Son has proven adept at breathing lift back into spent businesses, riving Vodafone Japan, Japan Telecom and Willcom, through aggressive pricing and marketing.

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The assets it could sell include a 17% stake in Spain's Airtel, a stake in a French mobile telephone company, as well as its stake in Japan Telecom.

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Sacconaghi thinks Apple is likely to expand distribution to additional Asian carriers, including China Telecom, KDDI in Japan and LG Telecom in Korea.

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Tizen has pursued carrier support very strongly and its Board features several of the largest carrier groups globally, and more importantly, in several leading countries, the biggest carrier domestically, like NTT DoCoMo in Japan, SK Telecom in South Korea, Telefonica in Spain etc.

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It was founded in 1881 as Japan's first telecom equipment maker and turned out a phone just five years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the device.

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It might feel good at first, but as post-1980s Japan and the post-2000 internet and telecom sectors show, bubbles have nasty aftereffects.

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Founder of Internet and telecom company SoftBank bet heavily on mobile phones by snapping up Japan's Vodafone unit.

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The exact countries haven't been outlined, although it's easy to imagine Apple going for those countries where 4G speeds matter the most: there's been rumblings of talks with KT and SK Telecom in South Korea, but we could also see France, Germany, Japan and Scandinavian countries in the mix.

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Citing a study from Merrill Lynch, the CTIA chart says the average U.S. consumer pays 5 cents per minute for voice service--a rate cheaper than other advanced telecom markets, such as the U.K., Germany, South Korea and Japan.

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