Huawei Winning Injunction Against Motorola In NSN Case

One more advance on the lawsuit that Huawei has brought against Motorola (NYSE: MOT) in the latter company’s attempt to sell its networks business to Nokia Siemens Networks: the Chinese vendor has won a preliminary injunction on the $1.2-billion deal.

“The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Huawei that prevents Motorola from transferring Huawei’s confidential information to Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Siemens Networks,” Huawei said in an emailed statement.

This is a key win for the Chinese vendor, which this month had to pull out of buying the assets of a U.S. server technology company, 3Leaf Systems, after regulators said they would not support the deal.

Huawei and Motorola had been working together in a “cooperative relationship” since 2000, when Motorola began to sell Huawei wireless network products under the Motorola brand. Under that deal, Huawei also shared confidential IP with Motorola. It is this confidential IP that is the subject of this dispute: Huawei says it wants to make sure that it is not transferred to NSN as part of the acquisition.

As part of the judge’s ruling today, Motorola will also be required to hire a third party to ensure Huawei’s confidential information is securely removed from the network assets. And Huawei itself will be able audit the “record of service [that NSN] performs on Motorola-branded systems that include Huawei products.”

When the suit was first filed in January, the VP for global communications for Motorola Solutions, Nicholas Sweers,emailed mocoNews to say that the company is still aiming to complete the sale of its networks NSN by “early 2011 following receipt of approval from China’s antitrust authorities.”

But today’s ruling will likely cause a delay to the $1.2 billion sale of Motorola’s network business assets to Nokia Siemens Networks—assets that Huawei originally had wanted to buy itself but lost to NSN in an auction process last year.

“Huawei is pleased that the court continues to recognize the merits of our claim that Motorola must abide by its contractual obligations to protect Huawei’s trade secrets and intellectual property.  We hope Motorola will now turn its focus to ensuring that Huawei’s intellectual property rights are well protected,” Huawei said in its statement.

Will We Finally See Service Bars On The London Underground? Huawei Hoping So

One by-product of travelling to a different city—for example, Barcelona last week—is that it serves as a reminder that not everyone has to lose mobile connectivity when travelling on the city subway service, as we do on the London Underground. Now it looks like London may be catching up with the rest, and we may have Chinese vendor Huawei to thank for it.

According to reports from the Sunday Times and the FT, Huawei is in the shortlist—in fact, believed to be the only bidder—to supply network equipment for a mobile network to run on the London Underground, a project that has been discussed for years now but has never come to fruition. The idea now is to try to get this network up and running before the London Olympics in 2012.

The Chinese vendor is understood to be offering £50 million ($80.7 million) worth of equipment towards the deal, which would apparently cost over £100 million ($161 million) in total. The network would be installed and serviced by the French IT systems behemoth Thales in partnership with UK mobile operators.

In any case, the London Underground’s operator Transport for London confirmed to the FT that the network would need to be financially self-sufficient: “Given the financial pressures on TfL’s budgets, any solution would need to be funded through mobile operators with no cost to fare- or taxpayers,” it said in a statement.

But before anything has been confirmed, it looks like there are already some hiccups:

Huawei already is a major network equipment supplier to the UK’s largest telco, BT (NYSE: BT), but this project will highlight the Chinese vendor’s increasing role in UK communication networks for those not keen to see its role grow anymore—although it is important to point out that there have not been any reasons to question privately-owned Huawei’s role to date.

The company has made major headway in breaking into network contracts in markets outside of China, with a combination of strong products, low prices and, in some cases, unbeatable vendor financing terms. But in some markets entry has not been without problems:

Huawei has been in the middle of controversy in the U.S. over questions of national security: Huawei was barred by authorities from acquiring the assets of server company 3Leaf Systems, and as of last week pulled out of the deal. Last year, Sprint (NYSE: S) said it would exclude Huawei and fellow Chinese vendor ZTE from bidding in its big network upgrade project. Huawei has also put itself in the middle of the acquisition of a sale of Motorola’s network business to Nokia Siemens Networks.

Separately, phone comparison website Good Mobile Phonesput out some instant stats on what the public think about mobile networks on the Undergound: three-quarters of people polled are against the idea of a mobile network on the Underground (via the Telegraph), with only one in four respondents saying that it would increase safety on the network.

