Lenovo is expecting sales of Motorola phones to make up 40 per cent of its total smartphone shipments in the coming fiscal year beginning April 1, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the current fiscal year, the figure stood at 30 per cent of the total 85 million smartphones sold by Lenovo and Motorola.

Lenovo closed its US$2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google last October and earlier this week announced that Motorola smartphones will once again be sold in China, as well as other markets.

Motorola devices will be priced at more than US$400 while Lenovo smartphones will be below that figure.

According to Strategy Analytics, Lenovo captured five per cent market share of global smartphone shipments in Q314, while Motorola captured three per cent. The combined eight per cent share put it above the current number three player Xiaomi, after Apple and Samsung.

In China, Motorola will face fierce competition, with home-grown companies like Xiaomi and Huawei expecting to ship at least 100 million smartphones in 2015.

The three new devices that Motorola announced for China — the Moto X, new Moto X Pro and the Moto G, which supports LTE — are the first to be introduced by the company in the country since 2012, after Google withdrew the vendor from the market in 2013.

All three models will go on sale early this year.

Zain Group has announced that its mobile operation in Iraq launched 3G voice and data services across the country on January 1, 2015. The launch came following the finalisation of an agreement with Iraq’s Communications and Media Commission (CMC) in November 2014, which culminated in Zain Iraq making an initial 25% payment towards the overall 3G spectrum fee of US$307 million.

Three technology solution providers, namely Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Networks were commissioned early in 2014 to expand and upgrade Zain Iraq’s network thus allowing the operator to quickly roll-out 3G commercial services across the country upon granting of the license.

Zain Iraq today employs over 3,000 Iraqi nationals and is the largest operator in the country with over 4,000 mobile network sites serving the largest customer base in the country.

Huawei is forecasting its 2014 revenue to increase 15 per cent to US$46 billion, driven in large part by its mobile device and enterprise businesses.

The company said its consumer business group was expected to generate revenue of US$11.8 billion, a 30 per cent increase from 2013.

The company’s CEO, Ken Hu, who shares the CEO duties in a six-month rotation, said in a message that more than 20 million smartphones with the Honor brand were sold through online channels worldwide, an increase of 30 times in just its first year.

As it pushes both the Huawei and Honor brands directly to consumers, the company said it has set up 450 retail shops worldwide. Sales through open channels (non-operator) now account for 45 per cent of total sales.

The Shenzhen-based company announced last week smartphone sales increased by nearly one-third in 2014 to reach US$11.8 billion as shipments increased 40 per cent to 75 million smartphones.

Although the company increased its smartphone shipments, the total fell short of its previously-stated goal of 80 million units.

Recent figures from analyst firm Gartner showed that Chinese players continued to expand their market share in the smartphone sector during the third quarter of 2014.

Huawei was ranked third for smartphone sales, just ahead of fellow Chinese players Xiaomi and Lenovo. The three companies saw their combined share of the global smartphone market increase by 4.2 percentage points year-on-year.

Huawei said it sold four million Ascend 7 units within six months of launch.

The telecommunications industry faces declining revenues in developed markets and stagnating growth in emerging ones. Telcos thus need to tap into new sources of revenue growth, while reducing their cost structure. Big Data has been proposed as one of the industry’s solutions for both revenue growth and cost savings.

Santiago Castillo, Principal at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants

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Ooredoo Algeria today confirmed that it has reached the milestone of 3.5 million 3G customers within the first year of the launch of the service.

The company reported that more than 3.5 million customers in 25 provinces have chosen Ooredoo’s 3G network.

Ooredoo Algeria also became one of the first operators in the world to achieve network throughput of 63 Mbps, and the first operator in Africa to deploy 400G ultra-broadband mobile access network in 2014.

As early as January 2015, Ooredoo’s 3G network will be extended to 32 provinces, covering 80 per cent of Algeria’s population. Ooredoo has invested more than US$2 billion in its network enhancement programme and intends to accelerate its ambitious investment plan.