Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in first week, Flurry says
Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in the first week, making it the Android platform’s first legitimate challenger to the iPhone, according to analytics firm Flurry. Those figures are more than four times what HTC and T-Mobile were able to do with the MyTouch phone and about one-sixth of what Apple pulled off with the iPhone 3GS in their first weeks. (Keep in mind that Apple launched that model in eight countries, not one like the… Continue Reading
Analysts: Either 100,000 or 400,000 Droids sold
How many Droid phones has Verizon sold? It depends which respected industry analyst you ask.
Telecom analyst Mark McKechnie from research firm Broadpoint AmTech told Bloomberg reporters that Verizon began sales with 200,000 units in stock last weekend, and that most stores had sold roughly half their stock. That multiplies to 100,000 units sold. (Mark is not pictured at right. These guys just had the best Droid team spirit in a Google image search.)
The number is impressive, but… Continue Reading
Happy Droid Day!
After weeks of speculation, followed by a real announcement, followed by more waiting, Motorola and Verizon have finally released the Droid, the supposed iPhone-killer which is the first device using version 2.0 of Google’s Android operating system.
The reviews have been positive so far, with gadget king Walt Mossberg calling it “a more credible alternative to the iPhone” as well as “the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I’ve tested and the best… Continue Reading
Voxeo acquires Motorola’s voice-based browser technology
Voxeo, a communications company that lets you retrieve your bank balance via voice commands, is announcing today it has acquired the voice-based browser business from Motorola.
Orlando, Fla.-based Voxeo has acquired Motorola’s OEM VoiceXML browser business as well as exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser. In turn, Voxeo is licensing the technology back to Motorola so it can use it in its phones and other gadgets.
The VoiceXML technology is an application based on the XML… Continue Reading
Motorola unveils CLIQ smartphone, social MOTOBLUR service based on Android
Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha is giving attendees a look at Moto’s upcoming Android-based smartphone onstage at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2009 conference this morning in San Francisco.
He’s showing off MOTOBLUR (all caps, sigh), a phone service based on Google’s Android mobile operating system that will be out in time for Christmas. You can guess most of the features — it pulls all of your messages from e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and other services out of the apps and… Continue Reading
Roundup: Ad market reset, Windows 7 pricing, Pogue’s voicemail crusade continues
Online advertising stops its nose-dive — Second-quarter global ad revenues, at $7.864 billion, were down 3.4 percent from a year ago. But admit it: After the past year, a 3.4 percent drop almost feels like growth. Is this a “reset” of base level from which the ad market can now grow again? TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld plots the line and explains the economist-speak. Erick, I hate to be all VentureBeat fussy, but do you have more granular… Continue Reading
Motorola snags former Samsung head of mobile marketing
William Ogle, former chief marketing officer for Pizza Hut, and recently chief marketing officer for Samsung Telecommunications America, has been appointed chief marketing officer for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business. Ogle will report to Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-chief executive officer and CEO of Mobile Devices.
In the 2008 video interview with Forbes, below, Ogle says that yes, Samsung’s strategy of marketing 50 to 60 models of phones can be stressful on the marketers. But the array of… Continue Reading
WiMax chip provider Beceem raises $20M
Beceem Communications, one of the top providers of WiMax chipsets, announced that it’s brought in $20 million in a fifth round of funding to scale its manufacturing operations.
The round was led by Motorola and included Global Catalyst Partners, Khosla Ventures, KTB Ventures, Walden International, Intel Capital, NEC, Mitsui and Samsung. Beceem, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has raised $110 million to date.
Car battery maker A123 scores $15M more from GE
A123 Systems, maker of lithium-ion batteries — primarily for hybrid and electric cars — has nabbed another $15 million in funding from General Electric, marking the seventh time the conglomerate has invested in the capital-rich startup. This brings the total of A123’s recent round of financing to $69 million.
The Watertown, Mass.-based company says it plans to use the money to construct battery factories in Michigan close to its key automotive clients. These days, it’s rare… Continue Reading
Truce: Google and Microsoft join forces for an open white space spectrum
Google and Microsoft are perhaps the Internet’s two most fierce rivals. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work together from time to time. That’s what they’re doing to make it possible for consumers to take advantage of the TV white space spectrum, according to the Google Public Policy Blog.
