Nokia, Motorola, Research in Motion, Apple (yes, even Apple) and six other cell phone makers have agreed to a European Commission request to develop a universal charger. The agreement was announced today by the the EC. The new handsets will use Micro-USB connectors, and will be available in Europe beginning next year. The GSM Association […]
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Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon, appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show” yesterday talking about the communication company’s plans for global growth, network neutrality and the role of government. For the record, Verizon plans to build out its wireless business internationally within the next 5-10 years, and about one-third of that growth will be through […]
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Global revenue growth from mobile phone subscriptions has slowed, according to data released today by research firm Telegeography. The firm notes that the top 20 global service providers generated $251 billion during the first three months of 2009, which was only up 3 percent from the same period last year. Part of the slowed growth […]

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The Kindle DX uses E-Ink technology
Prime View International, a Taiwanese company that makes an e-readers display part, said today it would purchase E-Ink, a company that provides the digital ink technology in the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, for $215 million. The two companies have been partners in developing the Sony and Amazon e-reader products, […]

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As cable companies transition to super-fast broadband speeds provided by DOCSIS 3.0, they’re also considering how they can move from providing analog and digital channels via radio frequency the way they do today, and instead transition to an on-demand IPTV model that could offer them more flexibility with their programming options. For consumers, this could […]

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Meraki, the wireless access point maker, today sent out emails informing its customers than it’s launching two enterprise access points that can be managed via the web (Meraki, in an attempt to hop on the cloud buzzwagon, calls this a cloud controller). That means Meraki is going to compete with folks like Cisco, Juniper […]

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Meraki, the wireless access point maker, today sent out emails informing its customers than it’s launching two enterprise access points that can be managed via the web (Meraki, in an attempt to hop on the cloud buzzwagon, calls this a cloud controller). That means Meraki is going to compete with folks like Cisco, Juniper […]

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We’re no rating agency here at GigaOM, but Om and I got together this week to figure out our coverage priorities for the coming months — let’s call it a spring cleaning — and decided there are five companies that we’re just not going to spend a lot of time on anymore. Nortel , AMD, […]

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Most in the technology world think about scaling in relation to web sites and data centers, but the carriers operating the world’s wireless networks are worried about scale as well. As they transition to fourth generation (4G) wireless networks, they’re not just thinking about increasing data speeds; they’re also trying to figure out how to […]

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At the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona today, the next-generation 4G wireless service finally got some respect, with AT&T saying it will likely deploy the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard in 2011 rather than in 2012 and Verizon choosing vendors for its upcoming LTE rollout.
Verizon has chosen Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent as […]

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In a twist on customer satisfaction surveys, Glassdoor, an online site that tracks employee satisfaction, has asked employees at mobile handset makers and carriers what they think of the executive they work for and the products and services their workplaces offer. The folks at Apple are cultishly loyal to CEO Steve Jobs, giving him a […]

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Long Term Evolution (LTE), the next-generation wireless network chosen by 80 percent of the world’s carriers, isn’t turning out to be the star of this year’s Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Instead of announcing LTE rollouts, carriers are talking up their upgrades to HSPA+, a small, software-based step up from existing GSM-based 3G […]

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Oh no, Moto! The handset and equipment maker reported a $3.6 billion loss today on sales of $7.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2008.  Motorola’s handset business sold only 19.2 million phones in line with expectations. With a quarterly loss of $595 million, Moto’s handset business has lost a collective $3.22 billion in the […]

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The economic downturn knocked the wind out of the handset market in the third and fourth quarters of 2008, resulting in shipments of 1.2 billion handsets for the year and overall growth of just 5.4 percent, according to data released today from ABI Research. And it’s only going to get worse. But economic upheaval isn’t […]

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Chemical giant BASF and a small specialty chemicals company in Skokie, Ill., called Polyera Corp. have come up with a new type of semiconductor ink they plan to market under the name ActivInk. The ink is based on a new molecule that allows printed ink to carry a negative charge. Flexible circuits carrying a positive […]

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Today Ericsson reported a 31 percent drop in its fourth-quarter profits to 3.9 billion kronor ($465 million), announced 5,000 job cuts and said its core telecommunication equipment business was still unaffected by financial turmoil. Ericsson saw a large loss in its handset unit, but demand from telecommunication operators and a weakening currency meant strong equipment […]

