Rebirth of England.

Chapter 628 Google’s mobile phone system?
After more than a month of negotiations, the consortium consisting of O2 Telecom and Caesars Fund finally reached an agreement with Deutsche Telekom on the acquisition price of T-Mobile USA.

On October 10, the two parties announced that Deutsche Telekom's board of directors had approved O25 Telecom's offer to acquire its subsidiary T-Mobile USA for US$2 billion in cash.

This acquisition price represents a premium of more than 10% compared to the market value corresponding to T-Mobile's stock price at that time. Since it is a cash acquisition, this price should also satisfy Deutsche Telekom.

After all, T-Mobile's stock price rose when the two parties began negotiations. Then, as the stock prices of many telecom companies fell collectively, T-Mobile's stock price also began to fall, which made Deutsche Telekom finally determined to sell T-Mobile USA.

At least after receiving this cash, Deutsche Telekom itself will be able to alleviate the crisis under the current circumstances.

After the agreement was reached, T-Mobile USA began the delisting process.

Eventually, O2 Telecom will merge with T-Mobile USA to become O2 Telecom's American subsidiary - O2 USA.

In this acquisition, Caesars Fund will provide funds for O2 Telecom. They will purchase $2 billion of convertible bonds from O200 Telecom. In addition, Standard Chartered Bank will provide O2 Telecom with a loan of $80 billion.

Currently, affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, the share prices of the entire telecommunications sector have continued to fall, and O2 Telecom is no exception.

It’s just that O2 Telecom’s stock price performance is slightly better than other telecom operators. For example, Vodafone’s stock price has fallen by 30% from its high point last year…

The purpose of Caesar Fund is very clear, which is to wait until the end of this year or the beginning of next year when the stock market reaches a low point, and then initiate debt-to-equity swaps to complete "bottom fishing" and expand its holdings in O2 Telecom.

"All telecommunications companies are having a hard time right now..."

O2 Telecom CEO Barry Trelles told Barron’s:
"Many telecom operators have recently launched layoff plans..."

Operators cannot remain immune to the growing crisis.

Among them, American operators at the center of the storm were the most affected.

For example, AT&T announced a layoff plan of 12000 people in the third quarter of this year, Sprint canceled its plan to sell Nextel, and Verizon's acquisition of Alltel also faced difficulties in funding shortages...

And T-Mobile USA was directly acquired by O2 Telecom...

A person related to South Korea's SK Telecom revealed that it has abandoned its plan to cooperate with Sprint, the third largest mobile operator in the United States, due to the deteriorating business environment.

In Europe, the world's telecommunications giant Vodafone recently announced that it would control costs and lay off employees to survive this economic "winter"...

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom were also affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, with Deutsche Telekom even under pressure to sell T-Mobile USA.

"However, compared with telecom operators, equipment terminal vendors have been more affected, especially Apple and Honor Electronics, as sales of related Android phones have begun to explode..."

Just as Barry Trelles said, the most shining "twin stars" in the mobile phone industry in the past two years are Apple and Honor Electronics, which have newly joined the industry and led the touch-screen smartphones.

Whether it is iPhone 3G or Mate 2, their performance in the market this year is far from comparable to their previous generation phones last year.

The sales volume of these two mobile phones has exceeded 1000 million units so far, and they have undoubtedly eaten into the sales share of other traditional mobile phone manufacturers.

Therefore, under the subprime mortgage crisis, other former mobile phone manufacturers are in a very bad situation... According to the third quarter financial report of 2008, Nokia's net profit fell by 30% in the quarter, and it has fallen year-on-year for two consecutive quarters. It recently decided to lay off 600 employees and stop supplying mobile phones to major Japanese operators...

Sony Ericsson suffered its first net loss in nearly five years, with a loss of 5 million euros, and will lay off 2500 employees...

Motorola lost $8.4 million and laid off 3000 employees, two-thirds of whom were from the mobile phone division.

在“9·11”时大受华尔街青睐的黑莓公司，股价仅在4个月内就从150美元大跌至60美元。

According to the latest research report from Credit Suisse Securities, due to the uncertainty of the global economy, the development of the mobile phone industry in 2009 is not optimistic. With weakening demand and increasing pressure on the supply side of the industry chain, the industry's revenue will experience negative growth for the first time in eight years. Mobile phone sales in 8 may fall by 09% to 2008% compared with 4.

Market research firm iSuppli recently said that due to the impact of the economic crisis, the cycle of consumers replacing mobile phones has begun to lengthen, so the global mobile phone market will continue to shrink in 2009.

iSuppli has lowered its forecast for the global mobile phone market, estimating that mobile phone shipments in 09 will be 12.2 billion units, a 2008 percentage point drop from its forecast for 6.

Affected by the economic environment, some equipment manufacturers have shown poor performance in the third quarter of 2008. Cisco, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, Texas Instruments, Samsung, NEC, Motorola and other equipment manufacturers generally reported losses in the third quarter and lowered their fourth quarter expectations.

Whether it is chips, storage or system equipment, the situation is not good. Due to the surge in revenue pressure, some equipment manufacturers have begun to make adjustments to help companies survive the downturn by shrinking their business scope and strictly controlling costs.

Due to preconceived notions, even though brands such as Samsung, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson have successively launched mobile phones equipped with Android systems, their sales are still not comparable to those of Apple and the Honor Mate series of mobile phones.

It can only be said that it has slightly reversed its decline.

……

“If we acquire Motorola, is there hope?”

After receiving Ivanta's call and hearing her thoughts, Barron couldn't help but ask:

"why?"

"We need more patents, and Motorola has more than 17000 mobile phone-related patents and 7500 patent applications. Obtaining these patents can ensure that our Android camp can be protected from patent lawsuits..."

It can be heard on the phone that Ivanta's words are somewhat cautious:

"You should know that the mobile phone operating system that Google has been secretly developing will probably be launched soon!"

Yes, it was Baron who revealed this news to Ivanta, and he learned about it when Google recently began to frequently contact some mobile phone manufacturers.

According to Barron's further investigation, Google started this more than a year ago, probably after Android officially announced the Android mobile phone operating system.

They probably didn't expect at the time that this small company that they had hoped to acquire but failed to do so would eventually be able to develop a mobile operating system that could compete with Apple's iOS system.

Google, unwilling to lose Internet access for smartphones, decided to secretly launch its mobile operating system project.

(End of this chapter)