Ridiculous as it may seem to you and I, Lycos Inc of the US and the Bertelsmann-Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) venture that was Lycos Europe had not been a joined-up entity since 1997. Lycos Europe had paid its bigger namesake to lease the trademark - an arrangement it renewed in 2007 for a hefty $5.2 million. After Lycos Europe’s AGM on May 31 (probably its last as it liquidates itself after failing to find a buyer), we already reported the company would sell back those trademarks - for Lycos, Tripod, Angelfire and Hotbot - to the US mothership. Lycos Inc today re-announced the sale and said it will now operate in Europe under its own steam: “Over the next several weeks, Lycos will be re-launching the provision of search services within the European territory.” CEO Jungwook Lim comments in the release now hint at the nonsense of the 12-year-long split personality: “(It) sometimes caus(ed) confusion in the marketplace. For a variety of reasons, it made sense at this time to consolidate Lycos’ collective assets and branding, especially in Europe, which is an important part of the global market.” What those reasons were, well, we’ve forgotten, but Lycos had been a master at the divided trademark, once owning Wired Digital, but not the magazine, before selling it back to Conde Nast.

—Pre for O2?: O2 has beaten rivals Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Orange to win the deal to exclusively carry the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, unnamed sources told the Guardian.co.uk. It’s good news for O2, which currently stocks the iPhone exclusively, but will reportedly see that deal phased out as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) looks to open up distribution of the cellphone to other carriers. More at mocoNews.net... The iPhone has been particularly good to O2, where it has helped attract valuable contract customers and reduce churn, no small thing in one of Europe’s most competitive mobile markets. It’s unknown at this point whether the deal with O2, which is owned by Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), will extend to the group’s other units. Spanish press reports in March said Telefonica had won the Pre deal to exclusively distribute the device in the UK, Spain and Latin America. —EU mobile broadband stats: New research shows that the mobile broadband market in Western Europe—comprising of 3G dongles, cards and internal celluar modems, reached 10.5 million units in 2008, compared to 4.7 million in 2007. Via Telecompaper.com. —Nokia’s Ovi Store: Finnish mobile giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today finally unveiled its Ovi app store as a mobile browser-based client via store.ovi.com or as a downloadable app. Users in eight countries including the UK will be able to add the cost of apps to their mobile bills. There are more than 50 million Nokia handsets across the world, but the company has a long way to go to compete with Apple’s iPhone app store, which reached one billion downloads in less than a year. Full story at our sister site Moconews.net —Connect2Media: The Manchester-based mobile and TV games developer and distributor has launched its first game on Apple’s iPhone app store: users can download Go! Go! Rescue Squad from today, priced £2.99. Versions for Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade, Android and Windows Live are due for later this year.

Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), O2’s parent company, reported earnings today, revealing that its UK unit, its largest in Europe, was “outperforming” in the “slower market,” thanks in part to the “continued success of high-end devices,” such as the iPhone which it carries exclusively. First quarter revenues climbed 7 percent (based on local currency) to 1.56 billion euros (£1.4 billion). O2, the UK’s largest operator by subscribers, closed the quarter with a total of 20.4 million customers (exclusing Tesco customers), as the number of valuable contract customer net adds surged 18.4 percent. More at mocoNews.net.

—FindAnyFilm.com: The UK Film Council’s new website claims to have hit 10 million visits in the 10 weeks since its launch. FindAnyFilm.com, dubbled a “Google (NSDQ: GOOG) for film”, launched in January after a £1 million build-out to offer cinema and TV listings, DVD, Blu-ray and download options for 34,000 films. The council says the site has broken in to comScore’s top 20 for movie sites. —French IPTV: France, already the world’s biggest country for IPTV subscriptions, now has 6.2 million subs - an annual increae of 36.8 percent, says telecoms regulator ARCEP (via C21). Some 37 percent of ADSL broadband subscribers take IPTV packages, with Orange the most popular service on 2.2 million subs. —Google search share: On the subject of France, Google was far and away the country’s top search site in April, pulling 89.83 percent of all queries, according to AT Internet. Everyone else has merely crumbs - Live Search on 2.90 percent, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) 2.48 percent, AOL (NYSE: TWX) 1.66 percent and Orange 1.47 percent. —Premiere AG: Now that it’s got 30.5 percent of the German pay-TV provider, News Corp (NYSE: NWS) is planning to rename it Sky Deutschland, sources tell WSJ.com. That would bring it in to line with Sky Italia, New Zealand’s own Sky and Sky FBiH of Bosnia and Herzegovina, each fully or partially owned by Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate. —Spanish ads: Spain is following France by proposing a bill that would remove advertising from state TV channels La Primera and La Dos. To offset, Spain has proposed a three percent levy on commercial TV and a 0.9 percent levy on telcos like Telefonica (NYSE: TEF). It’s raised commercial operators’ hopes of a greater slide of ad income. Via Reuters.

