This sums up much of my thinking - I hold a few and swing trade a few and even trade intraday sometimes ......

I think there is a lot of slack that management can cut out of the costs and would also anticipate sector consolidation ..... good value currently and have been holding their own in a falling market. Lot of US interest.

ains


Edited by Dominic White
(Filed: 08/02/2003)


Texting makes MmO2 sexy but it's also risky

More and more Britons are discovering the joys of textual intercourse. In the month of December, we fired off more than 50m mobile messages a day, and next Friday (that's Valentine's Day, folks, in case you'd forgotten) we'll send considerably more than that.



It emerged this week that the chief beneficiary of this craze is MmO2 . BT's former mobile phone division revealed that it gets a higher proportion of revenues from texting than any of the other three operators.

Revenue from messaging grew at its fastest rate ever in the last quarter, up 19pc, and data services as a proportion of MmO2 's revenue rose to 17.7pc from 15.6pc.

More good news was the rise in MmO2 's average revenues per customer. ARPUs, as nerdy analysts like to dub them, grew by 5pc to 243 in the UK and by 9pc in Germany to 212.

MmO2 now has 19.1m subscribers and in Britain it may be the smallest player, with 11.9m users, but it is growing faster than its rivals - testament to the success of its rebranding from BT Cellnet.

Only 114,000 of its 503,000 new UK subscribers were higher-spending contract customers, but MmO2 claims its pre-pay customers have started spending more than before.

Customer growth in Germany, which continues to be dominated by T-Mobile and Vodafone, is less impressive and the MmO2 share price ascribes little or no value to this part of the business.

That seems unfair, given the fact that the group has attracted higher-spending customers and has made a decent fist of turning the operation around. An eventual sale or merger is almost as inevitable as a disposal of the Dutch unit, which is losing customers.

MmO2 's larger rival Vodafone is trading on a free cashflow yield of 6pc, while at 49p this week, MmO2 's equivalent valuation remains negative. It might not have Vodafone's scale or profitability but there is room for upside. A risky buy.

25 Feb 2003 17:07 GMT

KPN, mm02 scrap 3G linkup plans

AMSTERDAM, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Dutch telecoms group KPN KPN.N said on Tuesday it and British mobile phone operator mm02 had scrapped tentative plans to join forces in building a third generation network in the Netherlands.
KPN spokesman Marinus Potman said the two phone operators had previously signed a memorandum of understanding to explore cooperating on the rollout of third-generation mobile networks in the Netherlands, but had since decided not to go ahead.

"We signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the possibility for combined activity for 3G in the Netherlands. We came to the conclusion it wouldn't bring much synergy so we stopped the operation," Potman told Reuters.

Mm02 is active in the Netherlands through its unit 02.

KPN was not seeking an alternative partner and expected to go it alone in building the network, Potman said, adding that the Dutch company still expected to begin rolling out UMTS services in Germany by the end of 2003, as previously announced.

Mobile madness makes UK WAP happy
10:45 Friday 28th February 2003
Reuters


The troubled mobile phone companies will be laughing all the way to the bank if handset data usage continues to grow at the current rate
British mobile users downloaded 524 million Internet pages to their phones in January, jumping by a quarter on December figures, as sales of new handsets and marketing of services increased interest in cell-phone surfing.

The daily average of 17 million compares with 13.5 million in December and 12 million in November, and coincided with the sale over Christmas of hundreds of thousands of new phones geared to make mobile gaming and Internet access simpler.

Like rivals in other countries, Britain's four operators -- Vodafone, Orange, mmO2 and T-Mobile -- are very keen to increase the amount of money they earn from non-voice services.

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) said there were now around 25 million Internet-enabled mobile handsets in Britain, and it expects to see a total of eight billion wireless application protocol (WAP) page impressions this year.

