This week in the wireless backhaul industry, EXFO, sponsor of the wireless backhaul community, reported a 20.9 percent increase in its sales to $67.6 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2011 from $55.9 million in the third quarter of 2010.

However, the sales of the company decreased 6.1 percent from $72 million in the second quarter of 2011. After nine months into fiscal year 2011, sales increased 42.4 percent year-over-year to $205.3 million.

In related wireless news, according to an FCC (News - Alert) report on wireless competition, the number of adults who rely exclusively on mobile wireless for voice service has increased significantly in recent years.  According to the January to June 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 24.9 percent of adults, or one in every four, lived in households with wireless phones only during the first half of 2010.

Lamonde said that given the company’s outlook for the fourth quarter, the company should generate annual revenue growth greater than 30 percent for telecom business, which demonstrates once again the company’s ability to grow faster than the end-markets.

In its most recent study, the NHIS found that 30 percent of respondents only used mobile phones during the last half of 2010, an increase of three percentage points since the first half of 2010. In addition, about 16 percent of respondents indicated they received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones despite having a landline phone in the home as well. 

In other news, Andy Rubin, Google’s (News - Alert) senior vice president of Mobile, this week revealed that there are a half million new Android phone activations every day. Consider that two months ago, the figure was at 400,000 each day, which means at this growth rate (roughly 4.4 percent week over week), Google will see one million Android (News - Alert) phone activations each day by October of this year.

Steve Jobs, who once nitpicked over how Google was measuring Android adoption numbers, couldn’t even throw cold water on those figures. Android has been outpacing Apple (News - Alert) iOS devices by far. (There are approximately 210,000 iPhones activated each day, and a total of 325,000 iOS devices, including iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices). Android now owns 36.4 percent of the smartphone market in the U.S., according to ComScore, leading the iPhone’s (News - Alert) 26 percent, Research in Motion’s 25.7 percent and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7’s 6.7 percent.

Be sure to bookmark and stay tuned to the Wireless Backhaul community, exclusively on TMCnet for all the latest news in wireless backhaul services including microwave and satellite systems.

Stefanie Mosca is a Web editor for TMCnet. Previously she worked as a freelance copy editor for Digital Surgeons LLC. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of New Haven. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf