LONDON-Officials for Virgin Mobile in the United Kingdom confirmed that the company’s announcement of a new Sony Ericsson phone for left-handed users was in fact an April Fool’s Day prank. The company said it had no plans for such a phone.
A Virgin Mobile spokeswoman said the prank went over well, with a variety of news outlets (including RCR Wireless News) picking up the fake story. The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the cheeky British carrier had broken April Fool’s Day rules by putting out the fake news March 31 instead of April 1.
In its April Fool’s prank, Virgin said it would sell the Sony Ericsson LH-Z200 for about $220 starting this month. The carrier said the phone was exclusively designed for left-handed users-a razz that got this reporter. Ah, nuts.
In other April 1 news, Verizon Wireless said it would acquire Sprint, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc. in a deal worth $150 million billion trillion, and officials from the GSM Association said they planned to challenge Qualcomm Inc. executives to a friendly game of softball.
