You wouldn’t know it from the number of Android handsets on the market, but support for Google’s new mobile operating system is growing. This morning, Open Handset Alliance, a coterie of tech companies dedicated to promoting the OS, added 14 new partners to its roster.
T-Mobile’s G1, the first smartphone based on Google’s Android operating system, really is as cheap as it looks. According to a new theoretical tear-down by research firm iSuppli, the G1 costs about 10 percent less to manufacture than Apple’s iPhone 3G.
Beyond the wet-your-pants whipsawing of the financial markets, the week ending Oct. 17, 2008, was one in which Apple figured prominently. On Tuesday, the company unveiled revisions to its MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air portables–as well as its new LED Cinema Display. It also issued a Steve Jobs health update: The Apple CEO’s blood pressure is 110/70.
The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that a free national broadband network established in the so-called “white spaces” of the AWS-3 band would not cause major interference with other services, paving the way for a sale of those airwaves at a federal auction. An unfortunate turn of events for T-Mobile, which has been aggressively lobbying against the idea.
Get this: Apple’s iPhone 3G is now the second best-selling mobile handset in the U.S. According to NPD Group, the device outsold the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro between June and August to claim about 17 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. Moreover, about 30 percent of stateside customers who purchased an iPhone 3G during that period switched mobile carriers to do so.
Looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays–Research in Motion. Shares in the company slipped more than 6 percent to a new 52-week low today. This after charting a new 52-week low last Friday driven by the 27 percent drop they took after RIM issued a lower-than-expected forecast for the current period. That decline was the company’s steepest in eight years and belied CEO Jim Balsillie’s claims that emerging competition from new handset makers isn’t undermining RIM’s competitive position.
T-Mobile has abandoned the 1GB monthly usage cap it originally set for its forthcoming Android G1 phone. Seems the company finally saw the irony in offering subscribers a $25-a-month unlimited-data plan and then penalizing them for excessive data usage.
Color Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster unimpressed by T-mobile’s G1, the first mobile phone to use Google’s Android mobile operating system. Though the device is certain to be a viable competitor in the current mobile market, it’s no iPhone. Apple, says Munster, has nothing to worry about. The G1 will have “little or no impact” on near-term iPhone sales.
The first Android-powered handset debuted this morning at a T-Mobile launch event in New York. Manufactured by HTC, the G1 is largely as anticipated. Peter Chou, CEO of HTC describes it as “iconic,” but that’s being a bit generous, I think. In design, the device seems to borrow quite a bit from the T-Mobile Sidekick, and its touchscreen GUI clearly owes a thing or two to Apple’s iPhone.
If wireless providers applied the per-byte pricing scheme they use for SMS texting to other data transmitted over their cellular networks, it would cost nearly $6,000 to download a single 4 MB song. Yet the price of text messaging has doubled industrywide in the last three years. Why?
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.
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