The official price of Palm’s new Pixi smartphone is $99.95, but Wal-Mart is now offering the handset for $24.99 with a two-year contract, as is Amazon. That’s a 75 percent price cut. Staggering, considering the Pixi arrived at market just four days ago.
Verizon was right. The truth does hurt. And it is especially painful when it’s meted out by a court of law. A U.S. District judge on Wednesday denied AT&T’s request to force Verizon to pull its “There’s A Map For That” and “Island of Misfit Toys” commercials, saying that while the ads might be “sneaky,” they are they are not misleading.
Since 2008, AT&T’s network in and around San Francisco has experienced an increase in 3G data traffic of 2,000 percent. If you find this metric as astonishing as I do, consider this: The increase in Bay Area data traffic is actually below the national average–significantly below. According to AT&T CTO John Donovan, 3G data traffic on the company’s wireless network has risen nearly 5,000 percent nationally in the past 12 quarters.
Bay Area iPhone users, relief is on the way. AT&T has almost completed a $65 million upgrade to its network in the region. The carrier has upgraded close to 850 cell sites in an effort to better handle the massive surge in data traffic it has seen in and around San Francisco since the debut of iPhone. And make no mistake: The surge has been massive.
Verizon, though it refuses to divulge sales numbers for Motorola’s new Droid handset, says it has been “very pleased” with demand for the device so far. And no wonder: According to Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, Verizon is on track to sell 600,000 Droids during the fourth quarter of 2009.
For Palm, 2010 will be a year of channel expansion, with its new webOS handsets coming to more carriers. Top among them, Verizon, which has been rumored to be getting a device “like the Palm Pre” since Palm launched it. In a research note to investors today, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu says a Palm smartphone from Verizon is pretty much inevitable.
“AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s ‘There’s A Map For That’ advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.” So begins Verizon’s response to AT&T’s complaints about its new ad campaign and as you can see, it pulls no punches. For 53 pages, the new filing mercilessly thrashes AT&T, proving over and over again that the carrier’s carping over Verizon’s ads has transformed a no-win situation into a horrific PR disaster.
If you follow AllThingsD, and Weekend Update hopes you do, then one thing you’ve come to value is the special way the staff gets around the world to cover the important stuff and report it straight from the geek’s mouth. This week our bicoastal brigade brought the tech news as it happened, and in Boomtown’s case, from 30,000 feet.
Palm shares are trading higher today, bolstered by anticipation of the Nov. 15 launch of the Pixi, the company’s second webOS handset, and by some silly rumors about a potential takeover by Nokia. Does the company really need another software platform to add to Symbian, Maemo and Qt? C’mon.
After nearly three years of rumor and speculation, Dell is finally entering the smartphone market–in China and Brazil. Later this month, China Mobile and Brazil’s Claro will begin selling the company’s Mini 3, a handset designed around Google’s Android mobile OS.
Lest there be any doubt that Apple’s iPhone is redefining the smartphone market, consider this: In under two and a half years, the device has managed to claim nearly a fifth of the worldwide market for smartphones.
According to new data released this week by Gartner, Apple shipped some 7.04 million iPhones in the third quarter–up from just 4.72 million phones in the same period a year ago–for a 17.1 percent share of the market.
In preparation for the official launch of its new Pixi handset, Palm is rolling out a new ad campaign. It’s something of a departure from the ads the company used to tout the Pre, trading their alleged “ethereal beauty” and I-Am-The-White-Witch-of-Narnia-FEAR-ME spokeswoman for a more forthright pitch involving a crowd of friendly-looking hipsters enjoying a new “Alvin and the Chipmunks” mashup.
As clever as it is, Verizon’s reimagining of a Rankin/Bass animated Christmas television special as a criticism of AT&T’s wireless network coverage did not go over well with Ma Bell. On Wednesday, the carrier amended its complaint against Verizon, asking a federal court in Atlanta to force its rival to immediately pull the ad and two other holiday-themed spots that debuted with it.
iPhone exclusivity officially came to an end in the U.K. yesterday when, joining O2, Orange became the second carrier to offer the Apple smart phone in the country. And judging by Orange’s first-day sales, the debut was quite a success. The iPhone went on sale at 7 am Tuesday and by 4 pm, Orange had sold more than 30,000.
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. Read more »
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.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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