says. “Nokia has been stumbling for a couple years trying to find its way back to enterprise dominance. Samsung is an also-ran in the enterprise smart phone market. This gives HP a great opportunity to create an enterprise smart phone offering with Palm.”
The HP-Palm announcement came on the heels of CenturyLink’s agreement to buy Qwest Communications for $10.6 billion in a deal that will make it the third largest local carrier in the U.S. The acquisition should position CenturyLink solidly in the 33 states that it serves for at least the next five years, according to wireless and telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.
Twitter acquired Cloudhopper for an undisclosed price to grow and scale Twitter’s SMS service. Cloudhopper seeks to refine and make efficient mobile messaging technology
In the solutions arena, several ISVs announced that they were joining forces
In the solutions arena, several ISVs announced that they were joining forces. Tekelec picked up two companies (Camiant, a policy control firm, and Blueslice, an SDM player) with the aim of creating one of the industry’s most indepth solutions for the intelligence layer of all-IP networks. Also, Kabira Technologies was scooped up by SOA/BPM player TIBCO Software, and Clarity and Omnix announced that they would be merging. It’s an interesting trend of industry consolidation, and we’ll be watching to see if the OSS/BSS space continues to fold into itself over the rest of the year. There are signs that additional acquisitions are in the works, so we’ll stay tuned.
for businesses through its software and infrastructure offerings. Twitter said it had been working with Cloudhopper for the last 8 months and was processing close to 1 billion SMS tweets every 30 days. Cloudhopper founder Joe Lauer and Kristin Kanaar, director of carrier integration, will be joining the Twitter management.
Mergers and acquisitions weren’t limited to the U.S. market. Vivendi completed the purchase of virtually all the outstanding shares in Brazilian telephony and Internet operator Global Village Telecom (GVT). As a result of the purchases Vivendi has acquired 93.58 percent of the free float, boosting its total equity stake to 99.17 percent of GVT’s shares.
Some Combinations Fail
However, not all mergers proceeded as planned. The Swiss Competition Commission blocked the combination of France Telecom S.A. and TDC A/S subsidiaries in Switzerland, Orange Communications S.A and Sunrise Communications AG.
“France Telecom and TDC are disappointed and surprised by this decision as they strongly believe that the contemplated combination and the substantial commitments that they had proposed to undertake would have benefited the Swiss Consumer. Without this combination, Swisscom's dominant position in the Swiss telecommunications market would be maintained,” France Telecom said, adding
Pipeline
Publishing, Volume 6, Issue 12
