South Africa’s MTN has said that it will support plans by the Rwandan government to float its 10 per cent stake in MTN Rwanda onto the local stock market, ending speculation that MTN might try to buy the interest instead.

The government previously said that it wanted to sell the stake, and that it is also seeking to boost its newly opened stock exchange by floating state-owned companies on it.

“We have not made a final decision on how to structure our shares. But we would wish the public to own what they have done in Rwanda,” Shauket Fakie, MTN Group executive in charge of business risk management told Business Times.

The government would have needed approval from MTN, as the (55 per cent) majority shareholder, to float its stake on the stock market.

The country currently has three mobile operators: MTN – with an estimated 53 per cent share; Rwandatel – with 33 per cent share and Tigo – 14 per cent.

Huawei is aiming to ship up to 20 million smartphones this year, an increase on earlier sales targets of 12-15 million units in 2011. Last year, it shipped 3.3 million smartphones.

“Our original target this year was at 12-15 million units globally,” Victor Xu, chief strategy and marketing officer of Huawei Device, told Reuters on the sidelines of a company event.

“Currently, based on the sales in the first half of this year, sales in the domestic market might have already exceeded this figure. Therefore, we think probably that could be around 20 million units globally.”

The company is looking for total mobile phone sales of 60 million this year.

Huawei has previously said that it will launch 8-10 new smartphone models in 2011, with 80% being of entry- to mid-levels, and aims to be among the world’s five largest handset vendors in 2013.

Sales under the Huawei brand will start later this year in the UK and China, supported by an advertising campaign that will spread to the USA, Japan, India and Indonesian markets in 2012.

Nokia is reported to be preparing to leave the Japanese market within the next few months and will close its own brand retail stores by the end of July.

The local Nikkei newspaper reported that the stores selling its luxury brand phones, Vertu had been struggling to gain sales as smartphones grew in popularity. The Vertu branded concierge service will be closed down in August.

Nokia stopped selling handsets through the networks in November 2008 after its market share dropped below one percent. Nokia had sold handsets through Softbank and Docomo – but the local operators prefer to define their handset specifications in-house and contract handset vendors to make phones for them.

A year later, the company cut 220 jobs as it scaled back R&D efforts in the country.

Zain Group has announced the appointment of Ahmad Al Hanandeh as CEO of Zain Jordan, effective July 1, 2011. The appointment follows the departure of Abdul Malek Al Jaber who ended his two-year contract as CEO of Zain Jordan and has decided to dedicate his immediate future to his family while pursuing personal business interests. Al Jaber also relinquishes his role as Zain Group COO.

Al Hanandeh, a Jordanian national, first joined Zain as chief financial officer of Zain’s Sudan mobile operation in March 2011. Prior to that, he was for four years the GM of Posta Plus, the Gulf-based company specialising in world-class delivery, courier and postal services across the Middle East. From 1994 to 2006, he was a key member of the Aramex Group initially joining as an accountant and rising to country manager of several of Aramex’s Asian operations.

Nortel has concluded the auction of its patent portfolio and raised US$4.5 billion from the bidders, considerably higher than the initial offer of US$950 million from Google.

The winning consortium consists of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony.

In a separate statement, RIM said that its portion of the purchase consideration is approximately USD$770 million.

The Nortel patent portfolio comprises approximately 6,000 ICT patents and patent applications, including telecommunications, Internet search and social networking. It covers mobile, LTE and data networking as well as optical, Internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patent portfolios.

“Following a very robust auction, we are pleased at its outcome of this extensive patent portfolio”, said George Riedel, chief strategy officer and president of business units, Nortel. “The size and dollar value for this transaction is unprecedented, as was the significant interest in the portfolio among major companies around the world.”

The battle for the patent portfolio intensified in recent weeks, with concerns about Apple’s intention in bidding for the patents being raised in light of its recent patent fights with other handset manufacturers.

The auction also highlighted issues with patent trolls and the use of patents as tools to stifle competition – the issue initially raised by Google when it said it was bidding for the patents in order to protect itself from future lawsuits.