The iPhone is finally coming to the world’s most wired country. South Korean regulators on Wednesday cleared the iPhone for sale. Great news for Apple. The South Korean market is a robust one, and analysts say that with the right carrier partner, Cupertino could be looking at first-year sales ranging from 500,000 to two million.
AT&T has beaten out some 30 telecommunications carriers and private equity groups to buy the wireless spectrum and other assets that rival Verizon Communications was required to divest as a condition of its recent acquisition of Alltel Wireless. The company said this weekend that it will pay $2.35 billion in cash to buy licenses, network assets and some 1.5 million wireless subscribers across 18 states, mostly in rural areas.
Is it too late for Sirius XM? CEO Mel Karmazin and John Malone, whose Liberty Media just tossed the foundering satellite radio outfit a $530 million lifeline, clearly don’t believe so. So do the company’s long-suffering investors, who continue to stand by it, though their faith has been sorely shaken. But the same cannot be said for Martine Rothblatt, the entrepreneur who founded Sirius nearly 20 years ago.
Since 2005, the South Korean government has required all cellphones sold in the country to support WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability), the country’s cellular middleware platform. And for Apple, as well as other handset manufacturers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson, redesigning their devices to do so is a costly proposition. So costly, in fact, that they didn’t bother, leaving the country’s handset market to Samsung and LG, which now dominate it.
On April 1, 2009, that will all change.
Sprint Nextel has terminated CEO Gary Forsee’s contract–and not because of excessive calls to customer service. Under pressure from investors over the company’s deteriorating financial performance, Forsee stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer today, leaving as his legacy a lowered third-quarter earnings forecast and net loss of approximately 337,000 subscribers in Sprint’s key [...]
Carl Icahn was right. Motorola really is desperate for a new product. How else to explain a patent the company was awarded last month for a “communication device having a scent-release feature and method thereof.”
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 »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
