Mobile phone operators mull creating rival to Google

Some of Europe's biggest telecoms groups are to hold talks next week about creating a mobile phone search engine which could challenge US giants Google and Yahoo!.

Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and American network Cingular will come together for talks at the industry's annual trade show in Barcelona, Spain, Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported.

The operators believe that creating their own search engine could help them to "retain a greater share of advertising revenues", it added.

"There is a big play in mobile search that we need to be part of, and we are exploring those options at a very high level," an unnamed British executive at one of the companies involved told the paper.

The implications for existing deals between the networks and the US search companies are not clear -- Google has signed up Vodafone, Hutchison's 3 and T-Mobile, while Yahoo! has signed up Vodafone and 3.

Source YahooNews

Cheaper Mobiles Boom, Chipmakers feel Squeeze

Mobile phone sales may be booming worldwide but many suppliers of component chips aren't happy.

Chip makers are complaining that strong demand for affordable cellphones in emerging markets has begun to hurt their sales and profits because cheap phones contain fewer chips than expensive smartphones.

The sudden pain among chip makers is significant because the world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia, has been feeling the impact of the shift to cheaper phones for years, without it apparently impacting its main chip suppliers.

Analysts point out that rich consumers in developed nations are not buying expensive phones the way they used to.

With the notable exception of Japanese-Swedish Sony Ericsson , which had a stellar fourth quarter with its expensive Walkman music handsets and Cybershot camera phones, Motorola, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics all reported a shift to cheaper phones and price pressure in medium and higher priced models.

Sony Ericsson is proving that consumers will buy more expensive models only when there is a clear benefit, for instance because they contain a high quality digital camera, said analyst Niels de Zwart at Rabo Securities.

source: Yahoo!News