The most popular services included downloads of ringtones and screensavers, with demand for games rising, the MDA said.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Text/SMS messaging totally insecure

Canary sings, "I can read your texts"

By Tony Dennis: Friday 28 February 2003, 10:41


A LITTLE BIRD working for one of the major British GSM operators has revealed to us just how insecure the whole text/SMS messaging service really is.
In order to offer SMS (Short Message Service) - otherwise known as texting - operators install an SMSC (Short Message Service Centre). Many of these SMSCs come from software specialists such as LogicaCMG or Schlumberger SEMA.

In essence, an SMSC is like a giant store-and-forward email server.

Our canary maintains that the typical time a text message stays stored on the SMSC is around 15 days. Worryingly our bird says that text messages can actually be viewed by ANY customer services advisor. " There's no password or permissions or anything," the canary adds.

"Many advisors amuse themselves on slow days by picking numbers at random and reading the messages, and then following the trail to the sender and jumping from person to person like this. It's also possible to spoof text messages through the [SMSC], and make them look like they've come from anywhere or anyone, just like with email."

More to the point if a member of the public does want to take some sort of action regarding a nuisance SMS, the operator does genuinely possess the ability to interrogate the SMSC and discover all the requisite information.

Most operators won't actually admit this to the public, as it could easily generate masses of customer complaints which would be unprofitable to pursue. The good news, however, is that if you ask the customer services department of your mobile phone company very nicely indeed, they will reveal the number for a nuisance calls bureau which can investigate SMS complaints too. So now you know.

OOM outperforming sector and market on lowish volumes - up 1.05%


ains



3G network may carry adult video

Richard Wray
Monday March 3, 2003
The Guardian

The "launch" party for Britain's newest mobile phone network, 3, will be a very mute affair this evening in keeping with the company's low-key roll-out

ADVERTISEMENT

strategy - the public cannot yet buy the phones.

Insiders say, however, that the company's soft launch may have a hard core.

The network will draw attention to what it sees as the big advantage of its 3G technology over the traditional four British networks - the ability to download, view and even send video images.

The company has already made extensive use in its advertising of its agreement with the FA Premier League, that allows it to provide video highlights of games.

But 3 has so far been reluctant to talk about other content which insiders say it has also considered making available over its network: pornography.

Insiders who worked with 3 in the run-up to its soft launch said that the company has streamed hours of pornographic material over its network. One technician who worked with BBC Technology, which 3 has contracted to deal with its video content, said the company has obviously investigated adult services.

"There was quite a lot of sex and that caused a few eyebrows to be raised at the BBC, with questions about can we really process this?" he said.

But a spokesman for 3 refused to comment on whether the company has any designs on making adult services available over its network.

He did admit that every mass media market -such as video, publishing and the internet - has tended to attract pornographers. "We are assuming that in the long run 3G will be no different," he said.

Prospective customers have been able to sign up for 3's service for just over a week. But the company has yet to fulfil any of those orders which may be delayed for several weeks.

Its three UK high street stores also recently opened for business, allowing people to see the new technology, which 3 will be retailing through selected branches of Carphone Warehouse, Dixons, Phones4U and The Link.

But while the last big launch in the British mobile phone industry - Vodafone Live - involved a gala bash, 3 is keeping itself under wraps.

PARIS (AFX) - Orange SA said it plans to increase the price of SMS messages containing games and chat, but said the price of SMS text messages sent between its customers will remain unchanged.
A report in today's La Lettre de L'Expansion said the company is considering increasing prices for SMS messages from the end of March.

"We have not planned an increase in SMS tariffs," said a spokesperson for the company, who added that SMS messages containing games and chat will be charged as an 'added value' service from the end of March.

These messages are currently charged at the same price as text messages.

They account for around 5 pct of Orange's total number of messages sent, or 3 bln eur in 2002, according to the spokesperson.

paris@afxnews.com

11:02 Monday 10th March 2003
Reuters


Handset sales were up 6 percent in 2002, beating analysts' estimates by several million - and Nokia remains the market leader
An end-of-year buying spree by consumers lifted sales of mobile phones well above forecasts in 2002, a research group said on Monday, adding that it expects even stronger growth in 2003.

