Reports from Carphone Warehouse report a 13% year on year growth in revenue to £789m for the six months ending on 30 September.

The growth represented performance across the company’s two main arms of business – broadband and retail.

Carphone Warehouse chief financial officer, Roger Taylor, said the independent retailer has had a ‘very strong start to the year,’ adding that ‘revenue growth has been slightly ahead of expectations’.

Best Buy
At the start of 2009 Best Buy Canada got in Partnership with Carphone warehouse, this partnership lead the opening of Best Buy Mobile “Store Within a Store” at all Best Buy locations. During October 2009, the website BestBuy.com had a face-lift. The font used in the site was changed to the font seen in the alternative logo that appeared in 2008.

Best Buy operates numerous Best Buy Mobile stores within the U.S. as a joint venture with The Carphone Warehouse, there are currently 13 of these stand-alone stores, mainly in Manhattan.

Best Buy Mobile connections increase by 2%
Best Buy Europe in which Carphone has a 50% share, grew 4% year on year from £1,617m to £1674m, with mobile connections growing by 2% to 5.9 million during that period.

Best Buy has had a massive impact on CPW revenue, which is no surprise when you look at the array of services and products offered.

Services/Products:

• Wider variety of mobile phones than other telecom stores
• ‘Unlocked’ phones that can be used on any GSM network
• Products included, Computers, Home Theaters, Musical Instruments, Cameras, Camcorders, Mobile Phones, iPods, MP3 players, Music, Movies, Video Games, Home Appliances, GPS Systems and more
• Best Buy continues to wow customers with some of the most impressive Cyber Monday deals & discounts yet on everything in their store – discounts go has high as $1000 off a selection of very popular products

Best Buy Mobile also offers services similar to those from carrier stores, including, warranty service on any phone, loan phones, and the most popular carriers.

Carphone and ‘Big Box’ Stores
The company is also on track to open its ‘Big Box’ stores in Spring 2010.

Carphone Warehouse CEO, Charles Dunstone said: ‘Within Best Buy Europe we maintain our guidance for full year operating free cash flow of £50m, after all “Big Box” investment. We also now expect our share of net income for the full year to be at the top end of the existing £30m to £40m guidance range.

‘Our guidance for Best Buy branded “Big Box” store openings remains unchanged. We remain fully on track to open our first stores in Spring 2010 and we are making good progress in finalising further store openings.

‘In the US, Best Buy Mobile continues its very strong development and we remain confident in our guidance for a material increase in its profit contribution in the current financial year.’

There is a big push on all electrical products not just mobile phones, CPW have also reported a positive feedback for its ‘Wireless World’ stores and said it expects to see increased numbers by March 2010.

The search giant wants its own Android device.

Probably the best indicator that there’s an iPhone killer in our midst is that there are now regular rumours about potential Android phones. Even Dell’s got one of ‘em.

The Google Phone rumour is a special one though – for the second time in the last month, word is going that Google wants to launch a Google-branded smartphone running its own Android operating system. According to TechCrunch, Google will partner with HTC to create an Android super-phone that will be thinner than the iPhone and Motorola’s Droid, now out in the US. LG and Samsung are also potential partners.

The phone will apparently be sold directly to consumers as well as via retailers, which would make a nice change to all the exclusivity agreements around here.

We saw Samsung back in May 2008 launch the first Mobile TV Slider Phone for Europe – the Samsung  P960! They were also the world’s first DVB-H mobile TV phone that supports both of European mobile TV standards, Digital Video Broadcast – Convergence of Broadcast and Mobile Service (DVB-CBMS) and Open Mobile Alliance Mobile Broadcast Service Enabler Suite (OMA-BCAST).

Nokia has followed Samsung and announced on the 18th November 2009 a new phone, that will display TV pictures via DVB-H technology along with a built-in Electronic Program Guide (EPG), that allows you to create personal channel lists.

