Rebirth of England

After more than a month of negotiations, the consortium formed by O2 Telecom and Caesars Fund finally reached an agreement with Deutsche Telekom on the acquisition price of T-Mobile USA.

On October 25, the two parties announced that Deutsche Telekom's board of directors had approved O2 Telecom's offer to acquire its subsidiary T-Mobile USA for $28 billion in cash.

This acquisition price is more than 10% higher than the market value corresponding to T-Mobile's stock price at that time. Because it is a cash acquisition, this price can also satisfy Deutsche Telekom.

After all, from the beginning of the negotiations between the two parties, T-Mobile's stock price rose. As the stock prices of many telecommunications companies fell collectively, T-Mobile's stock price also began to fall, which also made Deutsche Telekom finally determined to sell T-Mobile USA.

At least after getting this cash, Deutsche Telekom itself can alleviate the crisis under the current situation.

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

In the end, O2 Telecom will merge T-Mobile USA to become O2 Telecom's American branch - O2 USA.

In this acquisition, Caesars Fund will provide funds for O2 Telecom. They will purchase $20 billion of convertible bonds from O2 Telecom. In addition, Standard Chartered Bank will provide O2 Telecom with a loan of $8 billion.

Currently, affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, the stock prices of the entire telecommunications sector are continuing to fall, and O2 Telecom is no exception.

However, the stock price performance of O2 Telecom is slightly better than that of other telecom operators. For example, Vodafone's stock price has fallen by 30% compared with last year's high point...

The purpose of Caesars Fund is very clear, that is, when the stock market reaches a low point at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, it will start debt-to-equity swaps, thereby completing "bottom-fishing" and expanding its holdings in O2 Telecom.

"Now all telecom companies are having a hard time..."

O2 Telecom CEO Barry Trelles told Barron's:

"Many telecom operators have recently launched layoff plans..."

In the increasingly severe crisis, operators cannot be immune.

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

For example, AT\u0026T announced a layoff plan of 12,000 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...

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

According to relevant sources of South Korea's SK Telecom, due to the deterioration of the business environment, it has abandoned the plan to cooperate with Sprint, the third largest mobile operator in the United States.

In Europe, the world's telecommunications giant Vodafone also recently announced that it would survive this economic "winter" by controlling costs and laying off employees...

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

"However, compared with telecommunications operators, equipment terminal vendors are more affected, especially Apple and Honor Electronics and related Android mobile phone sales have begun to explode..."

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 of these two mobile phones have exceeded 10 million units so far, and they have undoubtedly eaten up the sales share of other traditional mobile phone manufacturers.

Therefore, under the subprime mortgage crisis, those 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 25 million euros, and will lay off 2,000 people...

Motorola lost as much as 840 million US dollars and laid off 3,000 people, two-thirds of which were from the mobile phone department.

BlackBerry, which was favored by Wall Street during the "9.11" incident, saw its stock price plummet from 150 US dollars to 60 US dollars in just four months.

According to the latest research report of Credit Suisse Securities, due to the uncertainty of the global economy, the development of the mobile phone industry in 2009 is not optimistic. With the weakening demand and the increasing pressure on the supply side of the industry chain, the revenue of the entire industry will show the first negative growth in 8 years. The sales volume of mobile phones in 2009 may drop by 4% to 27% compared with 2008.

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

iSuppli has lowered its global mobile phone market forecast, estimating that the shipment volume of mobile phones in 2009 will be 1.22 billion units, a 6 percentage point drop from its forecast for 2008.

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 expectations for the fourth quarter.

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 adjust and help companies survive the trough by shrinking their business scope and strictly controlling costs.

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

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

…

"If we acquire Motorola, is there hope?"

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

"Why?"

"We need more patents, and Motorola has more than 17,000 mobile phone-related patents and 7,500 patent applications. Obtaining these patents can ensure that our Android camp can be free from patent lawsuits..."

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

"You should know that the mobile phone operating system secretly developed by Google is likely to be launched soon!"

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

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

It is estimated that they did not expect at the time that this small company that they had hoped to acquire but failed to achieve would eventually be able to develop a mobile phone operating system that can compete with Apple's iOS system.

Google, unwilling to lose the network access entrance of smartphones, decided to secretly start its mobile phone operating system project.