Ericsson today announced the appointment of Anders Lindblad as head of the newly announced new business unit Cloud & IP. Lindblad, currently head of Ericsson’s region Middle East, steps into the role of senior vice president and head of business unit Cloud & IP, effective July 1, 2014.

In addition to Lindblad’s appointment, Ericsson also announced the appointment of Arun Bansal, currently head of Ericsson’s region South East Asia & Oceania, as senior vice president and head of business unit Radio.

The newly-created business unit Cloud & IP and business unit Radio divisions were formed by a split of the current business unit Networks, in a move to accelerate transformation and support growth. Both Lindblad and Bansal are tested leaders with long and solid technical and business experience, and extensive experience from key markets.

Lindblad and Bansal will remain members of Ericsson’s Global Leadership Team. Successors to them in their current roles will be announced separately.

The two new organizations will be effective on July 1, 2014 with the business unit management team and organizational structure in place.

Vodacom has reported its full-year financial results to end-March reflected a modest rise in revenues and profit.

Revenue was up by 8.3 per cent to ZAR62 billion (US$6 billion), while net profit rose by 3.3 per cent to ZAR13.7 billion. The company added seven million customers during the year, taking its total base to 57.5 million.

In South Africa, service revenue grew 0.3 per cent, an improvement on last year’s contraction.

Excluding lower mobile termination rates (MTRs), service revenue grew three per cent. The active customer base increased eight per cent to 31.5 million.

Service revenue from international operations grew by 23.4 per cent (18.4 per cent) and the active customer base increased 21.8 per cent to 26 million.

EBITDA grew by 55.4 per cent with margin expanding by six percentage points to 29.6 per cent. Data revenue more than doubled and the number of active data customers increased 86.4 per cent to 7.7 million, driven by data bundles.

Mobile financial services are also a strong growth driver with M-Pesa now contributing 18.8 per cent to service revenue in Tanzania.

Looking ahead, the company said that it will be increasing capital investment over the medium term to between 14 per cent and 17 per cent of Group revenue, although that it partially conditional on the outcome of MTR cuts in South Africa.

Apple and Google have settled a long running patent battle and said that they will now work together on some areas of patent reform.

The lawsuits date back to October 2010, and cover mobile technology patents used in Apple’s iPhone and Google-backed Android phones made by Motorola Mobility, now a Google subsidiary that is being sold to Lenovo.

Apple and Google jointly informed a federal appeals court that the cases should be dismissed.

However, while they have agreed to drop their lawsuits, they have not actually licensed the patents to each other yet, leading to the possibility of future action if they cannot agree on licensing terms.

The dismissal notice does allow for future lawsuits to be submitted on these patents.

Apple is still suing Samsung for infringing the same patents.

MTN has outlined plans to spend US$3 billion on network upgrades in Nigeria to improve the quality of the network and expand its reach.

The investment is to be phased-in over a three-year period.

MTN and most of the Nigerian mobile networks have been criticised for poor quality of service and signing up customers to networks that cannot cope with the demand.

MTN has just over 57 million customers in Nigeria, and a market share of nearly 50 per cent.

Vivendi has completed the long running attempt to sell its 53 per cent stake in Maroc Telecom to Etisalat.

The final price came in at €4.14 billion (US$5.66 billion) – which is compared to the €4.2 billion that the companies originally said the deal would be worth.

However, that figure does not include the US$650million that Maroc Telecom has just spent buying a number of Etisalat subsidiaries – so the net cost to Etisalat is about US$300 million lower than originally expected.

In addition, Etisalat is due to receive €507 million in dividend payments from Maroc Telecom, payable next month.

Etisalat agreed to buy the 53 per cent stake in the Moroccan mobile network from Vivendi last November following a protracted bidding process, but completion has taken longer than expected.

Etisalat now owns 53 per cent of Maroc Telecom, with 17 per cent listed on a local stock market. The remaining 30 per cent is owned by the government, which also has a veto over any change in ownership.

Maroc Telecom has operations in Gabon, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali, and recently acquired Etisalat’s stakes in its subsidiaries located in Benin, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Niger and Togo.