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. We...
In an ongoing effort to cut costs, Nokia Corp. today invited 1,000 workers worldwide to voluntarily resign. The Finnish handset maker, which had about 128,000 employees at the end of 2008, said that between March 1 and May 31 all employees except "direct labor"...
With Sprint Nextel Corp. reporting a massive fourth-quarter loss, the company's ratings have taken a fall and it has been given a negative outlook for this year, according to a ratings service.Fitch Ratings has downgraded ratings for Sprint Nextel Corp., Sprint Capital Corp. and...
Dell'Oro Group Inc. analyst Ben Kwan forecast in December that various factors will drive growth in the wireless local are network (WLAN) market for enterprise this year."While a slowdown in the growth of new WLAN deployments and the lengthening of upgrade cycles is expected...
Femtocells are just starting to hit the wireless market, but considerable momentum is building for the technology to play a key role when carriers start to deploy LTE networks.More than 18 wireless providers said they are planning to deploy LTE technology within...
I spent a little time over the last few days downloading - ahem, purchasing - music.I bought a few tracks from a punkish-alt country band called Dead Moon, a jazz/funk act dubbed The Quantic Soul Orchestra and a couple of entire albums (do people...
Nokia Corp. confirmed today that the fourth quarter - typically the year's retail high point - was dismal and said the year ahead would far worse than it anticipated just a month ago. The company said the first quarter would reflect more extreme "seasonality"...
The business climate for wireless retailers has hit a crossroad. What were once invaluable outlets for wireless carriers looking to get their products in front of as many potential customers as possible for the lowest possible cost, has turned into a battle ground between...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications lost a quarter of a billion dollars in the fourth quarter as sales were down 23% year-on-year. SEMC shipped 24.2 million devices in the fourth quarter, down 21% year-on-year, and down 6% sequentially. The vendor shipped nearly 97 million devices...
Few people in mobile marketing can leverage both the online and wireless experience Paul Palmieri commands. The CEO of Millennial Media was an executive at Advertising.com before becoming a driving force at Verizon Wireless during mobile data's infancy, heading up the carrier's value-added services...
Nokia Corp. said today it would stop producing its mobile Internet tablet designed for a U.S.-based WiMAX network, raising questions on the phone maker's view of that nascent market. The N810 WiMAX Edition MID was Nokia's only product for WiMAX, which is slowly rolling...
Plenty of application developers and content owners are spinning their wheels as they try to convince users to shell out for mobile goodies. But a small - and very optimistic - segment is hoping to get consumers to save money with their phones.Mobile coupons...
Three people with a healthy obsession for cellphones; that's all it took to start Rentobile, a young company that rents popular handsets to U.S. consumers who want a shiny new device, but are stuck in the middle of a lengthy contract.Two years was much...
Hello! And welcome to a special edition of our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. As 2008 draws to a close and we take stock of all the changes that have happened in the wireless industry, we can't help but wonder how things will...
My e-mail inbox is teeming with pitches offering self-serving "predictions" for 2009 that read more like best-case scenarios for those hoping to cash in on mobile. But here's a forecast of my own: 2009 will be the year record labels and carriers finally wise...
Editor's Note: In our monthly Retail Snapshot feature, RCR Wireless News talks to retail managers across the country to get a first-hand view of what's hot in wireless.As Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. officially begin their joint WiMAX effort, an independent retailer in...
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 macroeconomic weakness and increased uncertainty has spurred enterprises to reduce capital budgets and increasingly...
Goodbye Xohm, hello Sprint 4G.Just over a year after inventing a new word for its WiMAX plans, Sprint Nextel Corp. has decided on a name that is easier on the tongue, and eyes, for its next-generation network aspirations. Sprint Nextel will be serving up...
All eyes are on Nokia Corp. for the handset maker's Capital Markets Day tomorrow in New York.With nearly 40% global market share, the Finnish giant's perspective is given substantial credibility, particularly in volatile economic times. And it comes on the heels of today's warning...
Mobile coupons are expected to reach 200 million redemptions worldwide by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.The mobile coupon market is most mature in Japan and Korea to date, but the United States and Europe are showing growth across all the...
The willingness of business customers to adopt mobile instant messaging has more to do with familiarity with PC-based IM services than with mobility, according to a recent study from ABI Research."The greatest adopters of mobile IM are T-Mobile subscribers whose demographic profile shows a...
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...
Similar to its like-named weather phenomenon, the launch of Research In Motion Ltd.'s Storm at Verizon Wireless has left mixed results. Sure, the resulting moisture and strong sales are needed, but the shaken nerves and rattled shoppers are after-effects that may take time to...
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become retail mainstays, but Mobile Tuesday?Recent economic woes have eliminated many marketers' ability to invest in emerging media. Still, aggressive mobile-marketing firms and major retailers are introducing programs meant to entice wary consumers this holiday season. One such...
