Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

In 2007, EMEA will surpass North America to become the largest ON region. Competition between the incumbent network operators and the Tier-2 competitive operators continues to drive spending.

ZTE is well positioned in the low-end handset market, particularly in handset customisation. It is present in the largest mobile markets; China and India, as well as emerging markets such as Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

This Ovum Navigator shows that important differences exist between leading players in Europe and that vendors vary significantly in terms of the strength of their strategies and ability to deliver.

Apple announced that iPhone and iPod touch customers downloaded more than 10 million applications from the App Store in the first this weekend. The store was launched last Thursday. There are now 800 applications available on the store.

In 2007, Autonomy demonstrated its differentiation from the rest of the search engine market players, and positioned itself firmly as an enterprise software infrastructure vendor through the acquisitions of Zantaz and Meridio.

At one time Italy was the talk of Europe in terms of next-generation access, with innovative competitive operator Fastweb leading the way with its FTTB deployment. However, Fastweb's deployment was always going to be limited, and with no other network-ba

Key findings from Ovum's end-user survey of wireless multimedia consumers

Zattoo stands apart from the plethora of Internet TV players by virtue of its almost stark simplicity. Its main differentiation from the competition lies in its pure focus on real-time, linear TV

For different reasons, global telcos are starting to offer enterprise fixed–mobile convergence (FMC) services in Asia-Pacific. This is increasing the pressure on incumbents to also consider the FMC path.

Nortel has announced a contract to provide managed multimedia services, including telepresence, for professional services company Deloitte. The deal encompasses 130 Deloitte firm member sites worldwide.

If any one player can dominate the connected home, Sony should be it. However, despite its assets, to date it has not made the best use of them, a fact that some of its closest rivals are starting to take full advantage of.

We coined the phrase 'SOA in the wild' to refer to a jungle where web 2.0 start-ups fight it out to survive the culling process of natural selection to become building blocks in a global SOA.

Ovum research with senior IT professionals in 150 large enterprises demonstrates the critical role of enterprise networks on the health of the enterprise, and their interest in adopting managed services for applications performance optimisation

The board of nCipher had unanimously recommended an offer from Thales UK for their company. Thus ends the independent existence of one of the industry's more colourful and unusual vendors that has ended as a success story.

Nero develops software that enables the transfer of digital audio, video and picture content between different computing, mobile and consumer electronic devices. As such it is well positioned to deliver one of the foundation stones of multimedia mobility

If SAS ever had an opportunity to raise its profile and steal a march over its competitors given the market consolidation activities of last year then the time is now. Has SAS seized the day and capitalized on this opportunity?

WirelineStrategy@Ovum future publication schedule

Telecom New Zealand has faced major change since 2006, being forced to operationally separate and accept new wholesale regulation. The loss of CDMA roaming in Australia has hit mobile revenues hard. TNZ is adapting to address these new conditions.

Here we present a selection of brief comments and analysis pieces concerned with recent regulatory events that affected the wholesale market in the second quarter of 2008.

IBM's Data Governance Council predicts the rise of data governance to avoid bad data leading to bad decisions. Let's not forget, though, that we all need to become more critical consumers of information, not just rely on the CIO to police our data.

Telefonica, the Spanish incumbent, has completed a year of remarkable performance, as shown in its year-end results. The integration of its regional operations is becoming a clear success.

Forward publication schedule, detailing our research plans for the next 3 months

The Vendor Contract Database shows carrier-vendor contracts around the world. The database is searchable by region, quarter, operator, vendor, and equipment segment. It contains over 3,500 contracts.

Opnext announced on July 9, 2008, that it had entered into a definite agreement to acquire Stratalight Communications for $172 million. The combined entity creates the largest 40Gbps module and subsystem supplier and helps stabilize the 40Gbps supply.

Redback's SM (smart metro) 480 is an existence proof of increased R&D funding by Ericsson, and this might be the most important takeaway. The Ericsson SM 480 looks to be a competent entry into the Ethernet services equipment market.

The centerpiece of Alcatel-Lucent's TPSDA V2.0 is a new high-scale interface/subscriber management card for the 7750 SR and 7450 ESS.

BICS is an international wholesaler with a good breadth of services, a strong track record in providing good customer service, and a focus on serving mobile operators.

With low disposable income and low penetration rates for fixed and broadband services, the Eastern European markets pose a challenging environment for telcos.

Voice remains an important service and revenue generator in Asia. Developed and emerging markets are on distinct and very different growth paths. This report examines the next ten years for voice in Asia.

Ericsson is the acknowledged market leader in network infrastructure, driven primarily by the strength of its mobile offering. As its telco customers aim to deliver triple and quad play portfolios, Ericsson restructured to focus on multimedia requirement

Analysis of the potential for devices optimised for health and fitness, and update of player strategies.

