Alcatel-Lucent SA

China is starting a long-delayed introduction of third-generation mobile phone service, setting off a politically charged scramble by foreign and Chinese equipment makers for up to $41 billion in orders.

Chinese sales could be crucial for suppliers such as Motorola Inc., Alcatel-Lucent SA and Nokia-Siemens Networks as global demand slumps. State media say the largest Chinese carrier, China Mobile, expects to sign up 100 million 3G subscribers -- more than most nations' entire mobile markets -- in the next three years.

New Alcatel-Lucent chief Ben Verwaayen faces a difficult job Friday as he tries to convince shareholders he can turn around the troubled French-U.S. telecommunications equipment maker the way he did BT Group PLC.

Verwaayen, credited with transforming the British telecoms company into a broadband Internet powerhouse, will be expected to pull off similar results at Alcatel-Lucent SA, a company still beset by integration problems two years after its creation in a giant trans-Atlantic merger, analysts say.

Microsoft Corp. does not have to pay $1.5 billion in damages to Alcatel-Lucent SA, a panel of federal appeals judges has ruled in what may be the last word on a long-running digital music patent lawsuit.

In February 2007, a jury in U.S. District Court in San Diego determined Microsoft infringed on two patents that cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format, a popular way to convert music from CDs into files on computers and vice versa.