Watching the competitive jockeying of the world's largest handset brands has its pleasures-the neck-and-neck excitement of a horserace, the tragedies of thrown jockeys and doomed steeds and, naturally, the wagering, er, investing. Behind the scenes, however, the major handset brands all depend to some...
The story of Motorola Inc.'s Razr handset has morphed of late from legend to cautionary tale. Despite the device's continuing, rampant sales, the company's decision to radically discount the price garnered volume at the expense of profit. (Motorola's other blunder: seeking share in emerging...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications launched a half-dozen new handsets and a slew of accessories in Berlin yesterday, with one handset-a candybar Cybershot, model K850-destined for the United States in the fourth quarter. No pricing or carrier deal was announced, but the banding indicates it...
Sony Ericsson has tapped Gracenote to power a sideloading-enabled mobile music platform.The new platform includes features such as search and discovery, song identification and playlisting, and is designed to allow the easy transfer of tunes between home music libraries, online music stores and mobile...
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. could overtake Motorola Inc. in market share for the second quarter, according to projections from analyst Ittai Kidron at CIBC. The share shift would be remarkable, based on 2006 results, which had Motorola at nearly 22% global market share and...
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 Compete's Miro Kazakoff, Jupiter Research's Julie...
Executives at Palm Inc. appear to believe they've bought the time and talent to move from less than 3% of the smartphone market to leadership in mobile computing.To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, that's a giant leap . for any company, analysts said. This is perhaps...
Sagem Communication signed a royalty-bearing agreement with Qualcomm Inc. to make and sell W-CDMA handsets worldwide at the latter's "standard rate," Qualcomm announced. The deal represents another customer win for Qualcomm, which competes with other W-CDMA intellectual property holders in the high-growth 3G space....
Gadgets beget more gadgets, leading to fun, safety and productivity for consumers and profit for all. What's not to love about that? New figures for the accessory market place its ascendance in context and underscore how handset vendors and network operators have...
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...
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...
In Hollywood, sequels sometimes do well at the box office. But the record is mixed, leading one to conclude that sequels are typically perceived as safer bets than utterly new, original material-whether or not that's true.This observation can be applied to the realm of...
Nuance Communications Inc. continued to help thin the speech-recognition herd, snapping up VoiceSignal Technologies Inc. in a deal valued at nearly $300 million.Nuance said it will fork over 5.8 million Nuance shares as well as $204 million in cash for privately held VoiceSignal, a...
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 Compete's Miro Kazakoff, Jupiter Research's Julie...
Counting on "small details" to differentiate its latest product launch, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. announced it will launch its new S500 handset in the United States. Pricing and distribution were not announced.The quad-band, EDGE-enabled handset focuses on colors, materials and finishes-CMF, in industry...
More than four months after announcing its acquisition of BellSouth Corp., AT&T Inc. continues a determined push to rebrand Cingular as "the new AT&T." Though that phrase has gotten its share of promotion by AT&T itself, let's get it straight: "The brand is 'AT&T,'"...
Nokia Corp. is deepening its hold on the Chinese handset market, the world's largest cellphone market and also one of its most rapidly growing.The Finnish handset vendor signed a strategic agreement with China Postel Mobile Communications Equipment Co. Ltd., the largest distributor of handsets...
Counting on "small details" to differentiate its latest product launch, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. announced it will launch its new S500 handset in the United States. Pricing and distribution were not provided.The quad-band, EDGE-enabled handset focuses on colors, materials and finishes-CMF, in industry...
The word last week that Nokia Corp.'s new N75 device would debut soon at AT&T Mobility drew its share of attention, for good reason. Though Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's CEO, has made a point to extol the value of the U.S. market-declaring it a hotbed...
AT&T Mobility slashed prices last week on its two BlackBerry Pearl models to $100, down from $150 for the red model and $200 on the regular model. Research In Motion Ltd. credited its strong earnings last quarter to the popularity of the Pearl.AT&T Mobility...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has come of age in the past year and finds itself in an enviable, if somewhat dicey, position. No resting on your laurels in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately industry. The vendor's disciplined focus on sales and profit, while carefully growing share, has...
Everyone loves a horse race, and in the first quarter global competition in the handset industry has tightened, infusing the high-stakes race with a sense that the future is in play. While first-quarter earnings reports and market analysis found no change in overall tier-one...
The global handset market grew 12 percent in the first quarter over the year-ago quarter to 252 million units, the first time in two years that growth in this segment fell below 20 percent, according to Strategy Analytics. The bright spots for the quarter...
Sony Ericsson continued its strong momentum in the first quarter of the year, posting big gains in revenue and profit. The vendor's growth in those two metrics far outstrips all the other, top-tier players. Unit shipments of its handsets, while way up on the...
