Telefonica O2 is to merge its mobile and fixed-line businesses in Germany in a bid to target the converged services market.

Nokia followed up its downbeat first-quarter results report yesterday with comments that the world's largest handset vendor is seeing signs of stabilising demand and now plans to rejuvenate the high-end of its handset portfolio.

US operator AT&T has teamed up with South Africa-based Telkom to target enterprise customers across Africa, reports the Financial Times (FT). AT&T said it would use Telkom's pan-African network - which reaches into 35 countries - to better serve its 1,800 multinational clients.

Sony Ericsson is to cut a further 2,000 jobs off the back of a first-quarter pretax loss of EUR358 million. The new round of layoffs - which follows 2,000 previously announced cuts as part of another savings drive, now completed - was not expected by the market, although its widened first-quarter pretax loss was in the range of a warning issued last month.

The Financial Times reports that Vodafone faces an unexpected hurdle in its plans to advance into Africa through spending US$2.5 billion to acquire control of South Africa’s biggest mobile operator Vodacom after a trade union sought an urgent court order to block the deal.

The Guardian reports that T-Mobile is poised to announce the appointment of Richard Moat, one of the team who helped Hans Snook build the Orange brand, as the new boss of its flagging UK business.

MTS has announced the commercial launch of its 3G network in Armenia. Services are available in the three largest cities of the country - Yerevan (the capital), Guymri and Vanadzor. It is the first time that 3G/HSPA services have been launched in the country.