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.

Abdul Malek Al Jaber is set to leave his dual role of CEO of Zain Jordan and COO of Zain Group, effective end of the month, Comm. can exclusively reveal. Sources close to Zain confirmed that Al Jaber will be departing the company effective June 30, for personal reasons.

He had only been appointed to his group-level position in March, and last month had spoken extensively to Comm. about the shift in focus he was helping to effect at Zain, as part of the cellco’s senior management team.

Abdul Malek Al Jaber is set to leave his dual role of CEO of Zain Jordan and COO of Zain Group, effective end of the month

“Our new strategy is innovation based,” Al Jaber said last month. “There was a combination of organic and inorganic expansion before Zain Group’s sale of its African assets, which was the turning point. We are still ambitious to emerge as a global operator, but this ambition has a new tagline, which is innovation.”

The announcement of the departure of Al Jaber follows the planned departure of Bashar Arafeh, Zain Group’s chief commercial officer earlier this year.

STC and Google Saudi Arabia held a joint press conference in Riyadh to launch the YouTube Invision service.

The conference included a visual demonstration showcasing the applications of the YouTube service that have been launched, detailing the features and benefit of the service and how to access it, in addition to the other customer benefits that will be gained from this new service.

YouTube Invision is a new and unique service in the Middle East that allows customers subscribing to the Advanced Interactive Television Service (Invision) to view and search for videos on YouTube on the Internet by using the television screen at home and at no additional charge without having to use the search engines or visit or logon sites and forums.