News tagged ‘Sprint’

DigiTimes sources revealed this week that HTC may challenge Apple's position of the top U.S. smartphone maker.

Here's the deal: HTC has smartphones available on all four U.S. carriers, while Apple partners only with AT&T and Verizon. The HTC Thunderbolt is reported as the second most popular smartphone on Verizon's network, while Apple's iPhone is the first one. The best-selling Android smartphone on AT&T is also of HTC (The Inspire 4G).

Read the rest of this entry »

As you may know, in March  Deutsche Telekom reported its intention to acquire the rival carrier, T-Mobile, for AT&T, its subsidiary company. The estimated price of the deal amounts $39 billion. The fact has recently attracted attention of federal regulators, as in case of successful transaction AT&T will become the leader in the field of wireless carriers, and the number of its customers will reach about 130 million people.

The FCC is eager to find out "how AT&T's wireless spectrum is being used, the nature of its overall network and why it believed it needed T-Mobile's spectrum to meet its goals for 4G", reported MacNN this Friday. Officials also investigate whether AT&T considered solutions alternative to acquiring T-Mobile, and what is the scope of those solutions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek claiming that the next-generation iPhone will be called “iPhone 4S” and it will come with a dual-core A5 processor, and better cameras. Misek also seems to believe the iPhone 4S will indeed feature minor “cosmetic changes” and support for HSPA+ networks.

Because the 4G chips weren’t ready, Apple is going with the minor update to the iPhone 4. Misek also revealed the next version of the phone will work with Sprint, T-Mobile, and China Mobile.

Misek believes the iPhone 5 — which was rumored to have NFC, a bigger screen, 4G connectivity, or a thinner form factor, among other things — will look like an iPhone 4, only faster on the inside.

Wall Street Journal reports that the next version of the iPad is now in production. The new iPad will be available through both Verizon and AT&T but not Sprint or T-Mobile, according to the newspaper.

The new device will be thinner, lighter and will come with a faster processor, more memory and a more powerful graphics processor, said the people familiar with the matter. It will have a front-facing camera for the first time for features like video-conferencing, but the resolution of the new iPad's display will be similar to the first iPad, they said.

New post on Consumer Reports' blog written by Mike Gikas and Paul Reynolds reveals that the company thinks Verizon iPhone 4 will have a short life as soon it will "be replaced by a newer, cooler version more quickly than is customary even for the die-young life expectancy of most smart phones."

It is true that Apple made the CDMA-enabled iPhone a mid-year carrier expansion, and most observers expect new iPhone 5 will not replace its less than 6-month old predecessor as at launch it will support only GSM / UMTS technologies. However, Apple's rivals do not propose any product cycles anyway and release new handsets every few months, so the position of Consumer Reports looks pretty inconsistent.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest iOS 4.3 build contains model references to not yet released iPhone and iPad models indicated in the code as:

iPad2,1
iPad2,2
iPad2,3
iPhone4,1
iPhone4,2

The first generation iPad carries a model number of "iPad1,1", the current iPhone 4 is 3,1 for AT&T and 3,2 for Verizon. These new designations likely represent the next generation iPad and iPhone. Perhaps, the second digit represents hardware differences between models - such as a Verizon iPhone and AT&T iPhone. We’re thinking maybe China is getting a new iPhone.  Or maybe the magical white iPhone has something different to it or maybe that Sprint event on Feb 7th is for a WiMAX . The iPad is also believed to be coming to both Verizon and AT&T, so that may explain at least a few of the different model numbers.

Yesterday analyst Katy Huberty from Morgan Stanley released another note for investors where she forecasted that Apple will sell 72 million iPhones 4 in current calendar year. Wall Street analysts in turn expect only 60-65 million Apple's handsets will be actually sold in 2011.

Katy is optimistic about the appearance of Verizon iPhone and notes that according to the proprietary Morgan Stanley survey, this year the largest network of the US will be increased by 7-8 million iPhone users, while totally there will be "10-11 million incremental shipments, including those who switch to Verizon".

Read the rest of this entry »

New Consumer Reports reader survey reveals that AT&T, which is an exclusive American wireless provider of the iPhone, had dropped significantly in customer satisfaction in this year.

Moreover, the company received the worst-possible scores in service, value and customer support, and the texting service was the only one exclusion of this list. According to the survey, more than a half of AT&T consumers have iPhones. That's why Consumer Reports electronics editor Paul Reynolds thinks that bringing iPhone to Verizon will be a successful step for Apple.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse gave an interesting interview to GigaOm, where he revealed that iPad has caused the increase in demand for his company's 4G and 3G Overdrive wireless hotspots. As most consumers buy Wi-Fi iPads, devices like the Overdrive become more popular for those who want to be connected on the go.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shaw Wu, who is an analyst at Kaufman Bros., said yesterday he has information that Apple develops new models of iPhones, which have both smaller and larger touch screens. According to his sources close to Apple's supply chain overseas new products will most probably appear next year and support such carriers as Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

"Our sources believe these likely represent new high-end and low-end iPhone models to complement its current iPhone 4. One possibility we are picking up is a "mini" or "nano" iPhone with a smaller candybar form factor leveraging technology in its new mini touchscreen iPod nano."