A total of 423 million handsets were sold to consumers in 2002, up 6 percent from 400 million units in 2001 and several million more than forecast, said Gartner Dataquest.



Market shares of the five key players changed little from the third quarter, with Finland's Nokia still firmly in the lead and selling more than twice the number of handsets than its nearest competitor, Motorola. However, Nokia no longer gained market share over its smaller rivals.

"We've seen phenomenal growth in countries like Germany and the Asia Pacific region," said Gartner analyst Ben Wood. Growth, especially in mature markets, was driven by consumers who replaced their old handsets with new ones earlier than expected.

Subsidies by mobile operators, crucial to push consumers into getting a new phones, was similar to previous quarters, meaning that the attractiveness of new products and the marketing were behind the sales increase, Wood said.

"We expect growth will increase, to perhaps 10 (percent) to 15 percent this year," Wood said. It would be the first double-digit percentage growth year since 2000 when sales climbed some 50 percent to more than 400 million but then stagnated.

To maintain growth rates phone makers are focusing more on replacement sales because many consumers already have a phone -- some one billion people around the world now use a mobile phone. This means manufacturers need to offer new features to give consumers a reason to ditch their old device.

Although a lot of attention is being paid to new colour screens and camera phones, most of the year-end sales surge was in basic handsets, which now contain more features than before, such as voice dialing and musical ring tones.

"The advent of new handsets with cameras and colour screens has encouraged people to go to the shops where they found that low-end phones also have a lot of features," Wood said.

He warned that operators were preparing to cut phone subsidies, which could hurt sales in 2003.

Nokia's fourth-quarter market share was 36.8 percent, barely changed from 36.9 percent in the year-ago period. It ended 2002 with a 35.8 percent share, up from 35 percent in 2001.

Wood said operators were increasingly concerned about Nokia's dominance. "They're looking at other handset makers to close the gap," he said.

Gartner measures sales to end-users, while rival market researchers, which have published 2002 statistics several weeks ago, measure shipments into the sales channel.

Motorola had a fourth-quarter share of 15.6 percent, versus 14.7 percent in the year-ago period, while its full-year share was 15.3 percent versus 14.8 percent the previous year.

Industry No. 3 Samsung stalled in the fourth quarter compared with the third, as the South Korean government halted shipments in an effort to stop all phone subsidies, but it still ended 2002 with a 9.8 percent market share, up from 7.1 percent in 2001.

Germany's Siemens, overtaken by Samsung last year, also continued to grow, ending the year at 8.2 percent versus 7.4 percent in 2001.

Japenese-Swedish partnership Sony Ericsson, whose full-year market share dwindled further to 5.5 percent from 6.7 percent, turned the corner in the fourth quarter by reversing the long string of quarter-on-quarter declines.

Sounds like a good revenue earner - shares leading the top 100 risers intraday





Tuesday March 11, 09:08 AM




MmO2 to trial music-over-mobile service

LONDON (Reuters) - Mobile phone operator mmO2 has said it will start testing a new system in May that will allow customers to download chart hits over its mobile network.


With brand partner MTV, owned by Viacom , and music groups including Bertelsmann's BMG providing the tunes, mmO2 said the quality of the sound would be similar to existing MP3 digital music ADVERTISEMENT

players.


The trial, which will run on digital music players made by Germany's Siemens , fits into mmO2's strategy to boost the amount of money its earns from customers by selling them new, multimedia services on top of voice phone calls.


"It is also good news for record companies, who want to find new mass-market sales channels," Kent Thexton, chief marketing and data officer of mmO2 , said in a statement.


Free 30-second samples should download in about 12 seconds, while full songs would take about 90 seconds, mmO2 said. The trials will start in May in Britain and Germany and are expected to lead to a launch later this year, it added.

sector taking a hit this morning in a down market but oom outperforming at this time



O2 to offer chart hits via mobile phones
Tuesday, March 11 10:02:26

(BizWorld)

Mobile operator mmO2, which owns O2 in Ireland, will shortly begin trials shortly of a new music-over-mobile service using GPRS technology.

