Behind the seemingly mild-mannered, Finnish face of Nokia Corp. lies the heart of a crafty predator.The company has seen the markets of the future and it plans to be more nimble to pounce on opportunity as it arises, or as its innovations and forward...
Longer contracts are pushing American consumers to keep their handsets longer, according to a new study by J.D. Power and AssociatesThe average length of ownership of a particular handset has increased for the first time in five years, to 17.5 months from the 16.6...
Longer contracts are pushing American consumers to keep their handsets longer, according to a new study by J.D. Power and Associates. The average length of ownership of a particular handset has increased for the first time in five years, to 17.5 months from the...
Growth in the handset market in the United States remains healthy, and recent market-share figures for vendors paint a markedly different picture than the global scene. Handset sales in the first quarter grew 12% from the year-ago quarter, with the sale of about 39...
Sprint Nextel Corp. added online streaming radio service Pandora to its lineup of music offerings, allowing users to create a customized "radio station" by entering their favorite song or artist.Pandora's Music Genome Project system provides a continuous stream of songs that have a similar...
The handset market in the United States in the first quarter grew 12% over the year-ago quarter, with the sale of about 39 million units valued at nearly $3 billion, according to The NPD Group. That growth is roughly similar to the year-ago quarter's...
Video-compression technology vendor On2 Technologies Inc. announced it acquired Finland-based Hantro Products Oy, a firm that sells video software to cellphone makers. On2 will pay around $58.5 million for the company, although the number is dependent on a variety of factors, including On2's stock...
Japanese wireless carrier KDDI Inc.'s American operation has moved closer to launching a mobile virtual network operator in the United States, targeting Japanese speakers in America.The carrier opened up a Web site over the weekend showing some teaser information about the service that appears...
Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. announced it will use chips from Beceem Communications for its planned dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX mobile phones. The agreement is notable as Sanyo is a major handset supplier to CDMA carrier Sprint Nextel Corp., which is in the process of building out...
Nokia Corp. may take advantage of Motorola Inc.'s current financial and portfolio weaknesses by lowering its handset prices incrementally, which could drive further consolidation among the industry's smaller, weaker vendors, according to Ben Wood, director of clients for Collins Consulting Services in the United...
Cox Communications has launched converged services in two markets in partnership with Sprint Nextel Corp., offering consumers in Arizona and San Diego a bundle that includes wireless service and mobile access to some cable content.Sprint Nextel has introduced similar services in Boston and Portland,...
Tween-focused mobile virtual network operator Kajeet Inc. has begun selling phones and service via its Web site, with coverage maps that appear to match up with the Sprint Nextel Corp. network. The MVNO is offering three handsets, all of them flip-phones: the 225 from...
Time Warner Cable became the latest of Sprint Nextel Corp.'s cable partners to launch wireless services, lighting up offerings in Raleigh, N.C. and Austin, Texas, running on Sprint Nextel's network. With the new launches, Sprint Nextel now counts four markets where its cable partners...
Cellphones are everywhere! They rule! Indeed, the new James Bond remake, Casino Royale, (seen over the holidays) should have listed the cellphone as a character because the storyline revolved around the phone with at least three major plot points center on the mobile device....
In the hard light of early January, the shape of the year unfolding ahead remains somewhat amorphous. What to watch for in the handset space, the wireless industry's most tangible interface with consumers? An informal survey of leading analysts, not surprisingly, takes a multifaceted...
Trying to please everyone is a good gambit when launching a handset business with global ambitions. Somewhere along the way, however, one has to shift gears.Managing sustainable growth and profitability in the handset market can demand investment in original designs, support for a manageable...
Time was when the wireless industry's major, marketshaping impact in the telecom sphere was defined by the number of mobile phones that became substitutes for landline telephones, which historically consumers have relied on for day-to-day communications.Just as Ma Bell back in the day grossly...
Sanyo Corp. has put its best foot forward at Sprint Nextel Corp. with a top-of-its-line multimedia phone, the M1, at a crucial time for Sanyo and amid a strong, overall portfolio expansion at Sprint Nextel. The M1 launch comes freighted with context-Sanyo's global handset...
TOKYO-Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. said it will recall 1.3 million cell phone battery packs produced by Sanyo Electric Co. after learning that a few of the batteries have generated enough heat to cause ruptures.The service provider said the problematic batteries are installed in...
UPDATED December 7, 2006OVERLAND PARK, Kan.-Sprint Nextel Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. introduced the latter's M1 handset, a high-end multimedia phone with lots of onboard memory and a two-megapixel camera, for $200 with a two-year contract. The phone may provide the gotta-have-it crowd with...
A lot of ink is expended on the competitive machinations of the top five global handset vendors-for good reason. This year, together, they will account for perhaps 80 percent of the nearly 1 billion handset shipments around the world. Big research-and-development budgets that support...
Comcast Corp. aims to find out if customers will buy wireless service from a cable company: the nation's largest cable provider is launching a trial of wireless service in partnership with Sprint Nextel Corp. in two markets: Boston and Portland, Ore.The launches are the...
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 RCR Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong...
BOSTON-Comcast Corp. launched wireless service in partnership with Sprint Nextel Corp. in two markets: Boston and Portland, Ore. Comcast's Mobile Access service is "a new arrangement from Comcast and Sprint that will make it easier for you to access all your home and entertainment...
