Google, Cisco, SAP said to be discussing BlackBerry bids

BlackBerry Ltd, on the block as its smartphone business struggles, is in talks with Cisco Systems, Google Inc and SAP about
selling them all or parts of itself, several sources close to the matter said.

    Such a deal would be an alternative to the preliminary agreement reached weeks ago with a group, led by BlackBerry's biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings, to take the company private for about $4.7 billion, a bid which has faced some skepticism because of financing questions.

  The company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, has asked for preliminary expressions of interest from potential strategic buyers, which also include Intel Corp and Asian companies LG and Samsung, by early next week.

It is unclear which parties will bid, if any. But the potential technology buyers have been especially interested in BlackBerry's secure server network and patent portfolio, although doubts about the assets' value remain an issue, the sources said.

    Google, Intel, Cisco, LG and SAP declined to comment. Samsung was not immediately available for comment.
Possible bidders are proceeding with caution given the uncertainty around BlackBerry, which last month reported a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion after taking a writedown on unsold Z10 phones.

   The value of BlackBerry's patent portfolio and licensing agreements is likely to halve in the next 18 months, a company filing from this week shows, potentially limiting its attractiveness.
According to analysts, BlackBerry's assets include a shrinking yet well-regarded services business that powers its security-
focused messaging system, worth $3 billion to $4.5 billion; a collection of patents that could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion;
and $3.1 billion in cash and investments.

  Adding to the company's woes, it's likely to burn through almost $2 billion of its cash pile in the next year and a half, Bernstein
analyst Pierre Ferragu wrote on Thursday after studying the filing.
Private equity firms that have showed interest in BlackBerry - which also include Cerberus Capital Management - have asked the company and its advisers to provide additional financial details about its various business segments, two of the sources said.

    That process could take another few weeks, as BlackBerry focuses on taking bids from industry peers, the sources said.

   In August, the company said it was weighing its options, which could include an outright sale, after Reuters first reported. BlackBerry's board was warming up to the possibility of going private.
At that time, it formed a five-member special committee chaired by board director Timothy Dattels. Other members include
Chairman Barbara Stymiest, Chief Executive Thorsten Heins, Richard Lynch and Bert Nordberg.
A spokesman for BlackBerry said in an emailed statement to Reuters: "The special committee, with the assistance of BlackBerry's
independent financial and legal advisors, is conducting a robust and thorough review of strategic alternatives." He declined to
provide further comment.

JPMorgan Chase & Co and RBC Capital Markets are advising BlackBerry. The board is being advised by Perella Weinberg
Partners, the sources said. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Torys LLP are providing legal advice.

Extending an Olive branch to customers

After a gap of six years, Mobile News revisits Olive Communications at its plush new HQ and finds it in rude health, as one of the UK’s fastest-growing indirect dealer partners. Michael Garwood reports

B2B dealer Olive Communications has come a long way from the firm Mobile News first visited in 2007. Back then the company occupied a modest office situated down the road from Carphone Warehouse HQ in Acton.
Its primary business focus at the time was almost exclusively T-Mobile – but a surprise termination left some to think at the time that its days were numbered.

   Not so. Having switched allegiances to Vodafone – and more recently partnering with O2 – Olive is now one of the fastest growing indirect dealer partners in the UK, and having acquired fellow Platinum Wish Communications as Mobile News went to print, has a base in excess of 110,000 connections.

   Today, the firm is housed down the M4 in High Wycombe, occupying a plush, modern and spacious office.
The move was prompted by a mix of practicality, given the firm’s substantial rise in staff numbers (which we’ll come to), and the need to create the right impression for clients.

   Olive MD Martin Flick explains as we walk through the firm’s impressive products and services demonstration suite:

“We have big customers and some big aspirations so it’s right we have a decent office that’s presentable, that you can bring customers to. It’s fit for purpose.
“It’s part of the process of becoming more professional, more developed as an organisation and building some scale.

“The culture we are instilling in our staff is that we want to obsess about customer satisfaction. We want to be very professional in our
approach and the environment you work in is an important part of that – which is one of the reasons we moved into this office.”

New direction

Flick joined Olive in December, having left Azzurri, a firm with an £120 million turnover and 750 staff, after eight years. He replaced Olive
owner Mark Geraghty, who has taken on a more “back-seat” position as group manager. Flick has also become an equity partner in the
business.

Flick explains the lure of Olive stemmed from a long friendship between the two, with Geraghty once a salesman at Flick’s previous firm Axxent Voice and Data, which was sold to Azzurri in 2004.