Huawei offering to build out London Underground cellular coverage for free

No such thing as a free lunch, is there? China's Huawei has generously offered to pick up the roughly £50 million ($81 million) tab for equipment to line London's sprawling subway system with mobile phone reception, a package it says it's extending as a gift from Olympic host nation to another (London will host the 2012 Summer Olympics, and it has said in the past that it'd like the Tube wired in time). The official line is that Huawei would make its money back over time through maintenance contracts, but some politicians are raising red flags over the Chinese firm's potential control over a critical piece of London's wireless infrastructure -- a sentiment that seemed to help kill a potential Huawei deal with Sprint in the States. Of course, the over-connected nerd in us is tempted to brush off espionage concerns if it means we can stay on email all the way from the West End to the Docklands.

MWC Wires: Huawei; Skyhook; eBay; Adknowledge; Myriad; KT

Huawei announced some devices today, including the Ideos X3 smartphone and Ideos S7 Slim tablet. The new touchscreen smartphone has a 3.2 megapixel camera, handset over-the-air and online upgrade, and runs on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform. It will be available sometime this spring and the tablet will be available in April.

»  Skyhook’s location platform is now available to the Intel (NSDQ: INTC) AppUpSM center through Intel’s AppUp developer program, which will help app developers for Windows and MeeGo-based devices. The platform has also just been integrated into Citysearch’s Android apps, which will improve the deals app as well as access to local business listings, reviews and ratings, and maps.

»  A new deal between eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) and Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) will see eBay’s store on most O2 smartphones and feature phones, including Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and Symbian devices. O2 customers will get the pre-load deal first, which will roll out to other Telefonica markets worldwide.

»  Adknowledge is now offering its iOS SDK, supporting iPhone and iPad devices. The new SDK aims to help developers monetize their games and apps, especially through free-to-play games.

»  Mobile tech provider Myriad Group has launched a new text-based social networking service that links with IM and e-mail for Telefonica subscribers. Called the Xumii platform, it’s available over USSD and SMS, and enables users to access social networking sites via short codes.

»  Korea Telecom is rolling out Syniverse’s mobile video broadcast service that works across both 3G and 4G networks and devices. It’ll work for any KT subscriber without the need for a new device or software.

T-Mobile Pulse Mini (U8110 By Huawei)

T-Mobile Pulse Mini (alias Huawei U8110) is the little borther of the T-Mobile Pulse. it’s smaller, and weighs only 110 gram. The screen is 240x320 pixel, and is suitable for the representation of 256 thousand colors. The device offers fast internet connection with 3G/HSPA and WLAN, and it has inbuilt GPS too.

The Pulse Mini has a 3,2 magepixel camera with autofocus, FM radio and BlueTooth. The device’s memory is 150 MB, wich can be extended to 16GB with micro-SD card.

It has a Qualcomm 528 MHz processor, wich runs Android 2.1 perfectly. Its largest benefit is its price, the Pulse Mini is one of the cheapest Android devices. The only rival in this price cegory is the Vodafone 845 (wich is a Huawei phone too). Its largest disadvantage is the low resolution resistive screen. It can be purcased in two colors: black and white.

It’s an ideal choice for first time Android users, or a secondary developing/testing device, but it’s not for the hardcore Android users.

The other details:

General

2G Network:	GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network:	HSDPA 900 / 2100
Announced:	2010, February
Status:	Available. Released 2010, July

Size

Weight:	110 gram

Display

Type:	TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Size:	240 x 320 pixels, 2.8 inches
	- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate

Sound

Alert types	Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker	Yes
3.5mm jack	Yes

Memory

Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records	Practically unlimited
Card slot	microSD

Data

GPRS	Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE	Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G	HSDPA
WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth	Yes v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port	No
USB	Yes, v2.0

Camera

Primary	3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, LED flash
Video	Yes
Secondary	Yes, VGA

Features

OS	Android OS
Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, IM
Browser	HTML
Radio	FM Radio
Games	Yes
Colors	White, Black
GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
Java	Via third party application
	- SNS integration - MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player - MP4/WMV/H.264/H.263 player - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Voice memo - Predictive text input