At the beginning of July 2008 Microsoft reinforced its repeated message that it wishes to be king of search in both the enterprise and on the Internet, with the acquisition of San Francisco-based Powerset. Mike Davis and Madan Sheina assess the potential

By the end of 2007 there were 29 million subscribers of services supplied by FTTx equipment and by 2012 we expect over 100 million subscribers. Lynn Hutcheson analyzes the current status of FTTx, future growth and what types of product we can expect.

Europe & Americas interconnect charge data for Q2 2008

Strong internet growth and rising demand for redundant capacity in the Asia-Pacific are driving renewed submarine cable investment. Ovum doesn't think that this is a bubble, but there is potential for danger.

The UK is one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world. However, it is one of the few of the advanced European markets that has yet to announce any major FTTx initiative.

This paper is a review of broadband deployments in the United States with an in-depth look at both retail and wholesale services offered by the two largest incumbent operators: AT&T and Verizon.

Joint analysis with Ericsson Consumer Labs examining consumer, service and device trends.

Our benchmarks of fixed and mobile interconnection and local loop line rental charges, updated quarterly for the Asia-Pacific region (exchange rate only)

Asia-Pacific retail/wholesale comparison tables for Q2 2008 (PPP)

Asia-Pacific interconnect charge data for Q2 2008

Our benchmarks of fixed and mobile interconnection and local loop line rental charges, updated quarterly for the Asia-Pacific region (PPP)

SAS has, over the past couple of decades, consistently ridden the peaks and troughs of the BI and data integration markets with modest ease. In 2007, the company continued its steady evolution, crossing the landmark figure of $ 2 billion.

Global optical component sales increased 4% sequentially in 1Q08 to $1,178 million and posted a 12% gain compared to the same period last year. The strongest share gains went to Finisar and Bookham. Emcore and Avanex had the largest share declines.

KPN is the incumbent fixed and mobile operator in the Netherlands, with international operations in Belgium and Germany, and more recently an MVNO operation in Spain. 2008 marks a change in KPN's strategy.

Ovum's UK S/ITS Contracts Database provides critical insight into the market for software and IT services by providing details of more than 2,600 deals and tenders relevant to UK technology and services players.

This spreadsheet gives an overview of WiMAX CPE including various form factors, such as outdoor CPE, indoor modems, PC cards and USB dongles.

Though the market is familiar with Sage's individual offerings, the company hasn't yet fully conveyed the value of its integrated product suites. As the SMB market becomes crowded with the likes of Microsoft, SAP and newer entrants such as NetSuite

Ovum has recently published worldwide forecasts for mobile total connections and ARPU. Raymond Yu analyses the key themes and underlying trends shaping these forecasts.

The 'Compuware 2.0' project is to result in no less than the 'rebirth' of Compuware. The company needs to work on the way it articulates and shapes Compuware 2.0 for it to eventually deliver.

Citrix has a grand vision to deliver a comprehensive middleware suite to enable the separation of the main components in the IT eco-system and to move forward towards the vision of anything-anywhere delivery.

Ovum recently presented at the European MVNO Summit in Rome, organised by Economist Conferences. Italy's MVNO market development and the opinion of the conference attendees reinforced the key messages from our presentation on MVNO market trends throughou

Unlike many other European countries, France has opted to bypass the cheaper option of fibre-to-the-cabinet plus VDSL and is going straight to fibre-to-the-business/home (FTTB/H).

The incumbent operator, Belgacom, still dominates Belgium's national DSL market. Its main competition comes from the cable TV operators, the largest of which is Telenet

IEEE approved the 802.20 standard for mobile broadband wireless access. Given the mobile broadband alternatives already competing on the market, Ovum questions the ultimate impact of 802.20.

The EVUA's Mobilising the Enterprise conference took place in Berlin at the end of June 2008. Much of the discussion amongst the global multinational users present was about the need for better management of mobility.

Our benchmarks compare charges for regulated wholesale services in countries across the world. Our main benchmarks cover fixed interconnection, mobile termination and unbundled local loop line rental.

Excel table for key benchmarks

Excel tables and charts for Europe & Americas additional benchmarks

Historical average fixed termination charges (US cents)

Historical average fixed origination charges (US cents)

Historical average mobile termination charges (US cents)

Comparison of retail/wholesale and interconnect charges

Anite has always been bullish about wireless, but the public sector still accounts for 38% of Anite's revenues and now some portion of the bottom line.

Ovum projects that the Asia-Pacific optical networking market will grow from $3.66 billion in 2007 to $5.40 billion in 2013, for an average annual growth rate of 6.7%. Market fundamentals remain largely constant from our January 2008 forecast.

Best practices have shown that a focus on the architectural part of SOA implementation is mandatory. However, another necessary component is the infrastructure required to allow services to communicate in a managed and service-level aware manner.

