Euronews: Vodafone Stung in Southern Europe

Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , the untapped potential of Africa and Nokia Networks provide the focus for today's trawl through the EMEA headlines.

Southern Europe continues to be a problem for Vodafone, which reported a net loss of £1.88 billion (US$2.98 billion) in its first-half results. An impairment charge of £5.9 billion ($9.37 billion) related to its struggling operations in Italy and Spain dragged the operator's numbers down, though emerging markets provided some grounds for optimism, with 11 percent growth in India and 18 percent growth in Turkey providing a couple of highlights. (See Vodafone Posts H1 Loss of £1.88B, Euronews: Vodafone Profits Slip as Europe Suffers and Euronews: Vodafone Suffers in Southern Europe.)

Vodafone's South African unit, Vodacom Pty. Ltd. , is looking to make acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa, reports Reuters. Vodacom wants to make up ground on MTN Group Ltd. , which, outside South Africa, reigns supreme on the continent.

Also on the make in Africa is Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , which tells Bloomberg that it predicts a 30 percent rise in revenues from southern and eastern Africa during the next three years as mobile penetration grows.

Huawei isn't the only vendor looking to benefit from increasing mobile penetration in sub-Saharan Africa, with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Alvarion Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR), Bluwan S.A. and Ceragon Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq: CRNT) among the vendors announcing deals in the region today as the annual AfricaCom trade show opens its doors. (See Africa's Wireless Gold Rush, Mobile's Impact on Sub-Saharan Africa and Bluwan Wins African Broadband Deal.)

Nokia Networks claimed the second largest share of the global LTE radio access network (RAN) market by revenue in the third quarter of 2012, a marked improvement from a year ago when it was only the fourth largest player, according to a new Dell'Oro Group report. In the Asia/Pacific region, NSN bagged the top spot. (See NSN Claims #2 Spot in LTE Market , Euronews: NSN Has Huawei in Its Sights and Euronews: NSN Overhauls LTE Offer.)

U.K. broadband provider TalkTalk saw first-half revenues fall 1.89 percent year-on-year to £828 million ($1.31 billion), although core earnings were up 6.2 percent to £155 million ($246 million). The company has high hopes for its recently launched YouView-based TV offer, for which it has secured 29,000 customers to date. (See TalkTalk Sees Revenue Slip to £828M in H1.)

Naguib Sawiris's plan to take a minority stake in Telecom Italia (TIM) for around €2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) is unlikely to go down well with the group of controlling shareholders led by Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF), reports Bloomberg.

Is this the future of TV? Orange France 's Transmedia Lab has teamed up with Lexis Numérique to create Alt-Minds, an online investigation game that, it says here, "takes players to the far reaches of Europe on the trail of five researchers who have mysteriously disappeared." Light Reading has the same problem with its editors...

In other Euronews:

• TeliaSonera's Kcell Proceeds With IPO
• Allot Offers Video Optimization

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading