Good thing Sprint expects to lose fewer customers this quarter than in previous quarters. Because if the company continues to lose them at its former rate–well, things are going to get even uglier. Reporting a wider third-quarter loss than expected this morning, Sprint said it lost 545,000 wireless customers and 801,000 more in the crucial postpaid category.
Google isn’t scheduled to report third-quarter results until Thursday, but already shares in the company are trading higher in anticipation of solid results. At $524.24, they’re up 1.55 percent–nearly $8, and not without good reason.
iPhone exclusivity is rapidly coming to an end. Less than 24 hours after Orange UK announced plans to offer Apple’s iconic handset to its customers “later this year,” Vodafone said that it plans to do so as well.
The consolidation of the prepaid cellphone market has begun in earnest. This morning, Sprint Nextel said it will acquire Virgin Mobile USA in a $483 million stock deal that will give the company a clear lead in the prepaid arena, where low prices are becoming ever more popular with consumers beaten into submission by the continuing recession.
Apple is doing to the wireless industry what it did to the recording industry beginning back in 2001: Stealing its customer relationships. That’s the gist of an argument put forth this week by Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who believes that with the iPhone and App Store, Apple has upended the wireless market in much the same way it upended the music industry with the iPod and iTunes.
After a bit of reflection, the Street is beginning to have its say about Google’s new Chrome operating system, and the consensus seems to be that while Chrome is obviously the company’s most direct assault on Windows to date, it’s not likely to be all that disruptive to the ubiquitous OS. “It’s not good news for Microsoft,” said FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal. “The real question right now is how bad can it be?”
Antipathy toward a Dell smartphone is building and the device hasn’t even exited the rumor stage yet. When last we discussed the Dellephone, wireless network operators had reportedly been unimpressed, criticizing it as dull compared with current and upcoming handsets. Now comes further criticism from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi Jr., who believes that Dell will announce a smartphone in the next six months but will most likely bungle it.
Would an iPhone that doesn’t require a data plan spike Apple’s addressable market in the mobile devices space? In a research note to clients today, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi makes the case that it would. Arguing that the market for standalone portable media players is certain to decline as consumers upgrade to multimedia smartphones, Sacconaghi says it would behoove Apple to migrate its vast iPod user base to two new iPhones: the iPhone Nano and the iPhone Touch.
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.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
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
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