In July 2010, Orange Group’s CEO Stephane Richard articulated a group-wide industrial project that would give the company a strategic direction in the period 2010-2015. Dubbed Conquests 2015, the telco’s business services unit has set about adapting the parameters of the programme to its respective operating environment, and has met with some early success

Badrinath says growth areas for the business include very high broadband, video, Internet of things (M2M opportunities), cloud computing, mobility, CRM, the workspace of the future, and security 

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After several years struggling to return to relevance in the highly competitive mobile handset market, Motorola Mobility at last appears to be finding its feet again, and producing compelling devices. The company’s market share of global handset shipments has fallen drastically in preceding years, though with Android identified as its operating system of choice, and smartphones as its market segment of focus, the Chicago-based manufacturer believes it has the right strategy in place to resurrect its fortunes

Hafez says Motorola Mobility always maintained its service provider partnerships, and it is encouraging how positively the market is responding to its new devices 

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Ericsson president and CEO, Hans Vestberg has reiterated his outlook that HSPA and 3G would remain his company’s main revenue generators in 2011, with LTE equipment becoming a more significant source of income in the 2012-14 timeframe. In the meantime, the manufacturer believes the combination of mobility, broadband, and cloud services forms the cornerstones of its vision to help create the networked society of the future

Vestberg believes that in the coming 10-20 years the networked society shall become a fully-functioning reality whereby everything that benefits from being connected to a network will be

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Last September Intel inaugurated the region’s first Centre of Excellence for Wireless Applications (CEWA) in partnership with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The development forms part of Intel’s plans to expand its Digital Transformation Initiative for the Middle East and fits right into Saudi Arabia’s efforts to create a knowledge-based society

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Today, new telecom technologies, globalisation, increased competition, and increased customer mobility have radically changed ways people communicate. Telecom operators around the world are in a race to offer customers a multiplicity of converging services/products at equally attractive and competitive prices. Today, many operators, especially incumbents, are struggling to fight new entrants, to win new customers, to reduce customer churn, and to protect their dramatically eroded profits (declining revenues versus increasing marketing and customer management expenses). Today, operators are on average losing 8-10 per cent of their customers each year. To minimise their losses of revenue and/or explore new revenue opportunities, telecom operators have to re-think their marketing and customer retention strategies and practices.

Mohamed Jamoussi is a senior advisor for Saudi Telecom (STC)

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