msmobiles.com - Cellular News - CEO of Vodafone - Arun Sarin - speaks about 3G plans + 3G failure in Europe caused by Nokia

CEO of Vodafone - Arun Sarin - speaks about 3G plans + 3G failure in Europe caused by Nokia
May 31, 2004;
Vodafone angry about Nokia and also specialist telco press is angry about Nokia, that dares to release 3G phones without telephony and thus hinders development of 3G in Europe.

Arun Sarin - an Indian American who is a CEO of Vodafone:

Arun Sarin - CEO of Vodafone

... which is the biggest cellular network operator globally (although in UK and France locally Orange is bigger) said that finances of Vodafone are healthy and it produces 8.5 billion UK pounds in cash flow.

Regarding 3G, Sarin said that Vodafone will be starting it for real (seriously) "in Christmas quarter". Nowadays Vodafone offers 3G/UMTS card for notebooks + one 3G cell phone made by Samsung (with videotelephony though).

Interestingly Vodafone is angry about Nokia and it prefers phones from Samsung and Sharp - that it is branding with Vadafone logo, rather than ones from Nokia.

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At this moment 3G in Europe is failure, and lack of handsets is the main reason of this failure. Who is guilty? The answer is simple: Nokia is guilty of this 3G failure in Europe, Nokia, that released already two 3G handsets but neither of them has videotelephony feature (the camera is on the back of the headsets and they have no videotelephony software). The one handset for 3G from Samsung that is now available offers videotelephony but customers don't want to buy it because it is quite expensive (999 Euro without subscription) and not many people have videotelephony yet (what's the point of having videotelephone if nobody can see you?).

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