Personal navigation device maker Garmin Ltd. said it will offer $3.3 billion for Tele Atlas N.V. in a move likely to spur a bidding war for the digital mapping company.Tele Atlas in July accepted a bid of $2.8 billion from TomTom NV, a Dutch...
Taiwanese smartphone vendor HTC Corp. and Brightpoint, Inc., the distribution powerhouse, signed a global distribution agreement that may help the smartphone maker realize its ambitions of establishing a globally recognized brand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. HTC Americas, the United States subsidiary...
For a show that bills itself as a bleeding-edge event with a multiple personality disorder (One Show. Two Personalities.) last week's CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco was exceedingly tame.A disappointingly placid Steve Ballmer of Microsoft took center stage for the...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works...
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...
Wow. Three days, a few hundred miles of walking, too much alcohol and too few good meals. Or in other words, a typical CTIA event. While this year's event seemed a little light on big news, there was still plenty of buzz oozing from...
The buzzword du jour: presence. "Presence" is getting a lot of play, from the focus of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's opening keynote address on Tuesday to a panel discussion Wednesday. But what the heck does it mean? Like most buzzwords, that depends on...
So this is what they mean by "One show, two personalities."Wednesday's keynote coupled the buttoned-down executive style of Research In Motion Ltd. with the hip, edgy verve of Facebook. Dustin Moskovitz, who co-founded the popular social networking site, unveiled a new application that delivers...
You're hearing a dizzying stream of promises and jargon aimed at convincing businesses to "go mobile."But you'd like to hear unvarnished advice from folks who have done the heavy lifting. Case studies, from the horse's mouth. Ya shoulda been at the roundtable Monday...
The Mad Ballmer remained out of sight for Tuesday's keynote address before a standing-room-only crowd.Instead, a calm, determined Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp.'s CEO, offered a new, enterprise-friendly, mobile-device-management suite, touched device maker HTC Corp. with his magic wand and just said no to spectrum...
Facts are facts. Large companies are the main drivers for the wireless industry. If MicrosoftNokiaVerizonWirelessRIM want to push innovation, they have the clout, power and money to make something happen.But following a quick stroll along the show floor, I think it's also obvious that...
The enterprise, like any individual, has to decide what it wants out of mobility in general and a device in particular before making a series of decisions. What are the needed applications? Should deployment be managed in-house or out-sourced? Should the enterprise buy devices...
If you've ever tossed a strand of spaghetti against a refrigerator to see if it sticks-and, therefore, is fully cooked-then you have a sense of what handset vendors and carriers go through each fall. The analogy is inexact because the issue isn't whether that...
Editor's Note: Welcome to a special CTIA I.T. Show Daily edition of our weekly online feature, Analyst Angle. Every Monday at www.RCRNews.com you can find columns from the industry's leading analysts, including iGR's Iain Gillott, JupiterResearch's Julie Ask and more. Visit www.RCRNews.com/analyst for more...
If you own the platform, you control the message.That's not some esoteric, technological mumbo-jumbo-though you'll hear plenty of that this week-but one take on Symbian Ltd.'s position as sponsor of the Smartphone Summit, which allows the company to spin the data on its fortunes.While...
AT&T Mobility bolstered its mobile music offering with plans to offer over-the-air access to Napster's 5-million-plus music tracks beginning next month. The deal builds on the carrier's current side-loading deal with the music giant as well as its over-the-air downloading agreement with eMusic.The service,...
What's Google Inc. up to in mobile? You might as well ask what Rupert Murdoch is doing in media.Because the answer is, just about everything.The Internet colossus first dipped its toe in the mobile waters in 2000 with a search service for Web-enabled phones,...
Verizon Wireless has added the ability to update software on new phones on-the-fly, a new offering that may stand as a key competitive advantage. The carrier is working with InnoPath Software Inc. to deliver its firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) service, which saves consumers a visit to...
Digital mapping companies such as Navteq Corp. and Tele Atlas N.V. "now occupy the most important position in the global GPS navigation supply chain," according to a new report from iSuppli Corp.The ever-increasing value of mapping intellectual property holders was underscored earlier this month...
In a online presentation this morning, Microsoft Corp. introduced its "Unified Communications" software offering that the company said would tie together all current means of business communication based on the concepts of "identity" and "presence"-a promise that has echoed for at least a decade...
Microsoft Corp. officially joined the voice-operated search field, unveiling a free directory-assistance service for mobile and fixed-line users.The software giant launched Live Search 411, an offering that delivers local listings as well as weather updates, movie show times and airline information. Users with Internet-enabled...
Want one of those ".mobi" suffixes for your wireless Web site? Get out your checkbook.The company behind the mobile-only top-level domain closed its first online auction earlier this month, raking in more than $850,000 as it hawked 100 mobile Web addresses to the highest...
After a one-year hiatus when the show visited Los Angeles, the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment event is back in the city by the Bay for 2007. The move is minor considering the wireless trade association's larger spring show has been bouncing between the...
Motorola Inc. said it will expand its W-Series line of affordable handsets, adding seven new models in advance of the holiday season.Two of the new models will be available in the United States: the W175, a candybar-style phone with one-click access to text messaging;...