Comments made at an IT industry lunch by the Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, reinforce the dilemma of contradictory objectives facing public sector CIOs.

Last week Nokia acquired Plazes, a small start-up company that has developed a platform that allows people to share their social activities based on location.

In case anybody thought that BT's global acquisitions roadshow was over, the UK national operator has swooped for a double purchase of ICT providers in Germany.

2008 Q1 interconnect charge data

This spreadsheet provides global FTTx, DSLAM and CMTS ports, revenue, and market share by region and on a rolling 4Q basis.

Tata Communications has launched a global hosted and managed telepresence solution, based on Cisco TelePresence. And it is bringing a new twist to the telepresence story: support for the hosted telepresence service will be provided by a series of Tata gr

Over a month after the NHS announced the termination of Fujitsu Services' £996 million contract to deliver electronic patient records to the south of England the future of these services in the Southern Programme for IT (SPfIT) is still unclear.

In 1Q08, the number of FTTx subscribers showed consistent growth with continued dominance in the Asia-Pacific region; DSL shipments, in contrast, dove while CMTS shipments soared.

Joint analysis with Ericsson Consumer Labs examining consumer, service and device trends

France Telecom has an extensive, well-developed international wholesale operation and a national wholesale unit which is achieving double-digit revenue growth, although the core aim of the latter is to support the group's retail business.

Analysis of the customer segments targeted for mobile broadband services in Western Europe, and the strategies available to mobile and integrated operators to maximise their mobile broadband opportunity.

Ovum recommends that any organisation investing in archiving also invests in certified records management software to support retention, and the assured removal of the content when no longer required.

This report provides an overview of selected UK operators' brand strategies. This includes the history of selected brands, how operators rebrand and a qualitative analysis of the success of rebranding.

In Western Europe, the mobile broadband market has grown sharply in recent months and this trend is expected to continue. In this report we assess what is driving the market and the potential barriers to uptake.

In March 2008, Ovum addressed telecom equipment vendor services in a report titled "Services business is key to infrastructure vendor profits." In this report we provide updated market size and vendor share estimates for that segment.

NXTcomm 2008 was short on optical announcements, but the market remains strong evidenced by the bandwidth growth in metro and core backbone networks and the insatiable thirst by operators for 40G and 100G transmission.

Many telcos now see themselves as customer centric businesses, but what does the customer actually experience in reality? This report looks at customer experience in the telecommunications vertical, what the term means from the telco's perspective, the i

Flash memory has emerged almost overnight as a form of mass data centre storage, fitting between disk and DRAM memory in terms of price and performance. It will be of most benefit in centralized rather than server-based storage.

Alfresco provides 'good enough' open source content management technology. It provides a good alternative to SharePoint for Office 2003 but needs to boost its market reach.

SingTel has developed an ICT package that was one of the three winners of the SME Infocomm Package (SIP) tender. Other selected consortiums are led by DP Bureau and iCELL Network.

LinkedIn, the online resource for professionals with 23 million members world-wide, has been dubbed the social network for grown ups in a bid to distinguish it from the big horizontal networks.

Tibco has agreed to buy struggling Insightful, a provider of statistical data analysis and data mining software for $25m. The deal is expected to close at the end of August. Insightful's technologies will complement Tibco's fast-growing business optimiza

The New South Wales State Government in Australia has awarded a A$115 million contract to SAP for administration systems in schools and technical colleges. Steve Hodgkinson casts a wary eye over the horizon.

Back in March we commented on the move by telcos into managed telepresence and high-definition videoconferencing. Now it is the turn of the vendor to be making noise in this fast-developing market. At this month's Infocomm there were several announcement

Teliris has announced the launch of its new immersive collaboration tools - Teliris Interact Easel and Teliris Interact Surface. Teliris, which can reasonably claim to have launched the first full-size telepresence meeting-room services in 2001, plans to

Neuf Cegetel is the leading alternative telecommunications operator in France created through the merger of the two altnets, Neuf Telecom and Cegetel, in 2005. This evaluation takes a look at Neuf Cegetel's strategy.

Wholesalers are realising the importance of how they handle the interactions with their customers and prospects, with increasing talk of putting the customer first, or at the centre of an organisation. Ovum principal analyst David James reports.

The UK mobile market is mature and fiercely competitive. Mobile players are enticing existing subscribers to churn with handset subsidies, free gifts and discounted deals. UK MNOs must focus on retaining their existing mobile subscribers.

Nowhere in Western Europe has the mobile broadband market grown as dramatically as in Austria, where users substituting fixed broadband lines for mobile is a reality.

IBM is the latest software vendor to try and turn the screw on Microsoft's Office franchise, announcing a support service to complement the freely-available Symphony desktop software suite which it launched last September. By doing so IBM hopes to raise