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Having rather unwisely offloaded its mobile phone division to investors for $100m in January 2008, Lenovo has spotted that it was a mistake of rather epic proportions and bought it back – for $200m. So that’s a wrap on the knuckles and a $100m penalty for being daft.

“As Lenovo’s global PC business continues to make steady progress, we view mobile Internet as a key growth opportunity moving forward globally,” said Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing while rather ignoring the question everyone has on their lips.

Let’s ask it: WHY sell off the business in the first place? Actually, there is some logic. Lenovo was short on cash at the time and needed the money so when investors offered $100m to take the then-unprofitable arm off its hands it seemed like a good move. Since then Lenovo’s PC business has improved and at the same time those crafty investors have transformed Lenovo mobile into a profitable business that is now ranked number three in China’s handset market and is the number one domestic brand! Consequently Lenovo felt ready to splash out again, especially when it admits:

“Industry analysts project the China mobile Internet market will grow to exceed US$16 billion by 2014, fueled [sic] by the rapid evolution of 3G mobile broadband and accompanying multimedia Internet services.”
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HP announced an extension of its BladeSystem solution builder program to enable additional independent software vendors (ISVs) to build solutions that customers can quickly deploy and easily manage in a converged infrastructure.

The HP converged infrastructure portfolio now includes new solutions capabilities developed with leading software vendors. New application infrastructure templates for HP BladeSystem Matrix (Matrix) represent best practice implementation and enable fast provisioning of complex infrastructures in minutes instead of months.

“Customers today are grappling with silos of infrastructure and are looking to simplify their data centers, as well as maximize the value of their technology investments,” said Santanu Ghose, Country Head, infrastructure software and blades, HP India. “With solutions such as HP BladeSystem Matrix, customers can align business initiatives with technology, creating a business-ready infrastructure that automatically adapts as market and business conditions change.”

Matrix templates are available on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as well as Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, and SAP NetWeaver. More Matrix templates are planned to be available in early 2010 to cover applications from Citrix, F5, McAfee, MicroStrategy, Novell, Red Hat, SAS, Siemens PLM Software, Inc., SunGard, TIBCO Software Inc. and VMware.
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IBM this week announced new development centers around the globe to help telecom operators develop new services that fit within today’s evolving communications business models.

Three standalone development centers will be located in China, South Africa and Malaysia. A fourth, in partnership with vendor Comverse, will set up shop in France.

The centers will focus on helping providers build new applications and services based on IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment 3.0 framework and will encompass software and hardware from a variety of business partners, IBM said.

Setting up global development centers has become standard practice for large telecom vendors, enabling them to handle local development needs but also in some cases to offer outsourced operational services as well.

The IBM Telecommunications Solution Center in China will operate as a subset of IBM’s already established China Development Labs. Among the work already underway there including efforts by China Mobile to deploy a new service creation platform.

IBM’s South Africa location, in Johannesburg, will serve all of Sub-Sahara Africa, IBM said. But Africa is also served by three additional solution center locations in Nairobi, Lagos and Cape Town. Among the work being done at the South Africa location is a proof of concept solution called “The Enterprise Applications for IMS + SDP for Mobile Healthcare” – which showcases how the health care industry can use standards-based telecom applications to improve the delivery of medical services.

IBM is opening a third center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Finally, the new Comverse Center of Excellence will work within the IBM Telecom Solutions Lab in France. The center will focus on BSS/OSS and service delivery platform solutions support.
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IBM is determined to show that the reports of the mainframe’s death have much exaggerated. The company has just announced a mammoth release of ten new software products all designed to improve the performance and introduce cost efficiencies for IBM’s System Z mainframe.

The new products cover a range of functionality including enhanced application connectivity, productivity, security and data management.

The appearance of so many products at once made a statement, said Jim Porell, a distinguished engineer at IBM. “It’s a pretty massive launch,” but he believed it was necessary to introduce so many enhancements at once. “The mainframe is competing with distributed environments – we wanted to show that there was a real commitment from IBM to the mainframe,” he said.

Porell said the themes of the new software launches were to simplify management, to offer a more consistent view of the data and to improve access. “The mainframe is like an interstate highway,” he said. “But trying to communicate with it is like using dirt back roads,” he added.

One of the key announcements was a new version of IBM’s information management system. The new release, IMS 11m uses open standards such as SQL to access IMS data said Porell.

Concerns about security have been met by the release of Tivoli zSecure to provide improved handling for the reporting of mainframe event: an important aspect of this is the improved graphical capability added Porell.

Complementing this is a new version of management product NetView helping managers get better insight on System Z data centres, while Asset Discovery for z/OS removes unused and obsolete software. “What are your assets?” said Porell, “this makes sure that software that is not being used can be removed, it offers a massive saving on licence costs.”

Among the releases are Rational Developer for System z version 7.6 which IBM claimed would lower development costs by reducing CPU usage, while Rational Team Concert for System z version 2.0 uses a new common repository to help development collaborate better.

Porell said that the company was keen to demonstrate where the mainframe offered an advantage over distributed systems. “You can get rid of multiple boxes and build everything on the mainframe. It simplifies the process and you don’t so many people to keep the systems running.
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Apple’s iPhone will be officially available on the 28th of this month from South Korea’s second largest mobile phone carrier KT Corp, ending a long wait for South Korea.

KT Corp have been taking reservations for the SmartPhone and plan to hold a special launch event on Saturday for around 1,000 customers who have pre-ordered the phone.

South Korea is one of the last of the Asian Pacific countries to offer the iPhone, which was launched in China last month and Japan last year, and is already on sale in India and Australia. In fact the iPhone is now available in 86 countries across the globe.

Part of the reason for the delay in making the iPhone available in South Korea was due to regulations surrounding the location based services the iPhone offers.

Under South Korean law, any business offering location based services such as maps and direction finders has to obtain permission from the government first.

Korea Communications Commission finally approved the granting of a business license to Apple to offer the location based services on Wednesday meaning that the last of the obstacles had been overcome.

It remains to be seen though, whether Apple will be able to eat into the dominance those Asian based manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics as well as Pantech Co have in South Korea. Locals tend to favour these suppliers over others.

Collectively these three companies are responsible for more than 90 percent of sales of mobile phones in South Korea, a country where 46 million people possess a mobile phone, or roughly 9 out of 10 of the population.

Apple isn’t saying much on the matter. Steve Park, Apple’s spokesman in Seoul has confirmed KT Corp’s announcement but wouldn’t be drawn into commenting on any sales projections.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple became the world’s most profitable handset vendor in Q3 2009. Nokia slipped into second position, as margins have been hit hard by both the economic downturn and a stagnant presence in the United States.

Alex Spektor, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate Apple’s operating profit for its iPhone handset division stood at $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2009. Apple overtook Nokia for the first time, which recorded a lower $1.1 billion of operating profit. With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years.”

Neil Mawston, Director of the Wireless Device Strategies service (WDS) at Strategy Analytics, added, “Nokia’s profit margin for its handset division has been shrinking during the 2009 global economic downturn. Strategy Analytics believes that the United States, where Nokia now trails Apple in marketshare, is the key to Nokia’s recovery in 2010. A successful fight on Apple’s high-profit home turf can simultaneously help to revitalize Nokia’s margins and to put a check on Apple’s surging growth.”