Nokia have been reading up, It has been estimated that more than 300 million people worldwide will watch TV via their mobile phones by 2012. The new phone is the Nokia 5330 and is priced at 155 Euros – it is currently being aimed at Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Holland in Europe plus territories in Asia, India and Africa.

The Nokia 5330 may ring a bell, Nokia launched the Nokia 5330 XpressMusic back in March 2009, the features on the phones are similar, with a 2.4 inch QVGA display, fast data transfer via 3G technology, a 3.5mm headphone socket to your TV programs in comfort, a 3.2-megapixel camera and access to Nokia’s brand new Ovi Store. You can also access YouTube, MySpace and Facebook!

We have no details as to when the phone will be launched in the UK, but it looks like it could be a popular one.

Mobiles are very popular in the UK and China, whereas the USA has always been a little behind on the mobile phone front. New reports say the US is catching up with Europe, it does remain a fragmented market where distributors and dealers are strong still.

The UK mobile phone market we have five networks, O2, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and Three, this will soon become four with the merge of Orange and T-Mobile. These networks serve a population of around 61 million!

When you look at the US population, they have around 305 million people with around 75 network providers across 50 states.  75 networks – the competition must be strong, yet with the size of the population, there’s enough fish in the sea or customers in the country. In the UK, the mobile penetration runs at something like 120%, with customers taking several airtime connections. In the US market the market penetration is 85% which is 260 million people.

Ovum analyst Steven Hartley says: “Network operators have massive gaps in coverage and can only claim national coverage by striking roaming deals with others, or by buying up regional competitors.

“It’s why the US market has always been perceived to be some way behind Europe – the mass of network operators has been busy  consolidating, rather than pushing the boundaries. But the US resembles any other well-developed mobile market now; it’s just taken longer to do so.”

In the US there are four national carriers:

• Verizon Wireless takes a 32 per cent share with 87.5 million subscribers
• AT&T takes 29 per cent with 79.5 million subscribers
• Sprint Nextel has 18 per cent with 48.8 million
• T-Mobile has 12 per cent with 33.5 million on its books

There are lots of smaller operators that link out to the US population with more than one million subscribers – US Cellular with six million, Metro PCS with six million and Leap Wireless with 4.5 million.

In the near future there are talks of the networks being cleaned up, so there are less little operators and more main dominating services.

Like in the UK the US experiences problems with network coverage, in the UK there are 5 networks fighting for coverage, in the US there are 75 operators. Look at the size of us and look at the size of the UK, the land needed to be covered with signal in huge. With huge areas of land to cover, a lot of money is needed to have masts put up.

There is a lot of land to cover and with such a large area, there’s constant problems with ‘loss  of signal’.

Consequently, the US has emerged as a major market for femtocells. Consumers and businesses are deploying them as personal network masts to boost coverage blackspots.

Global Insight analyst Seth Wallis-Jones says: “Coverage is still a serious issue. Many areas don’t have any signal at all. It’s the prime reason femtocells are picking up in the US more than anywhere else – the investment to cover all the US is too great.”

Lots of development is needed in the US, but as mobile phones start to become more and more popular the development work, is a must not a want.

The Chinese based technology company called Huawei are going to release multiple mobile phones using the Google Android operating system in the next couple of months.

The company are going to release a range of Android mobiles phones in Europe, the Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The Huawei Pulse is already being sold by T-Mobile in the UK! The T-Mobile Pulse is an HSDPA mobile phone, featuring Wi-Fi connectivity and GPS for mapping.  The Pulse comes with 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, but no flash, with T-Mobile claiming that to achieve the slim 160 x 62.5 x 13.5mm dimensions, some features had to be omitted.

Huawei uses low prices to gain from its china base quickly and to build up its main business in networking equipment. The Pulse phone is aimed at the lower end customers, who are looking for a low cost mobile phone.

More phones will be on their way from Huawei and entering the UK market.