ItsOn aims to shake up mobile
A new mobile service operator called ItsOn aims to shake up the US smartphone business by offering users the ability to tailor their voice, text and data plans precisely, and – perhaps most interestingly – buy data by the app.
The company’s Zact service – a play on the word ‘exact’ – operates as a cloud-based mobile virtual network operator, buying capacity on Sprint Nextel’s 4G/LTE network and reselling it to its own customers via a smartphone app or web page.
Lumia 928 offers brighter picture for Nokia in US
Things are looking up for Nokia in the US, a territory where it was unloved and unrepresented by operators not so long ago.
Now it has not one but two carriers touting its latest Windows smartphones, with Verizon launching the Lumia 928 this week and T-Mobile having its own exclusive with the 925, unveiled in London on Tuesday and available at a date to be announced in the US. Both represent advances on its signature Lumia 920 launched last year. Read more
HP sells webOS to LG for smart TVs
HP has sol
d its webOS operating system, developed by its Palm acquisition for smartphones and tablets, to LG Electronics, which plans to adapt it for consumer electronics devices such as smart TVs.
The move comes as little surprise – HP had abandoned development of webOS-based products and announced an Android-based tablet at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the weekend. Read more
Apple down 10 per cent as Q1 disappoints
Apple’s shares fell more than 10 per cent in extended trading in New York after the Silicon Valley company reported first-quarter revenues and iPhone sales below Wall Street expectations.
Apple reported $54.5bn in sales compared to an analyst consensus of $54.7bn. along with iPhone sales of 47.8m units, below expectations of around 50m.
Our live blog of the earnings announcement and subsequent conference call is after the jump. Read more
FreedomPop’s disruptive wireless broadband
In an age when it is often a good idea to sit down before opening your monthly wireless invoice, FreedomPop is promising ‘bill shock’ of a different kind.
The US-based startup backed by by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstom and his venture capital firm Atomico, launched a potentially disruptive free wireless broadband service as a beta or trial service today. Read more
‘M’ for Mainstream? – Moto’s Droid Razr M
Motorola’s new Droid Razr M is the first smartphone launched by the company since it was acquired by Google in a deal that closed last month.
The Razr M was one of three new Droids launched on Wednesday at a splashy event in New York’s Gotham Hall by Dennis Woodside, a Google veteran and Motorola’s new chief executive. It is however the only one of the three which is available for pre- order immediately. (It will ship by September 13.) Read more
Apple v Samsung trial fuels patents bubble
Apple’s victory over Samsung in the patents dispute shone an interesting light on the murky world of patents. For one thing it demonstrated clearly that there are two different types of patents around mobile devices that operate very differently.
On the one hand you have patents that are to do with how the phone actually operates, how it connects calls and handles data. These are the standards essential patents and they are the things that companies like Samsung, Nokia and Motorola have a lot of, as they have been in the business of making phones for a very long time. Read more
RIM catches a break
It’s not all bad news for Research in Motion, the struggling Canadian maker of the BlackBerry family of smartphones and Playbook tablet.
A US district court judge struck down a $147.5m jury award against RIM, ruling that the BlackBerry maker did not infringe patents owned by Mformation Technologies. Read more
The next move in the race for dominance of the lucrative smartphone market has been made by Samsung, after the Korean electronics group unveiled the latest incarnation of its best-selling Galaxy range in London.
The Galaxy SIII comes with a host of innovations and gimmicks – such as multitasking functions and a high definition screen – that Samsung will hope will be enough to take further customers away from the dominant iPhone range made by Apple. Read more
Nokia wins patent victory over IPCom
The complexity – one is tempted to say complete muddle – of the European patent system was highlighted on Wednesday when Nokia and HTC won a key victory in their intellectual property battle with IPCom.
IPCom, which is based in Germany, has waged a battle for several years to get mobile handset companies to pay it royalties for some technology it owns related to how mobile phones connect to 3G networks. Some handset makers have bought licences from IPCom, but Nokia and HTC strongly denied the validity of the patents and refused to pay up. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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