The W-CDMA baseband chip business is morphing in real time, as various market pressures push and pull the players to partner, diversify their customer base or pursue less-demanding technologies.Data from Forward Concepts (see chart) shows that last year Texas Instruments Inc. was the global...
The nation's first, and so far only, carrier to announce plans for a nationwide mobile WiMAX network now faces the successful completion of tens of thousands of construction projects before it reaches reality.Just a few weeks after announcing plans to collaborate on the development...
It appears the case has been made for mobile TV. The big question now is, what do on-the-go users want to watch? Once a questionable proposition even for early adopters, wireless video is quickly moving into the mainstream. Dedicated mobile broadcast networks and 3G...
When teardown firms managed to analyze the components of the iPhone, they found that Apple Inc. had taken the wireless handset industry's diversification strategy one step further.Where most handset vendors rely on one main source for certain key components-while cueing up a second source...
More than three years after the wireless industry launched an effort to establish a ratings system for mobile content, carriers are finally beginning to restrict access to the edgy stuff. Whether such efforts will help fuel data revenues, though, remains to be seen.CTIA in...
Wireless is still drawing considerable interest-and dollars-from venture-capital companies, but VC investment overall saw a dip in the number of deals in the first quarter as investors concentrated on exit strategies, including initial public offerings. Some of the biggest IPOs related to the wireless...
Mobile game publishers have gained steady-if uninspiring-traction churning out titles based on blockbuster movies and classic board games. But what the industry really needs, some believe, is some fresh ideas. And they're unlikely to come from some of the more familiar names in the...
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...
Despite the prevalence of end-to-end billing systems as operators have consolidated in recent years, some companies may prefer a one-shot solution to a particular problem without the expense and effort of replacing an entire system. According to Forrester Research senior analyst Michele Pelino, service...
The Internet is rapidly evolving from a desktop experience into a multi-platform phenomenon available on the go and around the world. Carriers, publishers and marketing firms are just hoping advertising doesn't get lost in translation. The wireless Web remains a nightmarish territory, fraught with...
In a city that prides itself on the blood sport of politics, good guys are supposed to come in last. Often they do. It's just business, nothing personal, you understand. Dog-eat-dog. The jungle. Dogged Darwinism. Smash-mouth democracy at its finest. Bring it on! JAY...
Arlene Harris has been connecting people to one another for a long time-ever since she was a child, helping connect calls for her family's mobile telephone switchboard in the 1950s. Harris has continued to forge connections through communications products as the wireless industry has...
Machine-to-machine communication is all about efficiency: collecting data from far-flung locations with less labor, less danger, lower power and in real-time. Thus one might conclude that the perennial drive for business efficiency would make M2M applications equally attractive everywhere. Certainly that's the promise. But...
Long billed as the killer app of tomorrow, location-based services finally appear to be gaining mass-market appeal. And network operators are well positioned to cash in. A study released late last year from In-Stat found that 53 percent of the 1,000 wireless users polled...
As companies seek to extend their brands into the mobile space and take advantage of its one-on-one, personal connections, they face the challenges of a medium that can look like television or the Internet but is not quite the same as either. Companies are...
Big-box retail is second only to the network operators' own branded retail stores as the channel of choice among American consumers. Big-box retailers as a distribution channel are rapidly rising in importance among carriers as well. This evolution reflects the growing sophistication of the...
Wireless technology is aiding various industries in serving their customers better by gaining efficiencies as they mobilize their workforces and enable a higher level of customer service-and increasingly, businesses are demanding wireless as part of their overall customer relationship management strategy. According to Richard...
The nation's 236 million mobile subscribers rang up an impressive $4.8 billion in mobile data purchases last year, using their phones to do everything from sending text messages to watching "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," according to figures released last week by IDC....
Daniel Neal is CEO of kajeet Inc., a mobile virtual network operator targeting the 'tween market and aiming, as he likes to say, to "super-serve kids" with a wireless service that takes into consideration their aspirations for adult devices ("They don't want four-button kiddie...
March in Florida typically conjures up images of half-naked college kids partying 24/7 on the beach, or for the more modest long lines and mouse ears. But, for the wireless industry this year it means show time. After a five-year hiatus, wireless trade association...
When Skype, the PC-based Voice over Internet Protocol provider, petitioned the Federal Communications Commission last month to allow consumers to load third-party, IP-based software onto their mobile phones, the company was thinking big. Getting a proprietary VoIP client onto mainstream feature phones could put...
California is sprinkled with television studios, and while many of the traditional Hollywood studios already have or are in the process of creating separate divisions for endeavors in the mobile TV space, a small group of entertainment companies have been built with mobile in...
The tower industry is sitting pretty these days. And, all things considered, the future couldn't look brighter for The Big Three: Crown Castle International Corp., American Tower Corp. and of SBA Communications Corp. Gone are days of flimsy business models and living on the...
BARCELONA, Spain-The show is in Spain, but last week's 3GSM World Congress was all about emerging markets in Africa, Asia and South America.After rising by an average of 25 percent for the last three years, global handset growth will slow to a 13-percent clip...
