Saudi Arabian mobile phone service provider Etihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily), said its second quarter profits are 29 percent higher than the same period in 2010, boosted by increased data usage and smartphone sales. Mobily said in a statement posted on Tadawul website Tuesday that net income climbed to SR1.164 billion ($310 million) versus SR901 million in the same quarter of 2010. Its shares climbed 2.36 percent to SR54.25 on the Saudi stock exchange. The telecom firm said net income in the first six months of the year climbed to SR2.16 billion versus SR1.62 billion in the corresponding period of last year. Engineer Abdulaziz Saleh Alsaghyir, Chairman of the Board, Mobily, said that smartphone penetration in the Kingdom had reached about 11 percent - according to some studies - and is still growing as more affordable mid-range and low end smart phones will be marketed to reach a wider audience and prices are going to drop on high-end models. The company said data transmission recorded a 46 percent increase during the first half of 2011. He further said Mobily is developing and enhancing its infrastructure through its networks expansion, which will help the company keep growing as per its declared business strategy. He also highlighted the substantial increase in utility and usage of connected smart devices and the range of social networking websites applications, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which is a major driver of demand for Internet connectivity in a youth-dominated society, especially some social media platforms releasing Arabic versions. Alsaghyir added that the number of broadband users had exceeded 5 million, and Mobily has an estimated 75 percent share of mobile broadband subscriptions in the Kingdom. The daily Mobily 3G network traffic exceeded 100 terabyte and that WiMAX network carry the same volume of daily data traffic. In order to keep up with all these variables, Mobily adopted its strategic decision to add LTE services which will be a major factor for excellence and differentiation with the potential for broadband market share gains, because of LTE ability to provide higher capacity, higher data transfer speeds, higher peak rates, higher spectral efficiency, more scalability and lower latency, which will improve the customer experience and enable home users in the Kingdom - including communities beyond the reach of a fixed-line infrastructure - to have access to fast broadband speeds that exceed speeds of a fixed line connection. Mobily LTE network operation is expected to start by year end. Major cities will be covered first and the remaining cities will be covered depending on many technical and marketing factors.