The white space spectrum, sometimes simply known as the “white space,” refers to unused radio frequencies in between the ones that broadcast television signals. These high-bandwidth spaces… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google sees results in Washington, sex offenders out of MySpace, Motorola’s big loss and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google is making friends in Washington — After Microsoft and AT&T’s lobbying power killed its Yahoo search deal, Google has proven to be the quick study in politics and now seems to have friends in high places…the highest places, the White House. The Wall Street Journal breaks it all down.
Sex offenders no longer welcome on MySpace — The social network banned some 90,000 of them — so they moved to Facebook? That’s what a… Continue Reading
Dell choosing between Windows Mobile and Android for its phone — is there really a choice?
It seems that the number of computer makers entering the smartphone market is growing daily now. Just one day after it was revealed that Acer would unveil a smartphone at next month’s Mobile World Conference, Dell is apparently thinking about doing the same thing. At the very least, it has been working on its phone for about a year now, and has some prototypes, sources tell The Wall Street Journal.
Dell’s situation is fairly interesting. As… Continue Reading
Obama’s choice for the post of chief technology officer narrowing?
The tech industry has been closely watching the Obama administration’s search for a chief technology officer and it looks like the short list includes two tech veterans of Indian descent, according to BusinessWeek.
Padmasree Warrior, the CTO of networking giant Cisco, and Vivek Kundra, the CTO of the government of Washington, D.C., are the front runners. I interviewed Warrior when she was the chief technology officer at Motorola years ago. She has deep knowledge in cell… Continue Reading
The iPhone outsells that thing I’m using as a paperweight (the RAZR)
About four years ago Motorola’s RAZR was the sexiest phone out there. I remember waiting with bated breath for the CDMA (a wireless technology) version, so I could use it with my Verizon account. Times have changed.
Now, of course, the RAZR seems like a relic of the past, but that doesn’t mean they’re not selling — they are, like crazy. So it’s big news when the new sexiest phone on the market, Apple’s iPhone, surpasses… Continue Reading
Motorola says no Android phones until the 2009 holiday season
Motorola has become the sick man of the Open Handset Alliance, the industry consortium backing the Google-created Android operating system. The third largest handset manufacturer in the world, Motorola saw sales shrink more than 30 percent from a year ago, according to its third-quarter report out today, leaving it with 8.4 percent market share.
The company still plans to bet a lot of what’s left of its handset business on Android, though. A device running Android… Continue Reading
Motorola’s social networking phone coming sometime next year
Motorola is indeed planning to offer a phone that uses the Google’s Android operating system and closely integrates with social networks, BusinessWeek has confirmed. News of the device leaked out last week, when bloggers discovered a Motorola job board posting looking for a senior user interface designer who could help with a “new Android Social Networking SmartPhone.”
The phone will include a touch screen similar to the iPhone and a slid- out QWERTY keyboard like the… Continue Reading
Motorola maybe working on Android phone for social networking
Mobile handset maker Motorola is working on a phone intended specifically for social networking, based in Google’s Android operating system, the AndroidGuys blog is reporting.
All we know about the social networking angle is a Motorola job posting looking for a user interface team leader who can work on, among other things, a “new Android Social Networking SmartPhone.” Motorola has already joined the industry consortium behind Android, called the Open Handset Alliance.
One friend in the mobile… Continue Reading
Kineto Wireless raises $15.5M for mobile base station technology
Kineto Wireless Inc., developer of software that lets mobile phones work on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks, brought in $15.5 million in fourth-round funding to advance the technology of wireless base stations — known as femtocells — which would expand home broadband coverage.
The new 3G and 4G femtocells would connect to customers’ existing broadband service to infuse home zone coverage for smart phones, and could even bridge gaps between coverage areas.
The investment round included contributions… Continue Reading
The white stuff: Google’s “white space” race continues
Google is launching a new web site called Free the Airwaves, to publicly encourage the Federal Communications Commission to deregulate “white space,” or tiny fractions of available bandwidths between broadcast TV channels in the 50 MHz to 700 MHz spectrum band range.
New hardware devices and software services could use these airwaves to offer wireless Internet to more people. This means free or cheaper Internet for you, maybe, via a venue that Google — not a… Continue Reading
C. Lester Hogan, a pioneer of Silicon Valley, dies at 88
C. Lester Hogan has died at the age of 88 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, the New York Times reported. He was a pioneer of Silicon Valley, leading the fledgling chip operations of Motorola and Fairchild Semiconductor that ushered in the modern age of technology.
Hogan was a billiant scientist who led Motorola to become the most profitable chip maker in the 1960s. After another pioneer, Robert Noyce, resigned from Fairchild Semiconductor, Hogan left Motorola’s Arizona… Continue Reading