

If the talks are completed, then it is expected that KT Corp will take a 20 per cent stake in Telkom SA.

Should the venture be agreed, Telkom will issue new Telkom ordinary shares for cash at an issue price of ZAR36.06 (US$4.61) per new Telkom ordinary share. That represents a 12 per cent premium over the current share price, and an investment of around US$600 million.

Alcatel-Lucent and Etisalat have today signed an agreement to jointly develop the most efficient and sustainable means to deliver mobile broadband to customers – built around the Alcatel-Lucent lightRadio product family. The agreement was signed by Nasser bin Obood, Acting CEO- Etisalat and Nicholas Bouverot, VP ME, Alcatel-Lucent.

Through its collaboration around lightRadio, Etisalat will help define the commercial introduction of this new product family in the Middle East and in other markets.

The lightRadio product family enables superfast speeds and high-quality delivery of applications to a variety of mobile devices, while reducing the size, complexity, cost and power consumption of mobile networks, making it a greener and more cost-effective solution for operators.

Under the joint innovation and collaboration agreement signed with Alcatel-Lucent, Etisalat will help influence the development of lightRadio via participation in joint working groups, early trials and validation of the technology. Business modelling teams of Bell Labs – the innovation engine of Alcatel-Lucent – will conduct a study of Etisalat’s network evolution path and determine the best fit of lightRadio products to help to reduce costs and meet customers’ needs. Etisalat is one of 10 operators worldwide selected to participate in this innovative collaboration model.

Sony Ericsson has reported that its third quarter sales fell marginally to €1.59 billion (US$2.19 billion) compared to €1.6 billion a year ago.

However, the company posted a zero profit figure, compared to a net profit of €49 million a year ago. This is an improvement on the loss of €50 million that the handset manufacturer reported in Q211.

The company shipped 9.5 million phones during the quarter, a nine per cent decrease year-on-year due to a decline in feature phone shipments, partially offset by an increase in smartphone shipments. The 25 per cent quarter-on-quarter increase was due to the higher volume of smartphones shipped.

The average selling price increased to €166 from €154. The year-on-year increase was due to the shift to smartphones and geographic mix despite a negative effect from foreign exchange rates. The sequential increase was due to product and geographic mix.

Sony Ericsson estimates that its share of the global Android-based smartphone market during the quarter was approximately 12 per cent in volume and 11 per cent in value.

The company maintained its forecast for modest industry growth in total units in the global handset market for 2011.

A report by South Africa based Standard Bank Group has estimated that mobile subscriptions in Africa will reach 800 million by 2015.

Simon Freemantle, an economist and author of the report said Africa had about 500 million mobile subscriptions in 2010, up from 15 million in 2000 and will hit 800 million by 2015.

He forecast that over the next five years East and Central Africa will enjoy the highest mobile subscription growth rates in the world, with three quarters of the increase expected to come from Uganda, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Kenya and Ghana.

Freemantle said the five trends driving Africa’s economic growth include a larger, younger and more affluent population, Africa’s transformational urban swell, technology, the dormant resources potential and the deepening financial sector.

Informatica Qatar (iQ), an IT consulting firm and technology solutions provider that offers high-quality systems integration solutions, has announced that it has recently signed an agreement with Huawei to be the exclusive distributor and after-sales service provider in Qatar of Huawei mobile phones, including the Huawei IDEOS and the Huawei IDEOS X5.

iQ brings to the partnership its wide experience as a leading product distributor and service provider in the ICT sector, serving a wide range of telecom consumer markets in the region. The partnership is in line with iQ’s strategy to establish strategic alliances with leading global ICT companies and to reach out to more customers in the Middle East by expanding its portfolio of premium technology solutions.