“Mark worked for me in this business, and was one of our sales guys working for me. He then left me just before we sold and set up on his own. We have remained friends ever since and then he asked me to come back as an equity partner in December,” he says.

“We started discussing going into business together as he wanted to take the step from being an owner-managed smaller business, like a lot of the indirect businesses are, to becoming a full-on enterprise grade organisation.

“Mark had taken Olive to a point where they had grown phenomenally and built a great team and customer base. They wanted to take it
to the next level and broaden their expertise in the management team, which is why I joined.”
Acquisitions and familiar faces
As Mobile News went to press, confirmed acquisition numbers for Olive stood at nine in the past two years, accounting for almost 70,000
connections (45,000 from Wish), the majority of which are on Vodafone.
During this time, staff numbers at Olive have rocketed – through a mix of retaining those at the businesses acquired, but also as a result
of a change in management strategy.

By the end of 2012, staff numbers had gone from 15 to 65. Since Flick arrived, numbers have tipped 80, including familiar faces from his
previous business ventures. These include Paul Butler, co-founder of Axxent Voice and Data with Flick in 1997, who arrived as
commercial director, and Gráinne Gormley, who joined in April from Azzurri as head of corporate sales, having spent seven years as a
business development manager.

“Since I started, we’ve brought in 20 or more people – and that will continue to rise as part of our growth plans,” he says.

Restructure

Part of Flick’s remit was to enhance the firm’s credentials in the market – boosting its portfolio and focusing beyond just mobile. And
while Olive has in recent months placed a keen eye on the corporate end – and has a healthy number of corporate accounts on its books
– it remains true to its heritage, acquiring and supporting those in the SME space.

To do this, Flick has reorganised the business, effectively segregating the two bases and enabling dedicated staff to focus on each.

Smaller customers are now managed from a desk-based team in Olive’s Hatfield office, which ensures all enquiries are dealt with, while
conducting quarterly reviews for each customers.

The larger customers are typically managed by a field-based team – each visiting and managing customers’ accounts on a more personal basis.

Flick explains: “Olive was once very focused on the low end but that’s changed quite a lot, because we are now equally focused on all ends of the market and we think we can cover both really well.

“The requirements from customers are often very similar but the approach differs greatly, which is why we have segregated our base into two segments.

“Our desk-based team in Hatfield is tasked specifically with managing our smaller customers and obsesses about customer satisfaction.
We have some really good, loyal customers in that space, with good spend and a high dependency on their device.

“That team is managed entirely independently of our corporate team, which manages the larger customers from a field-based perspective.

We have a really solid account development plan – each of our customers has a specific number of customers they are managing
and there is a very structured way in which they are managed.”

Eight week wait for iPhone 5s colour variant

Customers facing an eight week wait for iPhone 5s in ‘gold’ – as Apple struggles to fulfil demand

Stock of the iPhone 5s 16GB is still low among UK operators, with some customers having to wait as long as eight weeks for a gold version of the device.

The gold iPhone 5s sold out on launch day (September 20), with Apple CEO Tim Cook telling customers the company is “working hard to
build enough new iPhones for everyone”.

However almost two weeks later and over-the-phone availability of the model, and all iPhone 5s devices, is still limited.

Vodafone customers have the longest wait, with the gold version taking six to eight weeks to deliver, and the silver and ‘space grey’ two to
four weeks.

O2 are only taking pre-orders, with delivery time an estimated two to three weeks.
Orange (part of EE) customers have been told to expect a wait of “up to” 30 days. The silver and space grey versions are taking seven days to deliver, with the gold taking nearer to 30.

T-Mobile (also part of EE) customers can get the space grey version within two days, while the silver is taking seven days and the gold “a
lot longer”.

Three’s estimated delivery date for the silver and space grey versions is October 11, for the gold October 28 (calls made October 3).

The customer service assistant at Three said that Apple was holding back stock to make the iPhone “seem more desirable”.

All delivery times given are for the 16GB iPhone 5s if ordered over the phone.

HTC announces first ever quarterly loss

Manufacturer says it made a loss of £63 million in Q3, with revenue below what it had predicted following Q2 results
HTC has reported its first quarterly loss as revenue also continued to decline.

Announcing unaudited financial results for the three months to September 30, the manufacturer made a net loss of NT$2.97 billion (£63
million).

   This compares to a profit of NT$1.25 billion (£27 million) in Q2, which was down 83 per cent from the previous quarter. For Q3 2012, HTC
posted a net profit NT$3.9 billion (£83 million).

