Singaporean telecoms incumbent SingTel has reported a sharp fall in quarterly profits owing to losses booked on the sale of its stake in Pakistani operator Warid.

The operator said net income dropped by 33%, to S$868 million ($696 million), for the three months ending March 2013 due to the loss of S$225 million resulting from the sale of Warid.

Comparison with results in 2012 also looked unfavorable due to an exceptional tax credit of S$270 million booked in the final quarter of the previous financial year.

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile service provider, said on Monday it would pay its parents Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc a dividend of $7 billion in June, surprising some analysts who had not expected a big payout.

The dividend comes amid mounting speculation Verizon (New York City, NY, USA) could buy Vodafone's stake in the venture if they can agree on a price. Reuters reported on April 24 that Verizon was preparing a $100 billion bid for the stake but investors have said they expect Vodafone (Newbury, UK) to seek a higher price.

Nokia, battling to keep up with Samsung and Apple in the global phone race, lost almost 5 percentage points of market share in the first quarter, research company Gartner said on Tuesday.

Overall global sales figures for mobile phones rose 0.7 percent in the first three months of the year, driven by demand for smartphones and strong growth in the Asia Pacific region which helped to offset much weaker sales elsewhere.

Asia’s burgeoning smart-grid market is expected to generate $15.83 billion in revenue in 2018, up from just $5.4 billion in 2012, as demand response and energy management systems grow in popularity.

The forecast comes from Frost & Sullivan, which also believes that “Southeast Asia’s desire to switch to smart grids” will fuel smart-grid sales over the next six years.

The market-research company says Asia’s smart-grid market has already been given a huge boost from the rollouts of advanced metering infrastructure in Australasia and smart city projects in North Asia.

UK authorities have extended the deadline for installing smart meters in homes and businesses throughout the country, and delayed the start of the program by a year.

Utility companies were originally expected to have finished installing smart meters in the UK’s 30 million homes by the end of 2019, but will now have until the end of 2020 to complete the rollout.

Moreover, the £11.7 billion ($17.9 billion) program is now scheduled to start in the autumn of 2015 instead of the summer of next year.

Telefonica has teamed up with PC maker Dell to provide a ‘pay-as-you-go’ mobile broadband service for laptop and tablet computers equipped with M2M SIMs.

Under the Dell (Round Rock, TX, USA) NetReady service, consumers in Europe will be able to use 3G services on various Windows 7 and Windows 8 devices through an on-demand service.

The companies say the offer is aimed at companies that want to provide their employees with “fast and reliable connectivity, anytime and anywhere, paying only for what they need”.

The number of devices using a wireless internet connection is set to rise from 10 billion to 30 billion by 2020 as the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) takes off, according to new data from ABI Research.

“The emergence of standardized ultra-low power wireless technologies is one of the main enablers of the IoE, with semiconductor vendors and standards bodies at the forefront of the market push, helping to bring the IoE into reality,” said Peter Cooney, a practice director with ABI Research.

The number of container tracking systems in use worldwide is set to reach one million by 2017, growing at a compound annual rate of 49.1% over the next few years, according to new research from Berg Insight.

The market-research company reckons the number of units deployed on intermodal shipping containers grew by 54% in 2012 to reach 137,000 in the final quarter of the year.

The forecast implies that 4.1% of containers will be using remote tracking systems in 2017, compared with just 0.7% today.

M2M specialist Telit says one of its new modules has won the approval of Sprint for use on the operator’s US cellular network.

Telit (London, UK) says the new CE910-DUAL cellular M2M module is ideal for embedded applications requiring easy integration, but also suited to platforms based on Windows and Linux operating systems.

The manufacturer reckons it is particularly appropriate for applications such as vending, tracking, smart metering and telematics.

Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce firm, will take a 28 percent stake in digital mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, part of Alibaba's move to boost its competitiveness by beefing up its product lineup.

Unlisted Alibaba (Hangzhou, China) will invest $294 million to become the largest shareholder in the Chinese-based firm, according to a statement from AutoNavi (Beijing, China) on Friday which confirmed an earlier report from news portal Sina (Shanghai, China).