The new music service will enable customers to select, retrieve and store the latest chart hits via their GPRS-enabled mobile handset onto a specially designed digital music player.
The trials, starting in May in the UK and Germany, are expected to lead to the launch of a commercial service later this year and would be available in Ireland soon after.


The music will be provided by MTV and will include both the UK and European top 20 hits. Customers will need a digital music player, similar to the existing MP3 player, which can be plugged in to the mobile handset. The customer then selects a track and chooses either to hear a free 30-second clip or purchase the entire track. The digital music player can be unclipped from the mobile handset and used as a regular personal music device.

"Customers researched were very enthusiastic about the service with 76pc of 16-24 year olds expressing a strong interest. It is also good news for record companies, who want to find new mass-market sales channels," said Kent Thexton, marketing officer with mmO2.

With around 19 million customers, mmO2 has secured 3G licences in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Still gaining ground and nearly 5% up against 1% for the sector and about half that for the market


O2 to start 'music over mobile' trials

London, March 11 2003, (netimperative)



by Chris Lake

Wireless network operator mmO2 is to begin trials of its 'music over mobile' service in May, in conjunction with MTV and BMG, giving subscribers the chance to download tracks to a specially designed digital music player.


The Siemens-designed player can be connected to a GPRS-enabled handset in order to download songs, which will be provided by major record labels including BMG. The trial will help determine potential pricing, though it is expected that charges will go directly onto users' phone bills.

After songs have been downloaded, subscribers can disconnect the device from their handset and use it as a portable music player. Downloads will take about 90 seconds and the O2-branded digital music player will hold around 100 tracks on a memory card - users have the option of transferring tracks to a PC or purchasing additional memory cards to increase storage.

O2 claims this will be "the world's first music over mobile service" and aims to launch it commercially later in the year, subject to customer feedback from the trial, which will determine what kind of service they want and how much they are prepared to pay for it.

The trials will start in May in the UK and Germany. MTV will provide O2 with a range of music charts, which users can access through a specially-designed interface.

Initial research conducted by O2 suggests that more than three-quarters of 16-24 year olds have a "strong interest" in a wireless music service.

O2 said the service is "good news for record companies, who want to find new mass-market sales channels".

4 February 2003: Multimedia services boost O2

rumours of possibe m+a on german sub

Tue 11 Mar 2003


LONDON (SHARECAST) - Shares in mobile phone company mmO2 rose as it said it was keeping all its options open with regards to its Dutch business, and is estimating cost cuts of 1.2bn at the German unit through partnership deals over ten years.

Supermarket shares moved upwards as both Wm Morrison and Sainsbury's await news of the OFT's conclusions on the bid battle for Safeway. A decision is expected by the end of the month.


FTSE 100 - Risers

mmO2 (OOM) 43.00p +2.38%
Cost cutting measures at German unit through partnership deals

Video games and photos push mobile sales to 50m
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent
(Filed: 11/03/2003)


The mobile phone has cemented its position as Britain's most widely used gadget, with more than 50 million now in use.

Barely a household in Britain is not equipped with a mobile, according to the latest industry figures. They show that 49,860,000 mobile phone owners were registered at the end of last year.

With new subscribers joining at the rate of 100,000 a month, the 50 million mark was probably passed a month ago - more than two phones on average for every household.

With a population of around 59 million, Britain would appear to be virtually at saturation point, but the statistics hide the fact that a substantial number of Britons now have two or more mobile phones.


Youngsters in particular are driving the sales, attracted by features such as photo-messaging, e-mails, mobile video games and other fancy extras.

With the first of the so-called third generation of mobile phone service to be launched this month by 3, the report's authors predict our obsession with mobile phones can grow only more intense.

Already analysts are predicting that within a few years, more people could be watching the news or sports highlights on their mobile phones than on television.

