Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. will sell its ailing handset business -- and wireless infrastructure assets -- to Kyocera Corp. for about $375 million, the two companies announced.Sanyo's handset unit had been among the top ten original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in the world and a...
The first two handset vendors to report fourth-quarter and full 2007 earnings last week both forecast 10% growth for their sector in 2008, on top of healthy unit volume growth last year. That seemed to reassure industry analysts that macro-economic trends now capturing headlines...
PREDICTIONS ARE SO LAST YEAR.Instead, let's talk "expectations" - a term that seems to promise a more realistic look ahead at the new year. And there are questions worth asking that dog the conventional wisdom.To keep it tangible, consider issues related to mobile handsets...
Full data on how various handsets and carriers fared during the holiday shopping season awaits collection and analysis. Various firms will report their definitive views in late January, early February.Based on Compete Inc.'s measure of online shopping in November, as the quarter revved up,...
LG Electronics Co. Ltd. announced recently that the company's new Viewty handset has sold more than 310,000 units over its first five weeks in the European market, where it is on sale in 14 countries. The phone with a 5-megapixel camera launched in late...
For spectators at the iPhone circus, two basic questions seem prevalent. Will Apple Inc. sustain the brisk sales of its signature handset at AT&T Mobility here in the United States?And, in the circus' high-wire act, how will the iPhone fare overseas, as it rolls...
Mobile Complete launched an application that gives Web surfers the opportunity to try out various handsets before buying them. The interactive, consumer-focused Web program, called "TryPhone," builds off the company's DeviceAnywhere suite of products, which gives application developers and others a way to test...
T-Mobile USA Inc. continues to expand its lineup of handsets serving the carrier's HotSpot @ Home service, with the new Katalyst from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. The quad-band, EDGE slider handset is priced at $80 with a mail-in rebate and two-year contract and includes...
AT&T Mobility isn't wasting any time promoting its products and services in the former Dobson Communications Corp. territories it just acquired. The carrier said that the first phase of its integration of Dobson-a $2.8 billion purchase that closed in mid-November-will start Sunday, as more...
Better late than never.Handsets that didn't arrive by "Black Friday" or "Cyber Monday"-the ultimate days for in-store and online shopping, respectively-may still make an impression on harried shoppers.Nokia Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. announced that Nokia's 6263 will be available online, adding a seventh...
LG Electronics Co. Ltd. said it has consolidated its $350 million global brand-and-product account at Publicis Groupe's Bartle Bogle Hegarty following a review.London-based Bartle Bogle, which had emerged from the pack as the expected winner more than a week ago, will create a unified...
LG Electronics Co. Ltd. is creating a chief marketing officer position and the job will go to Dermot Boden, who starts work at the company's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, in December.Boden, an Irishman, is already working in Asia, where he ran Pfizer's operations...
Verizon Wireless' declaration this morning that "any application, any device" will run on its network next year is clearly an overstatement-Verizon's CDMA network allows only CDMA-based devices, in use by 60% of subscribers in the United States market, but only 20% of the global...
AT&T Mobility and LG Electronics Co. Ltd. are betting that American consumers will upgrade their handsets based on a combination of style and features-and are willing to pay the price. Those are the twin lures of LG's new Shine handset, which combines a silver,...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our Monday 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. In the coming weeks look for columns from Jupiter Research's Julie Ask, iGR's Iain...
The third quarter saw consumer handset sales in the United States valued at $3.2 billion, a 47% jump over the year-ago quarter, according to new data from NPD Group. Those numbers are based on 38 million units sold to consumers.Smartphones catapulted to 11% of...
Over the past week, a wide breadth of telecom companies have completed Long Term Evolution tests.Nokia Corp. announced results last week from the first phase of a trial that the company claimed achieved 100 megabit-per-second data transfer speeds. The trial was conducted by the...
J.D. Power announced Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications' handsets scored highest in overall customer satisfaction among U.S. and Canadian consumers in the consumer research firm's latest survey.SEMC ranked highest in features, battery life, physical design, operation and durability among U.S. consumers. Najmi Jarwala, president of...
Google Inc. drew considerable media attention last week with an idea and 33 influential friends.Missing was its long-rumored gPhone, whose actual fate remains a closely guarded secret. Instead, Google announced a consortium of 34 companies-the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)-and a common goal of producing...
Google Inc. is the new E.F. Hutton-when the Internet search giant talks, everybody listens. Many observers today expected to hear about a long-rumored Google phone-it didn't happen. Nor were any specific handset models announced. But listeners probably included likely competitors to the new Open...
A group of industry heavyweights-headed by Google Inc., T-Mobile, HTC Corp., Qualcomm Inc., and Motorola Inc.-announced a new software platform for cellphones that includes an operating system, middleware, user interface and applications. The alliance said the first phones based on the "Android" platform will...
Handset art Virgin Mobile USA and LG Electronics announced six specially commissioned handpanted Aloha handsets that will be auctioned off to support youth homeless charities. The project is part of the "National Homeless Youth Awareness Month" in November. Artists Daniel Davidson, Caroline Hwang, Rich...
Simplicity. Invisible technology that brings consumers emotional satisfaction.A fun user interface that enables the work/play overlap.A company not from Cupertino, Calif., but from another center of innovation: MAGIC Labs at HTC Corp. in Taipei, Taiwan-a lean, hungry player that is slicing and dicing the...
For Verizon Wireless and its recently installed chief, Lowell McAdam, life seems great. Customer growth remains near the top, customer churn remains nearly invisible and the carrier recently unveiled new devices targeting fast-growing demographics as well as a certain "fruity" competitor.Of course, not all...
