Bharti Airtel Ltd. (ISE: 55QN) missed analyst expectations for the second quarter. The largest mobile phone operator in India gained clients in the country's smaller towns and villages, resulting in lower than expected revenues. The company pulled in INR99.4 billion ($2.05 billion) for the second quarter -- compared to analyst expectations of INR101.7 billion. Nonetheless, revenue was up from INR84.8 billion for the second quarter of 2008. Net income grew 24% to INR25.2 billion. Net of a tax gain, however, the company missed analyst forecasts of INR23.6 billion.

Minyanville contributor Sean Udall dares to share the kind of keen insight and actionable information you won't find in any prospectus. For more original thought, visit www.minyanville.com.

AT&T (NYSE: T) became the first US carrier to make Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) the default search engine on its cell phones. Default search engines on traditional web portals probably don't carry as much weight as in the past. However, being selected the default for cellular searches is stickier due to the design of many devices. Moreover, YHOO will be providing the tag along ads that appear in conjunction with these searches.

Tech is lagging this morning as the finance stocks experience the biggest lift from the Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)/Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) news. Meanwhile, YHOO is flat and on a day like today as a story like this won't carry much weight, but over time, the fact that YHOO is making significant deals in wireless search strengthens the long term valuation case. I suspect the shares of YHOO will lag the broader market until we get renewed take-out chatter or we see better action from other technology leaders.

Meanwhile, one of my newer favorite Naz names is simply the Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) itself. NDAQ has traded terribly the last few months with the decline in its own index. However, volumes and business fundamentals are quite strong a the poor market doesn't necessarily mean that the NDAQ itself is weakening. In fact I would say their market share and overall strategy has strengthened over the last year or more.

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is getting kicked while it is down. Not that the company has done a good job of keeping its cellphone sales going. It does not have a single "hot" product. Its global market share is around 13%, depending on who is measuring. Analysts are cutting the number of handsets that they think the US company sold in the first quarter.

The one place Motorola does have good market share is the US. With 35% of the market, it is the leader. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) as only 10% against its global share of 40%. Nokia plans to change that. According to The Wall Street Journal : "Nokia is making mostly behind-the-scenes changes. It is cooperating with the large carriers such as AT&T (NYSE: T) that control how most phones are sold to customers in the U.S. and has started designing phones specifically for North America."

While the news could be good for Nokia, if it is successful, it would not have a huge impact on its financials. The company already sells over 400 million handsets and does particularly well in fast-growing markets in China.

Any share Motorola loses in the US would be devastating. The company lost about $1 billion in its handset division on $19 billion in revenue last year. Those numbers are likely to be worse for 2008.

When Motorola announced its was breaking the company in two, its share price barely moved. It may be occurring to Wall Street that the company is not worth more than the sum of its parts, especially with its largest division doing so poorly and under pressure from competition.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

With more than two billion cell phone users in the world, advertising over mobile phones is most likely a way of the future. But it seems like every week I receive a silly, spam-like text message encouraging me to purchase overpriced ringtones or use some other expensive service. Like many cell phone users, I rarely (if ever) take action from these ads and I find them brutally annoying.

Interestingly, a recent Associated Press article reveals several new ways advertisers are targeting the mobile phone market without being so irritating. For example, cell phone users have been offered services that allow them to find the nearest restaurant, convenience store, and so forth. While this service is clearly useful for the phone-owner, the service-operators can also profit handsomely by selling spaces to the restaurants, convenience stores, and so on.

With the growing saturation of mobile internet use, advertising over mobile internet pages could also make sense. But it's important for advertisers to remember that excessively-commercialized websites are a powerful turn-off to readers and users. Therefore, I'd bet that mobile websites would be limited to one or two advertisements per page. According to the AP article, this mobile internet advertising business has taken off in the Japanese market where most of the country's cell phone owners also have mobile internet access.

Going forward, more realistic and useful advertising methods are going to become more prominent in the mobile phone space. However, mobile phone network operators must be careful with what advertising is permitted. Moves further into the spam category will incense consumers, while moves towards useful and profitable advertising will probably sit well with most consumers.

See also:
Can AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) make money on cell phone ads?