The report by Continental Research paints a revealing picture of Britain's love affair with mobile phones. Back in 1990, there were just over a million users but sales blossomed in the late Nineties when firms introduced pre-pay handsets.

These allowed people - particularly children - who would not have passed credit checks to buy a mobile phone for the first time. It also meant parents could keep control over their children's mobile phone bills. They supplied them with pre-paid cards and their children remained safely contactable.

Today, more than two thirds of British mobiles are pre-paid, while a third are on contract, usually monthly bills, many of which are owned by businesses. One in five mobile owners is aged 15-24, a similar number are aged 25-34, but not all users are young - nearly one in 10 subscribers is 65 or older.

The report scotches the myth that women spend more time on the phone,at least in the realm of mobile communications.

It found men spend around 21 a month, while the average woman pays bills of around 16 a month.

Only four per cent of mobile owners have photo messaging but it has become the most wanted new feature, with around 14 per cent saying they will get it next time they upgrade their handset.

post something ains, we hate it when you stop

hack,splat,heheheheh

MADGE

BBC - Mobile phone firm O2 is embarking on an ambitious project to see if mobile phones and music can make money.

O2 has developed its own portable music player
The company is producing its own digital music player that can store and play back recorded tracks as well as download new ones via a handset.

Downloaded tracks are expected to cost around 1.50 and O2 is currently looking for keen music lovers to test the service in May.

If the trial proves a success, the commercial service could be launched before the end of 2003.

Faster downloads

The music player being made by O2 looks like the current crop of MP3 players and stores music on Compact Flash cards.

Once it is in the player it is yours, it's a permanent digital download

Leslie Golding, O2
Before now many companies, such as Musicwave in France and T-Mobile in Germany, have let people download short clips of popular tunes or ringtones derived from the same songs.

None have so far let people download and store entire tracks because the average size of a music file recorded in the popular MP3 format is 3.5 megabytes, which is larger than the entire free memory available on all but the most up to date phones.

Such files would take a long time to download to a handset even via the fast GPRS technology many mobile networks now offer.

O2 has got around these problems by using a compression technology called Microkosm from US company Chaoticom that lets a near-CD quality track download in two minutes.

A 64 megabyte Compact Flash card will hold about 100 Microkosm compressed music files.

Top tracks

Leslie Golding, head of music at O2, told BBC News Online that an eight-week trial would take place in May that will use 150 customers in the UK and 100 in Germany to test all aspects of the service.

Across Europe O2 has about 20 million customers.

Triallists will be able to listen to 30 second samples or stream and download entire tracks.

Users will get access to top 20 singles as well as top 10 best selling rock, dance, hip-hop and chill out tunes, each track they download will cost about 1.50.

Payments for tracks will be added to monthly phone bills or people can pay-as-they-go, said Mr Golding.

Downloaded music can be stored on a PC and listened to via the music player as many times as people want, he said.

"I do not believe in the idea of renting music," said Mr Golding. "Once it is in the player it is yours, it's a permanent digital download."

This looks good from earlier this week and helps to keep the shares close to the 50p resistance ...


O2 wins mammoth Masterfoods campaign

London, March 17 2003, (netimperative)



by Chris Lake

O2's Mobile Interactive Services unit has won a pitch to provide Masterfoods - owner of the Mars and Twix brands - with a huge text messaging competition that is expected to channel millions of prizes to winners.


Dubbed 'Chocollect', the instant win competition will see millions of chocolate brands - including Mars, Snickers, Twix, Bounty and Maltesers - labelled with promotional codes that can be sent by text to a short code number for 25p.

Entrants will recieve an immediate reply telling them if they have won. Prizes on offer range from a bar of chocolate to weekends away, as Masterfoods is running the competition in conjunction with marketing partners such as lastminute.com, Samsung, Xbox and Argos, which are all providing prizes.

