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Huawei postpones auction for major stake in mobile devices unit
It seems as if Huawei would rather hold tight to its mobile devices unit than sell it for less than it's worth, as evidenced by the sudden postponement of its auction last week. The Chinese telecom giant had cranked up the auction back in May in an attempt to generate cash and guidance for "navigating the North American market," but given the current economic situation, it reckons it's better off waiting for more prosperous times given that it's not in dire need of additional cash flow at the moment. We suspect Kenny Rogers said it best, and apparently, Huawei really does know when to hold 'em.[Via mocoNews]
Vodafone's 724FM gets FCC approval by way of Huawei
Want an unattractive candybar? Use Vodafone? Can you wait a little while? If you've answered yes to all three of those questions, look no further than the 724FM, a Huawei-sourced piece that has just crossed the FCC's wires on its way to one or more of the megacarrier's networks around the world. There's no indication on when we might see the value-priced (or so we hope) phone come to market, but with a tri-band EDGE radio, Bluetooth, microSD slot, 2 megapixel camera, and a design that only a mother could love, we don't think there's a ton of anxious anticipation building out there.[Via Mobil.cz]
Huawei's potential investors get pared down to five
Word on the street has China's Huawei having selected the five finalists for bidding on a 50 percent stake of its mobile division, a stake that the company hopes will net a solid $2 billion based on a $4 billion valuation. All five of the remaining bidders are private equity firms, suggesting that unless they're concealing their interests through an intermediary, the plethora of carriers rumored to have an interest have all dropped out of the running (or never showed up to begin with). The contenders at this point include Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Kohlberg Kravis Robers & Co., Silver Lake, and AEA Investors -- all companies we suspect would have no trouble cutting a $2 billion check that wasn't made out of rubber. Maybe we can settle this the old-fashioned way, with a potato sack race? Just a suggestion.
AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone mulling Huawei bid
There's apparently no shortage of interest in Huawei's generous offer to sell a healthy chunk of itself to one or more foreign investors in exchange for cold, hard cash, and the list of interested parties is turning out to be quite a who's-who. AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone have all emerged as potential suitors (with the latter two possibly working on a deal together, we'd imagine), suggesting that carriers have a lot of interest in sidestepping manufacturers altogether and manufacturing at least a few phones all by themselves. Bids are officially due next week and the stake is expected to fetch up to $2 billion, so if you've got service through any of these carriers, rest easy knowing that your monthly fees could be helping to fund a megasale.[Via Cellpassion]
Huawei looking for foreign investment to aid attack on US market
Though it's recently cracked the tough outer shell of the rough-and-tumble US wireless market, Huawei's got a long way to go before it can stand toe-to-toe with the Samsungs and LGs of the world. The economy's seen better days, the market is nearly saturated, and it already seems like there might be a couple players too many for profit, so what's an up-and-coming Chinese firm to do? Invite foreign investment, naturally. Huawei has retained Morgan Stanley to help it line up investors that can bulk it up enough to wage a broadsided offense against the low-end American market, leaving the mid and high-range lineups to the well-established companies that are already making a splash up there. It's pretty rare for a Chinese corporation of Huawei's size and clout to open itself up to cash from outside Chinese borders, so the deal's expected to attract a lot of interest -- theoretically setting the scene for plenty more of its wares on US carriers' shelves. We're all for healthy competition, and if Huawei can shake things up a bit, we're all for it.[Via Phone Scoop]
O2, Vodafone both working on 3G femtocell trials
Femtocells may be one of the closest things we have to a win / win in the wireless industry, lowering infrastructure costs for carriers and giving customers on-demand, self-installable coverage where they wouldn't have it otherwise, all without requiring WiFi-capable handsets that UMA services like T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home do. It makes sense that a number of carriers would be rushing to get femtocells into end users' hands, then, and both O2 and Vodafone are doing exactly that in separate European trials. O2's trial involves NEC equipment in the UK, while Vodafone is turning to Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent to supply hardware to Spanish testers. Both trials involve 3G cells (yay!) and at least O2 has gone on record saying that a successful test will lead to commercialization by early next year. Kinda strange that Sprint is so far ahead of the curve on this one, but hey, do you see us complaining?Read - NEC and O2 trial femtocells in the UKRead - Vodafone Group trials 3G femtocell technology
Huawei's U1215 with North American 3G crosses the FCC
With the company's deal with MetroPCS now firmly in place, it seems possible -- probable, even -- that Huawei is going to be looking to make a wider-scale splash in the US and Canadian markets, and this little candybar might be part of that whole plan. The U1215 is hot off the FCC's wires, packing GSM / EDGE and WCDMA service on the 850 and 1900MHz bands. There's nothing terribly special about the phone (read: 1.3 megapixel camera) other than the fact that it comes to us from Huawei, though. It's unbranded, so we don't know what carrier(s) might bless it, but the presence of video calling support makes Rogers a viable first stop.
