Verizon uncrated its latest iPhone challenger Wednesday morning, introducing the new $199 Motorola Droid, and it already has analysts buzzing about the life it may breathe back into Motorola, whose share of the phone market dropped by nearly half in the second quarter from 10 percent a year earlier.
Apple has a lot to gain by ending iPhone carrier exclusivity in the U.S. and signing up Verizon as a second carrier partner. According to Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, the company may do just that in the second half of 2010.
The BlackBerry’s days as smart phone of choice among consumers in the U.S. appear to be winding down. While Research in Motion’s popular device is still the leader in the smart-phone space, with 40 percent market share, its dominance is threatened by Apple’s iPhone, according to ChangeWave Research.
Though the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for its forthcoming Droid handset may make negotiations uncomfortable, Verizon is still very much interested in adding Apple’s iconic device to its smart-phone lineup. But if and when it does is entirely up to Apple, according to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg.
Verizon posted a decent third quarter this morning, besting consensus estimates. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings of 59 cents on revenue of $27.17 billion. Excluding one-time costs, Verizon reported a profit of 60 cents a share on revenue of $27.3 billion.
“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate or whatever comes after that.”
– Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, stokes the Apple rumor mill.
We knew it had to happen. There was no way the great white (and blue, and whatever color Yahoo is) search engine sharks could resist the fire hoses full of text chum Twitter produces 24/7. Heck, Twitter even chops its textual fish heads into lovely bite-sized chunks.
Analysts mulling over Nokia’s IP infringment suit against Apple seem to be of two minds about how the action will play out. Some see it as a move to cash in on Apple’s iPhone success. Others view it as a preemptory move against a possible infringement suit from Apple aimed at Nokia’s own multitouch handsets.
“We’re eagerly awaiting Apple’s Tablet and the answer to the question of whether there really is a very large market for stand-alone eReaders. We think there is…we see people carrying around stand-alone Readers all the time…they’re called books.”
– Mark Mahaney, Citi Investment Research
If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em. That seems to be the thinking at Nokia. Today, the Finnish cellphone giant, which has been struggling to develop a worthy competitor to the iPhone, filed suit against Apple, claiming the popular smart phone infringes upon a number of Nokia patents.
How badly does AT&T want to renew its iPhone exclusivity contract with Apple? Pretty damn badly. Posting third-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street expectations this morning, AT&T said it activated a record 3.2 million iPhones during the period. Of those, 40 percent were for customers new to the carrier.
AT&T reports third-quarter earnings Thursday and by all accounts, they should be strong enough, thanks to the sheer size of the company’s footprint and, of course, its exclusive carrier rights to the iPhone.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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