Brightstar Corp., which has successfully played the handset distribution game, has decided to pursue the accessories market by establishing a standalone company - Brightstar Accessories - headquartered in Miami.The company is attempting to catch a market estimated by ABI Research to create $40 billion...
With the lucrative fourth quarter just around the corner (almost), Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has joined the chorus of vendors reminding the world that they too have innovative phones.In SEMC's case, it spilled the beans today that it will bring to market an 8.1...
APPLE INC. IS THE NAME and, now, sheer volume is the game.Before the "wow" factor for his much-hyped handset fades or is eclipsed by competitors, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has abandoned his initial business model for plunging into wireless and has gone with a...
The pace of action on the world's infrastructure stage has increased over the past several months, with a number of major carriers announcing multibillion-dollar buildout plans, intellectual property owners realigning their stances, and infrastructure vendors desperately trying to keep up with it all.The...
Verizon said it will buy Alltel for $28 billion. If the deal goes through, it would create the nation's largest carrier with a combined subscriber base of more than 80 million customers.; verizon alltel acquisition merger; Sprint is...
We reported on the seizure of nearly 20,000 mobile phones deemed to be outright counterfeits by federal officials. In the suspected bogus category, there also were 2,000 headsets, 462 boxes of accessories and a wad of cash totaling $210,990. Many of the big names...
Two separate developments on the counterfeiting front together point to a festering problem for the wireless industry. First, federal authorities in New York sued to condemn almost 20,000 allegedly counterfeit mobile phones bearing names of leading handset manufacturers, and separately Underwriters Laboratories issued a...
Motricity's troubles continue; the company announced it lost a leader and sold off a chunk of its business. The mobile content and content infrastructure company sold its smartphone and direct-to-consumer businesses to Motricity co-founder Jud Bowman's entity, shortly after his resignation from the company's...
Global sales of handsets in the first quarter jumped 13.6% from the year-ago quarter, reaching 294 million units, according to a recent report from Gartner. Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and LG Electronics Co. accounted for most of that surge, with LG propelling...
Forces swirling throughout the wireless industry are clearly shaping handset offerings expected to reach U.S. consumers in the second half of this year. While that pattern has been typical in the industry in recent years, the pace of competition has quickened and the types...
Apple Inc.'s foray into the global handset industry is a work-in-progress, judging by last week's events, just as its initial, domestic rollout was marked by adroit tactical shifts.A sudden avalanche of international market rollouts for the iPhone announced last week appeared to reflect that...
Nokia Corp. isn't the only player looking to offer devices that come with music.The Finnish manufacturer raised eyebrows late last year when it teamed with Universal Music Group International to unveil Comes With Music, an ambitious program that will package unlimited full-track downloads for...
A sequential dip in shipments by Motorola Inc. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications between the fourth quarter and the first quarter spelled t-r-a-c-t-i-o-n for numerous second-tier handset makers, particularly in emerging markets. The opportunity for greater volumes among those outside the elite top tier...
Nortel Networks Corp. said today that it would charge "about" a 1% royalty rate* to handset vendors licensing Nortel's Long Term Evolution patents.(Yes, that asterisk is intentional. See below or Nortel's statement.) The infrastructure vendor said its motive was "to provide increased transparency and...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications announced plans to offer a new technology to bridge the Adobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms.Project Capuchin, as the effort is dubbed, allows developers to leverage the best attributes of both software stacks to create content-rich mobile applications,...
The once-monolithic handset market is becoming a lot more interesting.As growth slows in developed markets, players with strong presence in emerging markets may see more dependable gains. But macro-economic uncertainty has analysts and handset vendors forecasting anywhere from 4% to 10% overall growth for...
It's all about context. With investors apparently expecting dark news from the infrastructure sector, L.M. Ericsson's stock shot up more than 12% today after the company reported a 5% gain in revenue, a 55% drop in net income and an erosion in gross margins.Add...
Motorola Inc. continued to lose traction in the handset market as first-quarter revenue was down nearly 40%, its operating losses nearly doubled and handset shipments were down drastically over the year-ago quarter.Wall Street hammered the company's stock, sending it down nearly 5% today to...
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications said it lost a point of market share in the first quarter, following a warning it gave last month.The Japanese-Swedish JV reported a year-on-year increase of only 2% in the number of handsets shipped (22.3 million), despite what one analyst...
Sony Corp. of America said it will pay roughly $260 million for Gracenote, a music metadata and technology firm. Gracenote's database of artists, songs and lyrics is used by online music services such as iTunes, Yahoo Music Jukebox and Winamp; the Emeryville, Calif.-based company...
The market for Long Term Evolution technology took another step forward last week as seven infrastructure heavyweights announced a framework for licensing the rights to the next-generation wireless standard.Alcatel-Lucent, L.M. Ericsson, NEC Corp., NextWave Wireless Inc., Nokia Corp., Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson...
Nokia Corp. posted strong results for the typically tepid first quarter, but its stock dipped 14% in midday trading after the company said that the handset market's overall value, in Euro terms, would decline from last year.Nokia reported revenue of $20.2 billion in the...
LG Electronics Co. Ltd. shipped 24.4 million handsets in the first quarter, above analysts' estimates of 23 million to 24 million units.Handset sales reached $3.2 billion, up nearly 36% over the year-ago quarter, while the division's operating profit reached $448 million, a four-fold jump...
The market for LTE technology took another step forward today as seven infrastructure heavyweights announced a framework for licensing the rights to the next-generation wireless standard. Alcatel-Lucent, L.M. Ericsson, NEC Corp., NextWave Wireless Inc., Nokia Corp., Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications...