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week organization Americans for Fair Patent Use filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. Apple, Samsung Telecommunications America, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. are named as the defendants. The lawsuit says that these companies produce and/or sell falsely marked products with a patents that are expired or do not cover these marked products, with a purpose "to deceive the public about the patent coverage for their products."

Read the rest of this entry »

On June, 4 Apple sent a letter to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) with request to keep new iPhone’s photos and any information about it in secret for forty five days.

Though this is a standard practice for Apple, the situation looks pretty strange as the device’s internals had been already revealed with numerous prototype leaks. But Patently Apple, the company that obtained and published the letter, found the explanation in the document itself:

“Although Apple has begun to market the device publicly, these documents reveal technical and design information that has not yet been publicly disclosed in such marketing and that is protected by Apple as confidential and proprietary secrets”.

AppleInsider created a list of new iPhone’s technical details and features that Apple may want to keep in secret for a while. It includes new features of A4 SoC, details of new frame antenna, new cellular radio support for pentaband UMTS (850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz) 3G bands, details related to possible support of T-Mobile (AWS UMTS IV band) and Verizon/Sprint (CDMA/EVDO) networks.

Today Best Buy announced that as of Tuesday, June 15, every customer will have an ability to visit one of its retail stores (including  Best Buy Mobile standalone stores) to make an order for a new iPhone 4 and then take it on June 24. Both 16GB and 32GB models will be available for reserve.

President of Best Buy Mobile Shawn Score is glad to propose customers pre-order feature:

- Adding the iPhone 4 to our stores alongside other great smartphones like the HTC EVO from Sprint and HTC Incredible on Verizon, gives customers a great opportunity to view each side-by-side and get the mobile phone that works best for them.

Best Buy will become the second iPhone 4 retailer after Radioshack, which confirmed last week that it was authorized by Apple too.

As we wrote before, on June 24 iPhone 4 will also be available at Wal-Mart locations, but the company will not take pre-orders on the device.

AT&T, which will also sell new handsets, didn’t give any information on taking pre-orders.

Gene Munster, who is an analyst at Piper Jaffray, told yesterday that Steve Jobs won't allegedly make a surprise with presentation of the next generation iPhone at the WorldWide Developer Conference 2010. Because of numerous prototype leaks everybody expects the iPhone 4G to have thinner design, front-facing camera, improved battery and 5MP rear camera. But Gene claimed people should not expect that a Verizon-compatible model will be presented.

"We believe that it is unlikely that the next generation iPhone will be available at Verizon (or Sprint) at launch; rather, it is more likely that it remains exclusively available at AT&T in the U.S. at launch".

He also said Apple may start selling iPhone 3GS for $99 instead of iPhone 3G and provide a "limited demo" of new version of Mac OS X (10.7), that has all chances to support multi-touch technology as a key feature. But as we wrote before it looks like WWDC2010 will focus mainly on iPhone OS 4.0 so the preview of Mac OS X 10.7 will not allegedly happen.

Gene is assured that the presentation of iPhone 4G will have a positive influence on Apple's stock.

"...the new iPhone will likely drive unit sales beyond Street expectations, providing a positive catalyst for shares of AAPL in the coming months."

Recently Billboard published a report that reveals new information on Apple's share on music sales market. When the first generation iPhone was presented, iTunes had only 12,7% of American music market. In 2008 Apple almost doubled it and made 21,4%. 2009 reveals five percentage points increase - now iTunes has 26,7% of music sales.

Such mobile providers as AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless on the contrary lose their positions, downing from 6,6% to 4,9% in 2009. Partly it is explained by lower priced ringtones in iTunes and its free tools for making custom ringtones. Both of these factors eventually attracted more people.

Physical media music in turn loses its popularity from year to year. Numbers reveal its share fell from 57,5% in 2008 to 49,3% in 2009. That means that iTunes actually makes a half of all digital music downloads overall.

iTunes' closest rival Amazon also increased its sales. But in digital MP3 sales the company's share grew from 0,8% in 2008 to 1,3% in 2009, which is not even close to Apple's 26,7% share. Such results, according to Billboard, were "still well short of where major labels had hoped Amazon's download store would be by now, dimming earlier expectations that it will be able to significantly reduce the labels' heavy dependence on iTunes for digital sales."

It is interesting to look forward for Google which recently acquired Simplify Media to expectedly turn it into iTunes rival for Android users. But for now the company's subsidiary AdMob reveals the amount of media bought or even downloaded by Android users is still so small that it cannot be compared with iTunes success.