Industry News

Apple has come under fire for not paying any tax in New Zealand. The Californian company reportedly sold NZ$4.2 billion worth of products in the country, but didn’t pay any tax at all.

Nokia has renewed its managed services agreement with Chorus, New Zealand's largest telecommunications infrastructure company, for a further three years. Under the new contract, Nokia will continue to provide fully managed end-to-end operations services to further enhance the customer experience, operational efficiency and quality of the operator's national fixed line network.

British telecommunications giant Vodafone has given the green light to its Indian unit to merge with Idea Cellular in order to create India’s largest telecoms operator. The merger has been made out of necessity following the emergence of 4G newcomer Reliance Jio.

ZTE has suffered fresh woe just hours after it disclosed details of its settlement with the US government in which it was found guilty of breaching US export control rules in North Korea and Iran from 2010 - 2016. The Chinese vendor released its forecasted loss for 2016 - and it makes grim reading for stakeholders - ZTE have forecast a loss of $343m for 2016.

India, one of the world’s most competitive telecommunication industries has continued to be shaken following the incessant and aggressive strategy of the country’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. Since he introduced 4G newcomer Reliance Jio to the market in September 2016 – the telecommunications market has been drastically transformed. So much so in fact, that Norwegian multinational firm Telenor quit the Indian sector and sold its operations to Bharti Airtel.

Chinese telecom giants ZTE have received the largest criminal penalty in US history in relation to an export control case - following its admission that it violated the terms and conditions of US export controls in selling goods to both Iran and North Korea. ZTE pleaded guilty to the charges and the organization will immediately pay $892m - while another $300m in penalties will be suspended for a period of seven years. Some of the charges against ZTE included obstructing justice for hiding information from government investigators. The settlement reached between ZTE and US authorities is subject to court approval.

Samsung, the world's largest smartphone manufacturer, is embroiled in a corruption scandal which has seen South Korea's President, Park Geun-Hye, impeached. The heir to Samsung, Lee Jae-Yong, has denied all charges made against him involving corruption, bribery, perjury and other offences linked to the former President.

During its participation at the world's biggest ICT show, Huawei hosted its Global Digital Transformation Forum (GDTF), which saw keynote speeches and address from Huawei officials and a host of industry players from around the world.

Australia’s largest telecom company Telstra announced a strategic partnership with US-based VeloCloud Networks, the Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN (software defined wide area networks) company, which simplifies and automates enterprise branch networking. The partnership includes an investment by Telstra Ventures in VeloCloud as part of their latest funding round.

SK Telecom's 'oksusu,' its mobile IPTV service jointly operated with SK Broadband was recognized by the GSMA as the 'Best Mobile Video, TV or Film App' category at the Global Mobile (GLOMO) Awards 2017 at Mobile World Congress 2017.