    Revenue stood at NT$47.05 billion (£1 billion) for the latest quarter, down from NT$70.7 billion (£1.6 billion) in Q2. Its third quarter
revenue was below the forecast of between NT$50 billion (£1.06 billion) and NT$60 billion (£1.28 billion) made by HTC when it
announced its Q2 results in July.

   Following the publication of those figures, HTC CEO Peter Chou (pictured) said the firm had struggled “mainly” due to gaps in the mid-tier
market, having offered considerable focus in the high-end space.
It released the HTC One Mini at the start of August, with Chou saying the addition of such products would help it compete with rivals
across all price points.

    The manufacturer also launched its new marketing campaign later that month, fronted by Hollywood actor Robert Downey Jnr, debuting
its new brand slogan ‘Here’s To Change’.

Samsung Electronics predicts record Q3 profits of £5.8b

The 4G-enabled smartphone will be available from EE and retailers Carphone Warehouse and Tesco from tomorrow (October 5)

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 smartphone will go on sale in the UK tomorrow (October 5).
The 4G-enabled device runs on the Android operating system, and has a 4-inch display and five megapixel camera.

It features Smart Stay, technology which uses advanced facial recognition to detect when the phone is in use and saves battery life by
dimming the screen.

It will be available in the UK from EE stores, followed by selected retailers including Carphone Warehouse and Tesco.

Samsung vice president of IT and mobile Simon Stanford said: “Following the success of the Galaxy Ace 2, we are confident that our
customers will enjoy this new device when it hits the shelves this month.”

Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 to go on sale this weekend

The 4G-enabled smartphone will be available from EE and retailers Carphone Warehouse and Tesco from tomorrow (October 5)
The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 smartphone will go on sale in the UK tomorrow (October 5).

The 4G-enabled device runs on the Android operating system, and has a 4-inch display and five megapixel camera.

It features Smart Stay, technology which uses advanced facial recognition to detect when the phone is in use and saves battery life by
dimming the screen.

It will be available in the UK from EE stores, followed by selected retailers including Carphone Warehouse and Tesco.

Samsung vice president of IT and mobile Simon Stanford said: “Following the success of the Galaxy Ace 2, we are confident that our
customers will enjoy this new device when it hits the shelves this month.”

Samsung Explains Galaxy Note 3 Benchmark Tweaking

Samsung explains why the Galaxy Note 3 kicks in to turbo when benchmarks are run.
Samsung is once again defending itself against accusations of
inflating benchmarks. Earlier this week, Ars Technica showed
evidence that the Galaxy Note 3 goes into a benchmark boost
mode when specific benchmark apps are run. Essentially the site
duplicated a popular benchmark, renamed it, and showed that the
phone maxed out all four cores at 2.3 GHz when running the
popular solution, but not when the renamed-yet-identical version
was running.

"The Galaxy Note 3 maximizes its CPU/GPU frequencies when
running features that demand substantial performance," Samsung
said in a statement to CNET UK. "This was not an attempt to exaggerate particular benchmarking results. We
remain committed to providing our customers with the best possible user experience."

Ars Technica said the benchmark mode is triggered by a file named "DVFSHelper.java" that contains a hard-
coded list of every package that is affected by the CPU boosting. This DVFSHelper function is used exclusively
for benchmarks, covering all the popular benchmarking apps including Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack,
GFXBench and several Samsung benchmarks.

The site grew suspicious when it noticed that the 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 800 chip in the Galaxy Note 3 was
outperforming the same chip in a similarly designed LG G2. The artificial boosting was discovered in the U.S.
version of the Note 3, giving the device a 20 percent boost over its natural score, which is similar to the LG G2
phone, if not slightly better.

Earlier this year, Samsung was caught inflating the benchmarks of its Galaxy S4, turning the phone's GPU up
to 533 MHz when specific benchmarks were running. Samsung said that under ordinary conditions, the
Galaxy S4 is designed to allow a maximum GPU frequency of 533 MHz. However, the maximum GPU
frequency is lowered to 480 MHz for certain gaming apps that may cause an overload, when they are used for
a prolonged period of time in full-screen mode.

Just days ago, it was revealed that it's not just Samsung artificially inflating benchmarks, but even Asus, HTC
and LG. Even more, nearly all Android device makers have been found to be participants in benchmark
inflation over the past several years. The only companies not appearing to tamper with benchmarks is Apple,
Motorola, Nvidia Shield, and Google with its Nexus devices.

In AnandTech's tests, smartphones affected by benchmark tampering included the Asus Padfone Infinity, the
HTC One, the HTC One Mini, the LG G2, the Samsung Galaxy S 4, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and the
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 and 2014 Edition tablets.