Here comes China: Huawei inks deal with MetroPCS, too
In case the FCC filing with the big honkin' MetroPCS logo across the front of the phone back in June wasn't enough of a clue, Huawei has now made their handset deal with the carrier official. Huawei claims that the M318 was designed specifically with MetroPCS customers in mind, a fairly pedestrian, faux-metal piece with a 1.5 inch display, speakerphone, BREW support, and 5MB of onboard memory. Huawei's announcement to provide MetroPCS with equipment comes a few days after crosstown competitor ZTE's, but these guys are going to end up beating ZTE to the punch anyway -- the M318 is available immediately, whereas ZTE's yet-to-be-named phone won't rock shelves until next month.[Via RCR]
Alltel launches EC360, first Huawei data card in North America
Bring on the Chinese hardware! Hot on the heels of ZTE's victory making North American inroads on Telus with its D90 flip phone, Huawei's next, launching its EC360 data card on Alltel. To be fair, the EC360 is a little more boring than the Fastap-equipped D90 -- it's just an EV-DO PC Card -- though the 2.4Mbps of downstream speed Alltel's promising is music to our ears. Grab it now for a penny shy of $190, free after rebates and activation.
Huawei unveils U550, U121 handsets in Asia
It's been a tick since we've seen anything notable surface from Huawei (well, the real Huawei, anyway), but the handset manufacturer was back in action at CommunicAsia in Singapore. First up was the ultrathin U550 flip-phone, which purportedly supports HSDPA / UMTS / EDGE / GSM connectivity options, sports touch-sensitive buttons, and of course, provides a beautiful link to the 'net when your laptop can't sense a stray WiFi signal. The candybar-styled U121 device (seen after the jump) aims to be a more music-centric offering, and aside from the metallic design, built-in Bluetooth, and integrated media player, everything else looks fairly standard. No word from Asia on when this duo will storm store shelves, but it's usually not too long after gracing the showroom floor that citizens can snag their own.
Keepin' it real fake, part LII: snowin' the FCC
Yeah, knockoff phones are a dime a dozen at this point, but how many actually make it all the way to the FCC? We're not totally up on the latest copyright infringement law, but any way you slice it, we figure it takes some serious stones to push a blatant rip into the feds' hands. Alas, Huawei wants to step up to the plate with its C5320 CDMA candybar -- a device that could be easily mistaken for any number of Sony Ericsson's low- or midrange devices, but bears a particularly striking resemblance (in our humblest of opinions) to the K618. Funniest part is, since Huawei has zero handset presence with Sprint or Verizon, there are almost certainly no plans to bring this one stateside -- never mind the presence of a UIM slot. Just taunting our legal system, Huawei, eh? You think that's funny?
Huawei shows off new concept phones at CeBIT
Huawei showed off some neat concept phones this year at CeBIT, including a handset with an integrated USB connection at the handset's top that eliminates the need for any data cables or adapters (although, we'd like to see that plugged into a new laptop with relative ease). Anyhoo, Huawei also announced a new handset with an external battery only that makes a battery swap very easy as well as, umm, somewhat fashionable with that battery dongle hanging off your phone. The third Huawei concept sticks a Bluetooth headset right on the side of the handset so that the pair never, ever miss each other. We're not fans of ringing phones with no Bluetooth headset in sight either, Huawei. Kudos.[Via textually.org]
The Huawei E270: fantastic enjoyment with HSUPA uplink
Calling its E270 HSUPA modem "fantastic enjoyment" is strictly Huawei's own terminology here, but at two glorious megabits per second of upload speed (albeit theoretical) and up to 7.2Mbps on the downstream, well... "fantastic enjoyment," indeed. Granted, it'll be at least another year before we really start to to see widespread deployments of HSDPA's heir apparent -- which leaves the download speeds untouched from HSDPA while boosting the uploads significantly -- but we're glad to see manufacturers already have their eyes squarely on the prize for getting equipment prepped in the pipeline. Huawei says its E270 is also the world's first USB modem for HSUPA, surely bringing smiles to the faces of the expansion slot-challenged among us, and the tri-band 3G / quadband 2G radios should be enough to spread the love worldwide. No word on launch plans, but with the requisite networks necessary to take advantage of that juicy hardware far from in place, let's not put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse.
Huawei intros HSDPA USB modem
Huawei showed off what they're claiming is the world's smallest and fastest HSDPA USB modem, the E220, at CommunicAsia in Singapore last week. We don't know how long that claim will stand but it is, in fact, quite small (3.5 inches long) and fast (3.6 Mbps) -- and, while Huawei seems to mostly be playing up the HSDPA support, it also packs EDGE and GPRS compatibility, plus a nifty mini USB connector. No word on pricing or availability, as far as well can tell -- not that we're ever likely to actually get our hands on one anyway.
