What's up with... Huawei, Rakuten, NEC, Fujitsu

• Huawei coming back to claim throne
• Rakuten plans online supermarket platform
• NEC and Fujitsu to build a verification environment for Open RAN

Huawei is determined to return to the smartphone fray - whether it can ever ascend  to the smartphone “throne” again as smartphone top dog as promised by Huawei Chairman Guo Ping recently, is doubtful. Huawei was briefly on the throne as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor, but has recently dropped way down with its revenue tumbling, due mostly to US sanctions. In November it sold off its lower-end smartphone brand, Honor.  The rotating chairman is reported to have said in a transcript of a recent Q&A with staff, seen by Reuters, that while US sanctions have choked its smartphone business, it will not give up. The problems it faces are soluble, he claimed. 

Rakuten Group says it will launch Rakuten Zenkoku Super, an online supermarket platform, in 2021. As a first step it has reached an agreement with Beisia, which operates 138 stores in Tokyo and across Japan, to become an initial tenant. Rakuten says it will offer a complete system for operating online supermarkets — including order management and online payments — to supermarket operators across Japan. Rakuten will also provide a one-stop shop for retailers offering everything from customer acquisition and marketing support to consultation services for delivery operation setup. Get more details from this press release...

Streamlining Open RAN verification: NEC and Fujitsu say they are scheduled to build a verification environment in their respective laboratories in the UK and US  from August of this year and will begin interoperability testing. Leveraging this verification environment offers the industry the potential to significantly streamline interoperability verification between base station equipment from different vendors. Read more… 

Speaking of Telekom Romania (as we were yesterday) the eastern Europe telco has selected Mavenir’s cloud native IMS platform together with VoLTE and VoWi-Fi microservices for 4G. It says the subsequent strengthening of its 4G platform with cloud native software will provide continuity of voice services and help prepare it for the transition to 5G. According to Jovan Cetkovic, Director, Governance and Transformation at Telekom Romania, the move is all part of the telco’s journey toward becoming a “modern, agile digital company,” ready to deliver all the smart digital solutions required by its customers. “IMS will give us greater flexibility and strengthen our competitive position while Mavenir’s VoLTE and VoWi-Fi applications will enhance our core voice offering,” he said.