PlayPhone Inc. is targeting Hispanic mobile users with a Spanish-language version of its online storefront.The San Jose, Calif.-based company said the site offers Latino-targeted content as well as wares from existing partners including the Cartoon Network, ABC Television, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Wal-Mart. Hispanic...
Nokia Corp. will acquire total ownership of Symbian Ltd., buying out current partners in a deal valued at about $411 million, the company said today.Nokia said it would combine its own S60 platform with the Symbian platform and provide the results - a single...
Wireless had a muted role at the event as it traditionally takes a back seat to its wireline competitors at NXTcomm shows, and this year's event was no different. ; Nxtcomm; The troubles likely are to continue for...
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...
BARCELONA, Spain - Nokia Corp. used its S60 Summit '08 to tout the reach of its smartphone platform, woo low-profile developers and - like just about everybody else in mobile - crow about its openness.The show opened with a flashy video that demonstrated Series...
A handful of mobile players are trying to cram the silver screen onto the third screen. But whether there's a business case to be made for mobile movies is far from clear. The first wireless films came online for U.S. consumers in December 2005...
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...
Direct-to-consumer content vendor PlayPhone Inc. is expanding its footprint by merging with London's Pitch Entertainment Group.Pitch Entertainment delivers off-deck content, social networking applications and mobile marketing solutions in 20 markets primarily in Europe and Asia. PlayPhone operates its own content storefront as well as...
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...
AT&T Mobility announced that it will launch AT&T Mobile TV with FLO this Sunday. As previously announced, the service will include a pair of exclusive channels -- CNN and PIX, a channel of full-length movies programmed by Sony Pictures Television -- in addition to...
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,...
AT&T Mobility's MediaFLO-based mobile TV service has not yet officially launched; after a couple of false starts, the carrier appears set to launch the service, along with a pair of devices, in the coming weeks.However, RCR Wireless News obtained an LG Electronics Co. Ltd....
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...
