The expansion projects total a volume of 550 million USD for GSM radio and core networks (also using Ericsson's mobile softswitch technology). This new infrastructure will be deployed in 17 Chinese provinces and serve 200 million users once completed. China Mobile is already a long time Ericsson customer - since 1987. Not surprisingly (timing is everything in PR) the same day China Mobile also became the world's largest mobile operator (by subscribers and now also by capitalization). Vodafone, who lost the number one rank, still has higher revenues but this lead should also disappear pretty soon. Vodafone's statement reads a bit amusingly in light of the reality: "It's not about size, it's about service to customers and the value we can pass onto shareholders."

Reality
"...the group's market valuation is now 40 per cent less than the £100bn it paid for Mannesmann, its German rival, back in 2000.

Vodafone posted a pre-tax loss of £15bn last year - a record for a British company - as it was forced to write down the value of the Mannesmann acquisition."

To rub it in: imagine they had invested those £100bn into China at the time instead of into the "booming" German mobile phone market.

In an historic step (largest recall in the history of consumer electronics) Dell has recalled 4.1 million laptops due to problems with LiIon batteries. The batteries are from Sony as Dell reported. Now the story that everyone told so far when a laptop LiIon battery burst out into flames, that cheap and low-quality China made batteries are the reason for it and otherwise there is no potential danger, are not valid any longer. I am just thinking again about the Tesla Motors sports car from Southern California debut. The car has about 7'000 LiIon cells built in (behind the dashboard). Tesla of course says that they have done very high circuitry protection and also put the cells into metal containers but this somehow reminds me of the nuclear power plant evangelists who also always said that there is no danger at all and they would control the technology. If the Tesla car catches fire then we probably have a few celebrities less in this world (saw Arnold S. test driving it and quite a few prominent VCs from Silicon Valley too, who put their money into it as well).