Spanish mobile content giant Zed is purchasing Player X, the London-based mobile content publisher and aggregator for “close to £10 million” ($15 million), this week, according to the UK’s Sunday Times. Player X was started five years ago and has since then become a major mobile content distributor, supplying all the major mobile networks through its Player X Distribution unit. It also publishes its own content, including mobile TV, video, and games, through its Studio X division. Zed has been looking for ways to diversify beyond its direct to consumer (D2C) roots of selling ringtones and wallpapers direct to customers. It is thought its purchase of Player X will help strengthen its reach into the business-to-operator space as Player X has a number of key carrier customers in Europe, including Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), T-Mobile and Vodafone. UPDATE: Zed confirmed today that it has purchased mobile aggregator and publisher Player X, but declined to disclose the amount it paid. It told C21media.net, however, that the £10 million ($15 million) figure reported earlier was “wrong.” In a statement, Zed founder and CEO Javier Pérez Dolset, called the acquisition “a very important milestone within our business strategy” adding that the purchase “reinforces our strategy to continue our expansion into storefront and portal management for carriers across the world”. The Player X purchase also gives Zed two new operating divisions: video on demand and mobile TV, which the company said turns it into a “one-stop-shop” for content and distribution.

Combined Company to Be World’s Largest Mobile Advertising Exchange

It's time to re-learn everything you thought you knew about investing, writes Brett Arends.

Wireless service provider NII Holdings seems to be fighting a David-vs.-Goliath battle in Latin America. Or maybe not. By focusing on a niche — high-end business customers — NII (NIHD) has so far avoided a direct clash with two industry giants. With 7 million customers in Latin America, NII Holdings is dwarfed by No. 1 America Movil's (AMX) 181 million and No. 2 Telefonica's (TEF) 129 million. Still, NII Holdings claims an edge over those rivals:

The world's largest mobile operator by sales ups its annual cash outlook and says profit will come in at the upper end of its forecast range.

The first phase of VoIP didn't truly disrupt the traditional voice model, but the next round likely will, thanks to players like Google

NEC adds self-organizing network (SON) capabilities from Actix to its LTE family

Spain’s incumbent telecom carrier Telefonica (TEF) is planning to expand its stake in China Unicom (CHU), the second-largest Chinese wireless carrier. The Spanish telecom giant expects to gradually increase its share in the Chinese company to further boost its foothold in the world’s largest mobile market. The companies concluded a $1 billion stake purchase in each [...]

(TEF) Telefonica to Buy More China Unicom

Spain’s incumbent telecom carrier Telefonica (TEF) is planning to expand its stake in China Unicom (CHU), the second-largest Chinese wireless carrier. The Spanish telecom giant expects to gradually increase its share in the Chinese company to further boost its foothold in the world’s largest mobile market. The companies concluded a $1 billion stake purchase in each ...

International telecom titan Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) has announced key performance indicators for the third quarter of fiscal 2010. In its interim management statement for the quarter, the world’s largest wireless carrier by sales reported consolidated revenues of 11.5 billion (US$18.8 billion), representing 10.3% year-over-year growth.[More...]

The proposed merger of the UK units of European telecom giants Deutsche Telekom (DT) and France Telecom (FTE) in a 50-50 joint venture faces the possibility of an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the UK antitrust watchdog. OFT is of the opinion that the merger deal could significantly subdue competition in the [...]

(DT) Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom Face UK Probe

International telecom titan Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) has announced key performance indicators for the third quarter of fiscal 2010. In its interim management statement for the quarter, the world’s largest wireless carrier by sales reported consolidated revenues of £11.5 billion (US$18.8 billion), representing 10.3% year-over-year growth. Healthy contribution from the Asia-Pacific and Middle East operations contributed [...]

(VOD) Vodafone Group Sales – Guidance Higher

Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Telefonica De Argentina, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Evergreen Solar, Peabody Energy