Nokia Corp. begged for forgiveness from consumers after its new cloud-based service broke down.The Finnish manufacturer - which is striving to evolve into a mobile Internet services company - said its Contacts for Ovi offering shut down after a cooler failed, causing a server...
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 RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way....
Sun Microsystems Inc. is hoping to bridge the gap between smartphones and feature phones with a new platform targeting mid- and lower-end devices.The Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer unveiled the mobile version of JavaFX, an offering designed to run atop Java ME (Mobile Edition) as...
All the pieces are in place for a turnaround at Palm Inc., CEO Ed Colligan said in extolling the company's next-generation platform, due to launch in months.Perhaps the biggest variable in that turnaround, however, is a lackluster economy with limited visibility into future consumer...
Microsoft Corp.'s ActiveSync technology is behind Google Inc.'s latest mobile synching offering.The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant on Monday rolled out Google Sync., a feature that allows users with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices to exchange Gmail and Google Calendar information between phones and...
The Communications Workers of America and AT&T Mobility failed to reach an agreement over the weekend on a new contract covering 20,000 wireless workers in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Mountain States and West Coast. However, the dispute has yet to materialize into a strike...
Microsoft Corp. is the latest company to jump on the cloud-computing craze with a free new service for Windows Mobile users.The software giant unveiled My Phone, a Web-based service that synchs contacts, appointments, messages and multimedia content between the Internet and mobile phones. The...
The wireless pundits are chattering about a new offer from Verizon Wireless. The nation's largest carrier is offering a buy-one-get-one-of-equal-or-lesser-value-for-free promotion on the most popular smartphone brand - Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry - in the United States. That's technically a BOGOOEOLVFF offer, or...
Google Inc. launched a mobile version of its book search offering, enabling users with devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone and T-Mobile USA Inc.'s G1 to access more than 1.5 million works.The online giant said it formats the titles by extracting text from the...
For all the things the iPhone can do, running Flash - a platform that displays interactive graphics and animations - isn't one of them. But Greystripe isn't waiting around for Apple and Adobe, Flash's maker, to work things out.The mobile in-game ad network in...
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. eked out a slim lead in market share over Motorola Inc. in the United States last year, in part due to the latter's fading fortunes, according to new numbers from IDC.Where Samsung showed 15.5% year-on-year growth between 2007 and 2008,...
Nickelodeon is launching a series of iPhone and iTouch applications based on its popular shows "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Dora the Explorer" and "iCarly."Users will be challenged to match shapes, count numbers and practice the alphabet through a "Dora the Explorer" application game launching in March."SpongeBob...
Sales of GPS-enabled mobile phone are expected to buck the global trend of handset shipment declines this year, according to a report from ABI Research.And even though the market is expected to feel a pinch this year, unit sales of GPS-enabled phones should grow...
Betting that a touchscreen interface and high-resolution camera phone will lead to more photo-sharing - and accompanying data revenue - T-Mobile USA Inc. said today it would soon launch Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s Memoir.The carrier has not provided pricing or a launch date for...
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 RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way....
Mobile application retailer Handmark announced a deal to acquire FreeRange Communications, a Portland, Ore.-based mobile technology firm, for an undisclosed amount.FreeRange offers a publishing platform designed to help media companies and content owners to create branded, downloadable smartphone applications. The company also offers mobile...
Now that retailers have honed in on wireless, realizing that it can serve as an integral part of its business, they've also begun to notice that customers need more help understanding the new devices. In a recent survey from Mformation Technologies Inc., the company...
According to a Wall Street Journal report this morning, AT&T Inc. is very interested in acquiring network assets and customers Verizon Wireless has to divest as part of its acquisition of Alltel Communications L.L.C. Other reported interested parties include a pair of private-equity...
Smartphones are no longer the exclusive domain of high-powered executives and road warriors. But what that means for the mobile e-mail space - which seems perennially on the verge of reaching a tipping point - has yet to be determined.Handset manufacturers and application developers...
While being the gold standard for wireless smartphones has its advantages, Apple Inc.'s iPhone and exclusive, domestic carrier partner AT&T Mobility may be evolving into a potential gold mine in the eyes of plaintiffs' attorneys who continue to pile on one class-action lawsuit after...
The fourth-quarter slugfest between Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry Storm, HTC Corp's G1 and Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G - all heavily subsidized and marketed exclusives - reflected several major currents running through the consumer-based wireless industry. Carriers need to drive data usage to pay...
Apple Inc.'s threat to sue competitors over multi-touch capabilities that violate its patents, a warning made during the company's earnings call last month, may not be wise or even have a solid foundation, according to a leading telecom analyst. "Initiating multi-touch infringement litigation may...
The short-term forecast for the handset market calls for pain and belt-tightening, no matter which market analysis you favor. And those analyses range from pretty harsh to very harsh. "We expect the first quarter of 2009 to be the absolute volume bottom in the...
An inventory buildup, slowing demand and lack of visibility into how to weigh those two factors is hanging over the wireless chip industry as companies search for a way ahead. As most handset vendors posted volume shipment decreases for the typically hot fourth quarter,...
