Not surprisingly, Nokia Siemens Networks has ended its TDD technology cooperation with Chinese vendor Huawei. The two jointly own TD Tech, a TD-SCDMA technology joint venture established by Siemens Communications and Huawei in 2005.

With the acquisition of Motorola (NYSE:MOT), which has been focusing heavily on TD-LTE, it appears NSN can afford to go it alone in the TDD space.

NSN recently inaugurated a TD-LTE Open Lab at its Chinese Hangzhou facility, and kicked off a nationwide TD-LTE road show in China. China Mobile is keen on a nationwide TD-LTE deployment

For more:
- see this Marbridge Daily article
- read this Cellular-News article

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Having had two big news days in a row last week, Nokia Siemens Networks' (NSN) good news came to a halt of sorts. Having previously been optimistic about its market share prospects for 2010, NSN now says it will likely only maintain its market share in 2010.

NSN blamed  the "ongoing industry-wide issue related to security clearances in India, which is preventing the completion of product sales to customers and shortages of certain components that are affecting the broader industry."

While NSN didn't report significant losses like it did in 2009, revenues for the second quarter fell 5 percent from the previous year but were 12 percent better than the first quarter. Operating loss was $230 million, an improvement both from 2009 and the previous quarter. Minus one-time charges and special items, NSN recorded an operating profit of $65.6 million.

Last week NSN announced plans to acquire Motorola's (NYSE:MOT) wireless network business minus the iDEN business. The move gives the company strength in the North American and Japanese markets. In addition, the joint venture won a $7-billion deal with LightSquared, a new nationwide company backed by Harbinger Capital that will sell LTE services on a wholesale basis.

When it comes to India, which recently auctioned both 3G and mobile broadband licenses, major infrastructure awards have been delayed over the role Chinese suppliers might play given security concerns surrounding companies such as Huawei, which is constantly been rumored to have ties to the Chinese military, and ZTE. The Indian government is mulling over a decision, prompting operators there to wait on all contracts until they know whether Chinese vendors can bid for deals.

Nokia revealed during its earnings call that NSN would have recorded about $260 million in additional revenue in the quarter had Indian security clearances been obtained. Although other vendors haven't been public about the delays in India, their revenues have been impacted as well.

For more:
- see this Light Reading article
- take a look at this Rethink Wireless article
- check out the FierceWireless Q2 earnings page

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Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) saw its profits double in the second quarter but analysts were disappointed with the vendor's sales numbers. The company's sales declined 7.9 percent to $6.5 billion down from $7.05 billion on a net profit of $260 million. Ericsson said that the market conditions the company saw in the second half of 2009 with mixed operator investment behavior prevailed in the first half of this year. In addition, a shortage of components hampered the vendor's ability to ship base stations.

"There was some mixed operator investment opportunities across the world," said CFO Jan Frykhammer in an interview. "Some operators are investing more in data growth."

Frykhammer said Ericsson managed to ramp up the inbound supply for semiconductor components during the quarter despite a severe shortage of components and shipped base stations in volume late in the quarter, which impacted the vendor's balance sheet. "We will continue to be impacted throughout the year, and we're working hard to improve that," he said.

Frykhammer reiterated that the long-term prospects of the industry are strong given the significant growth potential of mobile broadband services.

The North American market was a bright spot for the Swedish firm with sales increasing 128 percent year-over-year and 37 percent sequentially. The growth was attributed to strong data growth which meant operators increased their investments in network capacity. In addition, during the quarter Ericsson said it started volume deliveries of LTE equipment, most likely to Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ), which plans to launch 25 to 30 markets by the end of the year. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are Verizon's radio access network vendors for LTE.

For more:
- see this FierceWireless article
- see this Wall Street Journal article (sub. req.)
- check out the FierceWireless Q2 earnings page

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Wireless data revenues for the country's two largest operators, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and AT&T (NYSE:T), continued to be the growth engine for the wireless businesses of both companies in the second quarter.

Verizon, which added 1.4 million subscribers in the second quarter, announced that retail data revenue was up 23.4 percent to $4.7 billion, a jump from $3.9 billion last year. Average revenue per user grew almost a percent to $51.56 last quarter with monthly sales from data plans increasing 19 percent to $17.85 per customer.

During a conference call with analysts, John Killian executive vice president and chief financial officer of Verizon, said Verizon has no immediate plans to migrate to usage-based data pricing plans, refuting a rumor that Verizon could be launching a tiered pricing plan as early as this week on the heals of AT&T's move in that direction. However, Killian said Verizon is studying the possibility of adding such plans for 3G. It's clear that the operator will launch tiered pricing for LTE when it launches its 25 to 30 markets by the end of the year.

For AT&T, which added 1.6 million net subscribers, wireless data revenues increased to $4.4 billion, up $936 million from the year-earlier quarter. The number of AT&T subscribers with wireless data plans was up 24 percent over the previous year. The company activated 3.2 million iPhones in the quarter, its largest number of quarterly iPhone activations ever. The carrier said around 27 percent of those activations were customers new to AT&T.

AT&T CFO Rick Lindner said that early results from the company's move to tiered data pricing plans have been encouraging. In particular, he said the company had expected a lot of customers to migrate to the lower price point ($15 per month for 200 MB of data) but a large portion migrated to the $25 per month for 2 GB of data plan. In addition, he said AT&T is seeing benefits from lowering the point of entry so customers can move into the integrated device category and try data services. "We believe over time they will migrate to higher-tiered plans," he said.

Another important segment analysts are beginning to hone in on is the connected devices segment, which is expected to drive growth in the coming years. In that category, AT&T outpaced Verizon, noted Ken Hyers, senior analyst with Technology Business Research (TBR). Verizon added 264,000 machine-to-machine (M2M) and connected device connections, which includes services such as business telematics and consumer offerings such as eReaders. Meanwhile, AT&T added 896,000 connected device connections in the quarter thanks to sales of Amazon's Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook eReaders, Hyers said.

"TBR believes that connected devices represents one of the most significant new growth markets for mobile operators and believes that AT&T is much more aggressive in this space than Verizon Wireless," Hyers said.

For more:
- see this this FierceWireless article
- read this Connected Planet article
- see this other FierceWireless article

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Reliance Industries, India's industrial conglomerate that snatched up startup ISP Infotel Broadband Services after it won the lone nationwide BWA license for $2.74 billion, now plans to deploy WiMAX in the 2.3 GHz band instead of TD-LTE technology.

Following the conclusion of the auction in June, Reliance indicated it would use TD-LTE technology, just as Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) had declared to use TD-LTE in the markets it won licenses.

It appears that TD-LTE isn't as mature as once thought, especially for the Indian market, which needs cheaper equipment to compete for the mass market. Reliance cannot afford to wait until that happens to tap into the highly underserved Indian market. According to a report in Rethink Wireless, which cites unnamed company sources, Reliance has begun to trial WiMAX, including a testing kit from Alvarion and and Samsung.

Other winners of last month's auction were Aircel, which won eight circles, Bharti Airtel, which one four, Tikona in five and Augere in one circle. Tikona and Augere are committed to WiMAX while the two companies have not yet made a decision.

For more:
- see this Rethink Wireless article

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Qualcomm's intentions in India could shake up WiMAX's potential foothold
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AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent announced they have identified a flaw that impacts uplink performance on HSUPA-enabled wireless devices. Discovered about a month ago, the software defect throttles upload speeds to 100 Kbps under certain conditions. "AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect--triggered under certain conditions--that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than 2 percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices," according to an official statement from the companies. Article