The new BlackBerry Storm from Research In Motion Ltd. will be available Nov. 21 at Verizon Wireless for $200, with two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate. The Storm's subsidized price comes in at the same price point as Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G with 8...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications announced its high-end, touchscreen smartphone, the Xperia X1, will be available to U.S. shoppers in time for the holiday season - but the device will carry the staggering price tag of $800. The announcement appears to reflect Sony Ericsson's inability...
Former Vice President and Noble Peace Prize Winner Al Gore will be the Day 3 keynote speaker at the International CTIA Wireless 2009 event, set to take place April 1-3 in Las Vegas.Former VP Gore "has a long history of demonstrating leadership in the...
There continues to be a fair amount of optimism among mobile game makers. Whether the rose-colored lenses are warranted, though, is more uncertain than ever.Gameloft last week offered a surprisingly upbeat outlook for wireless gaming as it posted $34.1 million in third-quarter revenues, up...
Was it brilliance or blunder to launch the much-anticipated BlackBerry Bold on Election Day?AT&T Mobility rolled the dice when it decided to launch its exclusive, much-hyped BlackBerry Bold mobile handset on Nov. 4, a day when much of the country was gripped by a...
Apple Inc.'s 3G iPhone was the top-selling handset in the United States in the third quarter, according to new data from NPD Group.
The long reign of Motorola Inc.'s Razr handset - three straight years, or 12 consecutive quarters - is over. The Razr,...
With the wireless industry's nationwide players having posted third-quarter results, it appears that the market is quickly changing from a battle of the big 4 to a war between the big 2. Last week, the industry's No. 3 and No. 4 operators, Sprint Nextel...
We expect our purchases to work as promised - and work right away. When it doesn't happen, it's frustrating and disappointing at best, and potentially a customer-losing experience at it's worst.Apple's 3G iPhone was a product that I was enthusiastically looking forward to for...
Visual voicemail is still in its infancy - it's only available on a handful of devices from the nation's top four carriers - but as the service becomes more prevalent, smaller wireless providers may see it as a way to separate themselves from the...
Financial news in just the past few weeks has led Qualcomm Inc. to forecast "meaningfully less" growth in CDMA-based handset markets for calendar year 2009. The chip and IP-licensing firm cited slower consumer purchasing than previously anticipated and a purposeful contraction in channel inventory...
AT&T Inc. reported plans to acquire Wayport Inc. for $275 million, expanding the telecom giant's Wi-Fi offering to thousands of locations and offering free Internet access to millions of its customers.The acquisition expands AT&T's Wi-Fi footprint to nearly 20,000 domestic hot spots and 80,000...
Former Vice President and Noble Peace Prize Winner Al Gore will be the Day 3 keynote speaker at the International CTIA Wireless 2009 event, set to take place April 1-3 in Las Vegas.Former Vice President Gore "has a long history of demonstrating leadership in...
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....
Craig Harper went from trying to keep track of his daughter to launching his own company that aims to help businesses keep track of their mobile workforce and be more productive.In 2006, Harper bought his 9-year-old daughter a Disney Mobile family cellphone, which gives...
Shares of Glu Mobile Inc. continued to slide after the mobile game maker posted a $56.9 million quarterly loss.The San Mateo, Calif.-based publisher reported third quarter revenue of $23.9 million, up 44% from the same period last year, thanks largely to increased sales in...
The handset market has been unseasonably chilly this fall.Where the third quarter typically reflects a ramp-up for the holiday spending orgy, it appeared from the metrics that the togas may remain in the closet this quarter. Media coverage that typically revels in the ups...
The strongest growth in Apple Inc. 3G iPhone sales is occurring among consumers who earn below the median household income, according to comScore/M:Metrics. While nearly half of iPhone owners earn more than $100,000 annually - the proverbial early adopters with high amounts of disposable...
You know that dusty smell you experience when you open a book that hasn't been picked up in decades? That's the feeling I get lately when I think of Microsoft's Windows Mobile.Smartphones - and the applications that run on them - are at the...
Despite some financial hiccups, Alltel Communications L.L.C. managed to acquire more than 1 million gross customer additions during the third quarter, a 28% increase from a year ago. The carrier recorded 335,152 net customer adds, with 255,299 of those signing up for postpaid plans.Alltel's...
NEWS LAST WEEK THAT MOTOROLA INC. HAD SETTLED ON Windows Mobile and Android as handset platforms in an effort to simplify, focus on innovation and manage costs underscored the unknowns involved in such choices. Because leading OSs come with "patrons and politics," with unknown...
The "OS wars," as some would have it, are alive and well - at least in the data on the various contenders' shifting market share."Symbian is still by far the most popular operating system for smartphones, with about 50% global market share," said analyst...
Gameloft offered a surprisingly upbeat outlook for mobile gaming as it posted $34.1 million in third-quarter revenues.The Paris-based game maker reported an 8% increase from last year's revenues during the same period, and generated $99.6 million during the first nine months of 2008 -...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.Having just returned from the Rutberg Wireless Influencers conference this past week, the top question on everyone's...
Is the Google Android operating system a game changer? The answer to that question may determine the answer to one of wireless's biggest questions: Who owns the customer? From the time the first cellphone call was made, wireless carriers have had the front-line relationship...