Ericsson has reported a 17 per cent rise in its third-quarter sales year-on-year of SEK55.5 billion (US$8.4 billion) while net profit rose six per cent to SEK 3.8 billion.

Gross margin in the quarter was down year-over-year to 35 per cent. A higher proportion of coverage projects along with accelerating network modernisation projects in Europe impacted gross margin negatively. Sequentially the increased share of services business also had a negative impact.

Networks sales grew 25 per cent year-over-year, and a decrease of three per cent quarter-on-quarter due to seasonality and reduced CDMA sales in North America.

Sales in Global Services grew seven per cent year-over-year and sequentially, while Professional Services, currency adjusted, grew by 13 per cent year-over-year. Managed Services showed good development with increased sales of 12 per cent sequentially, following 24 new managed services contracts reported in the second quarter. Multimedia sales grew 11 per cent year-over-year and eight per cent sequentially, with good traction also this quarter for revenue management in Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

Apple posted a sharp rise in its third-quarter revenues to US$28.27 billion compared to US$20.34 billion a year ago. Profits also rose, to US$6.62 billion compared to US$4.31 billion a year ago, but were lower than industry analysts had expected.

Gross margin was 40.3 per cent compared to 36.9 per cent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 per cent of the quarter’s revenue.

The company sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 21 per cent unit growth over the year-ago quarter – but again below the 20 million expected by analysts. The missed target being explained by the delays in rolling out the iPhone 4S.

Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, a 166 per cent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

The company sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 per cent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 per cent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

"We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to US$108 billion and growing earnings to US$26 billion," said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. "Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline."

UAE telco Du has announced its strategic alliance agreement with Akamai Technologies aimed at bringing a new dimension in efficient and secure delivery of e-business services to its business customers.

Leveraging Akamai’s global EdgePlatform, the agreement will provide Du’s business customers with a worldwide content reach and the ability to significantly enhance the customer experience of their end users.

Du will thus be able to offer faster delivery of secure cloud based delivery services such as HD video streaming, application, and site delivery to its business customers via Akamai’s globally distributed delivery platform. The content will be sourced from the nearest cloud of Akamai’s geographically distributed 95,000+ servers, within over 1,000 networks of Akamai coverage in 75 countries.

Furthermore, access to content of Du’s corporate clients will be much faster to their end users for any kind of media, both online as well as on mobile devices.

Earlier this year Ericsson entered a strategic alliance with Akamai, a leading content deliverer, to bring to market mobile cloud acceleration solutions aimed at improving end-user Internet experiences such as mobile e-commerce, enterprise applications and Internet content, is a clear indication of Ericsson’s intent to be relevant across the entire cloud delivery chain.

Millicom International – the holding company that operates mobile networks mainly in Africa and Latin America – has reported that its third quarter revenues rose by 13.1 per cent to US$1.15 billion.

Excluding currency fluctuations, revenues would have risen by 9.1 per cent compared to a year ago.

EBITDA was also up, by 9.3 per cent to US$529 million.

However net profit plunged to US$288 million compared to US$1.2 billion a year ago – although last year had been boosted by a one-off gain of $1.06 billion on the revaluation of the Honduran operation.

Mobile customers were up 13 per cent compared to Q310, bringing the total customer base to 42.2 million.

“In Africa, excluding Ghana and Senegal, our operations performed well during the quarter growing on average by 16 per cent in local currency. In Ghana we adjusted our prices due to the introduction of flat tariffs and specific promotions by our competitors. In Senegal our revenues were affected by capacity constraints associated with power shortages,” Mikael Grahne, president and CEO of Millicom said. “Revenue growth for Africa as a whole was 7.8 per cent in local currency. We remain focused on maintaining the affordability of Tigo products and services across the region.”

Grahne reiterated the company’s full-year guidance of an EBITDA margin of above 45 per cent, and a revision of the company’s CAPEX guidance to around US$820 million due to some delays in the delivery of equipment.

The company warned that it no longer sees a correlation between growth in customer numbers and future revenue growth and, overall, expects customer intake to continue to be quite volatile due to a range of factors including the macro environment, seasonality, competitor promotions and marketing activities.

Millicom is now focusing on 3G data and VAS customers who, on average, produce a higher additional ARPU as compared to 2G voice-only customers.

Etisalat reported a nine per cent rise in its third-quarter revenues to reach AED8.04 billion (US$2.2 billion), compared to AED 7.4 billion a year ago.

However, profits for the quarter were down very slightly at AED 1.72 billion compared to AED 1.74 billion a year ago.

Thus, a clear area of concern for Etisalat, as with most regional operators, is the downward pressure being exerted on profitability given the rise in market competition and the flattening of average revenues. For the first half of 2011, Etisalat reported a net profit after federal royalty of AED3.41 billion, which was down from a net profit of AED3.9 billion in 2010. This amount stood at AED4.6 billion in 2009, meaning net profit at Etisalat dropped by over a quarter in the two years to end-June 2011.

For the nine months to end-September 2011, revenue earned from international operations contributed 26 per cent to overall revenue, and increased 18 per cent on the same period last year.