Leap Wireless International Inc. (LEAP) fell back to earth during the second quarter following robust Q1 results and has announced a round of operational changes that it hopes will help turn around its fortunes in a market that has suddenly become obsessed with the...
If prepaid is the future, then count Sprint Nextel Corp. as going all in on the no-contract wireless front.The carrier today unveiled its latest card to play in the prepaid game with the release of its Common Cents pay-as-you-go service that provides a traditional...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.The prepaid segment has suddenly found itself in the spotlight thanks to two prime factors....
Sprint Nextel Corp. unveiled more details about its plans to lure prepaid customers onto its Virgin Mobile USA sub-brand, including a $25 a month Virgin Mobile plan aimed at data-focused youth market. The carrier expanded its Assurance brand and offered a few more details...
Sprint Nextel Corp.’s Boost Mobile division is keeping the pressure on in the no-contract space as it’s now offering unlimited 411 calls, e-mail and instant messaging to its $50 per month, unlimited rate plan. For those customers on the company’s Blackberry plan, the new...
Leap Wireless International Inc. is using 2010 to catch its breath, or at least that was the sentiment from its CFO Walter Berger who spoke this morning at Goldman Sachs’ Inaugural Technology, Media & Telecom Leveraged Finance Conference. Berger noted that the company spent...
BARCELONA – One advantage of the wireless industry’s move to the LTE technology standard is the plethora of new equipment that will be required to support those networks. Whether its upgrading from a current GSM-based network or a Greenfield build, carriers are going to...
Fresh off its $6 million acquisition of Kyocera Wireless Corp.'s Indian facility, MindTree Ltd. said it will enter the Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) business with Kyocera as its first customer, at a time when the market is stabilizing following a disastrous first quarter.Called N!Mo...
MindTree Ltd. said it will pay $6 million to buy Kyocera Wireless Corp.’s Indian facility, Kyocera Wireless (India) Pvt. Ltd., which develops wireless products, software engineering and product testing for Kyocera, as well as custom handsets for Indian service providers. In addition to the...
When in past years Symbian Ltd. nervously eyed the nascent promise of mobile Linux, Symbian evangelists noted sharply that the rival, open-source platform would require considerable sweat equity or costly out-sourcing to ready it for market.That claim turned out to be true to an...
Kyocera Wireless Corp. has enlisted a new partner to jazz up its accessory line. The handset and device manufacturer announced today that it partnered with Superior Communications, which will now manage the design, manufacturing and distribution of its Genuine Accessories by Kyocera line.Aside from...
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,...
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...
The swirl of events last month and their possible implications for the domestic handset industry are several-fold, analyst said last week. First, despite an outlook tempered by drastic economic headlines, the wireless market in the United States may not be the "meltdown" many are...
BOSTON - A day after the release of the first cellphone powered by Google Inc.'s Android software, the founder of the startup that initially developed the software took the Mobile Internet World keynote stage to explain the reasons behind the search giant's much-hyped effort."It's...
BOSTON - It's a busy time for T-Mobile USA Inc.The carrier is in the midst of rolling out its 3G network, it is launching the world's first Google Inc.-powered cellphone, and it is overhauling its interactions with application developers. The goal, of course, is...
The maturing U.S. handset market continued to chug along in the first half of the year - though slowing relative to years past - and analysts offered an array of views on what forces will shape the market in the second half of the...
Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the Chinese vendor of entry-tier phones, is seeking a capital infusion for its handset division to fuel international expansion of that business, particularly in the United States. Such a move would provide a brand-building opportunity and also free up resources...
Disaster reliefVerizon Wireless launched a program designed to make it easy for its customers to donate to disaster relief efforts targeted at China and Myanmar. The program allows postpaid customers to send a text message to the shortcode 4SAVE with the key word "quake"...
WHILE THE CARRIER'S COMPETITORS WORRY over a potentially greatly expanded customer base and network footprint, Verizon Wireless' handset suppliers likely are cheering news that the carrier plans to acquire Alltel Communications L.L.C."The strongest (handset) players at Verizon Wireless areprobably the winners" in the merger,...
The success of smartphones among U.S. shoppers has served to boost the average purchase price for cellphones, according to new research from J.D. Power and Associates. According to the firm's survey of almost 20,000 cellphone owners, the average price paid for a phone has...
It's been said that football is a game of inches, a description that might also be applied to the handset market. And, as in football, a team - in this case a pairing of Virgin Mobile USA Inc. with its first handset from Samsung...
Despite being less of a target in recent years, the cellphone industry remains entangled in health-related litigation that could turn on how the District of Columbia Court of Appeals rules on a challenge to a lower court's dismissal of six brain-cancer lawsuits last year....
A sequential dip in shipments by Motorola Inc. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications between the fourth quarter and the first quarter spelled t-r-a-c-t-i-o-n for numerous second-tier handset makers, particularly in emerging markets. The opportunity for greater volumes among those outside the elite top tier...
