Worst of the Week: The clock is ticking

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So, here we are, just over 4 weeks into 2008 and so far I have been very disappointed with the wireless industry. There have been no hostile take-overs, no financial scandals, no fire-and-brimstone collapses — though it seems Sprint Nextel and Motorola are trying — and we have yet to witness the launch of a new device or service that will be the hot topic for the year (and give everyone who did not come up with it sleepless nights for months to come).
What’s the deal!?!
And don’t think I haven’t been looking for such calamities. I walked the halls of the recent Consumer Electronics Show intent on finding just such a device/application/burning tree, and from what I saw, we are in for a ho-hum year. Of course it probably didn’t help that I spent most of my time at the show huddled in a fetal position in one corner of the central hall after having spent several hours in front of 3-D televisions and wishing I could join my new friends in their 3-D world, only to be whisked away by security.
On a side not, I only managed to regain my senses at CES after being serenaded by Kevin Costner and his American Roots band during an after-show party thrown at the Gibson guitar tent — and (shameless plug coming) . co-sponsored by RCR Wireless News — outside the convention center. There is nothing more soothing for the soul than listening to the Mariner himself belt out Musak-quality tunes interspersed with stories about how such mundane lyrics came to a multi-millionaire Hollywood actor laying in bed at night.
But anyway, back to my disappointment with the wireless industry to this point.
I was holding out hope that “The One Who Knows What We Want Before We Know Ourselves” would dazzle us with an updated iPhone that not only included 3G technology, but also managed to include 4G and 5G with the ability to upgrade to 6G with a simple software update. But alas. TOWKWWWBWKO let us, and more importantly, me down with just some software updates to the iPhone that I think included Etch-A-Sketch capabilities and the makings of a self-awareness program that is the beginning of the SkyNET program. (Obviously I’m still having problems reacclimating to the real world following CES.)
The only bright spot I can see is that the 700 MHz auction kicks off today — and if you know me at all, you know that there is nothing I love more than spectrum auctions. Nothing. While we won’t know the names of who is winning what, in my own mind I will be giving each winning bidder per round its own name culled from my childhood experiences growing up in the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley of California. And since I had a lot of invisible friends when I was young, I have lots of choices for bidder names.
And of course there is the Mobile World Congress coming up next month for the Euro-crowd and CTIA in early April for the domestics, but by that time my short attention span may have wondered off onto more interesting topics.
Come on wireless industry, save me from having to find more interesting topics.
OK! Enough of that.
–Received word this week that World Wrestling Entertainment is taking its annual Royal Rumble to Habbo’s virtual world. “After being assigned a virtual avatar to one of 59 WWE Superstars, Habbo.com’s 1.6 million online citizens will vote for which of the top 30 WWE Superstars they think will play various roles in the event (e.g., ultimate winner).” Now, this might be good news for some, bad for others, but I couldn’t comprehend any of it to form an opinion. The words in the press release appeared to be in English, but for some reason I could not discern any of it. Had I been hit on the head and forgotten the English language? Maybe. Did this release have anything to do with wireless? Could have. Is there a secret map entombed in the message that could lead the discoverer to a secret treasure? Might be.
–Here’s how little I understand about the stock market. So, Apple posted a blow-out fourth quarter with every possible financial metric blowing away the previous year’s number. The result: the company’ stock plummets. Motorola posts fourth-quarter numbers that are substantially below what it posted in the previous year. The result: the company’s stock plummets. Wall Street logic seems to come from another planet. A planet full of money.
–Poor Sprint Nextel. Days after announcing preliminary results on yet another abysmal quarter, one of the carrier’s few remaining affiliates, iPCS, posted its own quarterly results that included a nice jab at its bigger brother. iPCS noted “The subscriber growth through the Sprint-controlled and national channels continued to be weak however, which resulted in overall subscriber growth being below our previous expectation.” That should make any upcoming family reunions that much more uncomfortable.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@crain.com.