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As part of a CES related briefing, I was turned on to a product Motorola is pushing that combines a CDMA femotocell with a software-based phone and a digital picture frame. The femotocell will connect with a user’s existing broadband connection and boost cellular coverage in the home. The picture frame shows pictures and also […]

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Having determined that its growth in the enterprise has pretty much stalled, Cisco is looking at video to help it sell equipment to carriers. To do that it’s positioning video traffic as the new data — ready to take over the web. Because if you’re going to convince service providers to shell out for equipment […]

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The troubles in telecom continue as Nokia Siemens Networks plans to cut an additional 1,300 employees in Finland and Germany as part of an overall restructuring. According to today’s Wall Street Journal, the telecommunications equipment maker has cut about 6,000 workers and plans to lay off a total of about 9,000 before the restructuring is complete. NSN is a joint venture between Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG. Laid-off NSN employees won’t be alone, as workers throughout the communications value chain watch their jobs disappear — from those working at Freescale and ST-NXP Wireless to those at Nokia and Motorola. The industry and its employees have weathered downturns before, but it’s hard to watch it happen all over again.

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The votes have been cast, the winners and losers have spoken, and the euphoria of yesterday will now give way to the realization that a lot of hard work lies ahead. We’re not talking about the U.S. presidential race, but the even longer slog to use the spectrum between digital television channels for unlicensed wireless […]

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The FCC today opened up the wireless communications market with its approval of a plan to allow independent devices to operate in the spectrum between digital TV channels; it also OKd the merger of spectrum between Sprint and Clearwire as well as Verizon’s $28.1 billion deal to buy Alltel, creating two new wireless networks backed, in part, by Google.

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Motorola today said it has demonstrated over-the-air data transmissions using equipment based on the LTE next generation wireless protocol in the recently auctioned 700 MHz spectrum. The equipment will be ready for limited network deployments in 2009.

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A week before the Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on a proposal to turn over spectrum between the digital television channels for a wireless broadband service, singer/songwriter Dolly Parton has come out against the plan.

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BusinessWeek says Motorola, the beleaguered Schaumburg, Ill.-based handset maker is working on an Android OS-based phone — not that it should surprise anyone. Former CEO Ed Zander was quick to sign up for the Google-sponsored Open Handset Alliance.
Sanjay Jha, who now heads up Motorola’s handset business (which is likely to be spun out some time […]

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Kineto Wireless said today it has raised $15.5 million in additional capital, including funding from Motorola as part of a broader commercial relationship with the company’s home & networks mobility business.

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When it comes to the fixed-line Internet, the FCC would like you to believe that wireless broadband is going to be the answer, perhaps through schemes such as the D Block auction, spectrum grabs by M2Z Networks and white space initiatives. If you believe that, then you also believe that that you can walk away a winner from a game of three-card monte on a Manhattan sidewalk.

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The Wireless Innovation Alliance today is making another charge in the war between those trying to keep the unused spectrum between digital television channels clear, and those trying to use that spectrum for wireless broadband. Those so-called white spaces are the last chance for wireless broadband competition in the eyes of the Alliance and the […]

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After a few quarters of nonchalant statements that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and rising oil prices weren’t going to affect the tech stocks, the bloom is off the rose. The lowered sales forecasts and lackluster quarters are trickling in, and the trend for wireless companies is clear. This morning, networking equipment maker Ciena said in […]

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AMD sells digital TV chip division to Broadcom for $193 million in cash. It is part of companies desire to be an asset-lite company.

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Dr. Sanjay Jha has left his position as COO of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) to become the Co-CEO of Motorola Inc. and the CEO of Motorola Mobile Devices, the new handset division. The handset division, which has struggled for the last few years, will formally spin out of Motorola in the […]

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Motorola has divided itself into three units, rather than two. In March Motorola said it would spin off its handset business in the wake of poor performance. Now, according to WSJ, it has further split its units into: a set-top-box and home-networking business, a networking gear business, and […]

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Israeli chip startup Animon, which is pushing a form of whole-home, uncompressed wireless HD, has teamed up with Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi and Motorola to create the WHDI special interest group. Animon already has products out on the market to offer wireless HD using the same 5 GHz spectrum used by Wi-Fi. But the […]

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