Masterfoods expects 3m prizes to be despatched over the course of the next eight months. Players are asked to register their details online in order to collect credits and win prizes, transforming the promotion into a massive market research exercise.

O2 Online's Mobile Interactive Services team has created the SMS platform needed for the competition and is also providing consultancy, hosting and development services to support Masterfoods' largest marketing initiative in 2003. O2 said it will also develop games and ringtones for the promotion.

O2 Online CEO Laurence Alexander said: "The significance of this deal for the whole mobile marketing industry is immense. Masterfoods has made a huge leap by putting text messaging at the heart of its biggest marketing campaign this year.

"The approach being taken by Masterfoods will provide the most sophisticated use of text messaging as a marketing medium to date. It is proof positive of how mobile can be used by brands to build customer relationships."

Masterfoods has earmarked 10m to support the campaign.

Qualcomm: 3G will beat Wi-Fi
10:58 Wednesday 19th March 2003
Ben Charny, CNET News.com


The mobile phone technology giant is arguing that Wi-Fi will prove to be a short-lived phenomenon once 3G gets rolling
Breaking ranks with other mobile phone industry leaders, Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs said on Tuesday that mobile phone providers don't need to spice up their mix of offerings with access to Wi-Fi networks.

Speaking at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) conference in New Orleans, Jacobs said providers should instead stick with using cellular technology such as 3G, which is already matching the download speeds of a Wi-Fi network, is cheaper to operate, and covers more ground than Wi-Fi's 300-foot range.



"As these high-speed cellular networks begin to spread across the country, they will become the preferred service," Jacobs told thousands of wireless executives gathered for the CTIA Wireless 2003 show.

Jacobs was weighing in on what has become a big debate among the nation's top carriers. They've all built high-speed wireless networks using 3G technologies with names like CDMA 2000 1xrtt, or 2.5G technology such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) -- doubling the capacity of their networks for voice calls and creating a wireless Web network capable of matching landline Web speeds. And now most are adding Wi-Fi to the mix, eyeing the market for commercial "hot spots", places such as hotel lobbies or coffee shops where wireless Web access is made available to the public via Wi-Fi for a fee.

The beginning of war on Iraq has prompted a surge of online discussion and text messaging, as users seek out information and respond with their own instant feedback
Moments after the first missiles hit Iraq, Web surfers around the world logged on to get the latest news and unleash their own barrage of messages.

Online news portals in the United States and China -- which have nearly a quarter of a billion Web users between them -- reported three times as much traffic as usual, showing the power of the Net as a major source of information and ringing up profits for Web portals.

Ains, What is L2 looking like for O2 now & any predictions. Currently @49.75↑2%.

fairly well balanced at this time - 50p is a barrier but as soon as war is 'over' and we have news I can see them going a lot higher - sitting on mone at this time and added in the dip




Buy orders Sell orders
Num(%) Num Vol(%) Vol VWAP Vol Vol(%) Num Num(%)
1% (46.67%) 7 (65.29%) 1,058,173 49.08 - 49.64 562,444 (34.71%) 8 (53.33%)
5% (51.72%) 15 (63.32%) 2,040,664 48.87 - 49.84 1,181,979 (36.68%) 14 (48.28%)
10% (55.81%) 24 (63.30%) 3,464,089 48.30 - 50.29 2,008,170 (36.70%) 19 (44.19%)
15% (54.72%) 29 (58.99%) 4,769,089 47.44 - 50.97 3,315,951 (41.01%) 24 (45.28%)
50% (54.24%) 32 (62.95%) 5,668,670 46.75 - 50.99 3,335,727 (37.05%) 27 (45.76%)
100% (51.56%) 33 (62.50%) 5,676,670 46.74 - 51.24 3,406,723 (37.50%) 31 (48.44%)
all (51.56%) 33 (62.50%) 5,676,670 46.74 - 51.24 3,406,723 (37.50%) 31 (48.44%

Ains, What is L2 looking like for O2 now & any predictions. Hit high of 50 @13:00↑2%.