5 O’Clock Roundup: Sprint’s disappearing promo, stem cell breakthrough (sort of), search engine optimization
Sprint announces Palm Pre promo, then cancels it – Sprint’s website sprouted a great promo offer earlier overnight: Bring your phone number from another wireless carrier over to Sprint, and they’ll give you a $100 service credit on a new Palm Pre. The offer disappeared earlier today, and the company sent this official statement to reporters: “After further internal review today, the offer of a port-in service credit of $100 to new customers who buy the… Continue Reading
Sprint to sell Android HTC Hero in October
The new Palm Pre’s in Sprint stores are going to have some attention-grabbing competition in a few weeks. Sprint has announced its plan to sell the Hero phone, made by HTC and loaded with Google’s open-source Android operating system, starting October 11. A Hero will cost $279.99 in the store with a two-year service plan from Sprint. There’ll be a mail-in rebate for another $100, bringing the total cost for the phone down to $179.99.
Given… Continue Reading
Wireless carriers cautiously spending again on infrastructure
AT&T customers may finally get the iPhone service quality they expected when they spent $200 or more on a phone. U.S. wireless carriers have let reporters know that they’ll be spending more in the second half of this year to add capacity. They need to: Wireless traffic increased tenfold from 2007 to 2008, and is still growing.
Dallas, Texas-based AT&T plans to boost its capital expenditures, from 7.4 billion in the first half of this year… Continue Reading
Sprint acquires Virgin Mobile, looking to grow in prepaid phones
Sprint announced today that it’s acquiring Virgin Mobile USA in an effort to bring on more customers for its prepaid mobile phones. The deal adds up to $483 million, including the 13.1 percent of Virgin that Sprint already owns.
Sprint says it will merge Virgin with its Boost Mobile prepaid phone division, and will put Virgin chief executive Dan Schulman in charge of its overall prepaid business. With the economy causing more people to be budget… Continue Reading
Palm Pre goes on sales at Sprint stores nationwide
The Palm Pre went on sale at midnight last night in Sprint, Best Buy and Radio Shack stores around the country. Crowds lined up to get their hands on the smartphones, which are expected to be in short supply.
Palm and its exclusive wireless carrier for now, Sprint, both have a lot riding on the Pre’s launch. It represents Palm’s attempt to one-up the iPhone and recover a lot of its past cachet as an innovator… Continue Reading
Palm’s day of reckoning coming on June 6, with the Pre’s release
After much public speculation about the release date and pricing of the Pre (Palm’s answer to the iPhone), Sprint announced today that it will start selling the device on June 6, with a price of $199.99 (basically equivalent to the cheapest iPhone), if you make a two-year service commitment and after you receive the rebate.
Both smartphone maker Palm and mobile carrier Sprint have been struggling recently — with Palm’s sales falling below expectations and Sprint… Continue Reading
Twitter makes its commercial debut thanks to Sprint
Twitter continues to expand into the mainstream. It’s already being used by a number of celebrities, it’s all over news channels, and its founders have even started making the rounds on various television shows like The Colbert Report. Now, Sprint has released a commercial, running across the country, that features the service — and also pokes a little fun at it.
“233,000 people just Twittered on Twitter,” Sprint says before continuing, “26 percent of you viewing… Continue Reading
Roundup: Solyndra scores major green, Windows braces for worm, car takes to the skies and more
Department of Energy shines on Solyndra — The solar company landed a $535 million loan to continue developing its technology. The New York Times has more.
A wormy April Fool’s Day — The Conficker computer worm is set to be unleashed on April 1, exploiting Windows weaknesses to create millions of zombie computers. “Joke or apocalypse?” asks the New York Times.
Study says, “Do or do not, there is no try” — A new Harvard Business School study of venture-backed… Continue Reading
Rumors of a Palm Pre launch
With one month down, the countdown until the end of the first half of 2009 is underway. Why do I say that? Because that’s the stated launch window for the Palm Pre. And some new information today may narrow that window a bit further.
Sprint, the Palm Pre’s exclusive U.S. carrier, has sent out its End of Life (EOL) list, which the blog Boy Genius Report has obtained. The list indicates when some of Sprint’s current… Continue Reading
Roundup: Zune prunes, tech gets part of the stimulus, Sprint cuts a lot of jobs and more
Here’s the latest action:
Zune prunes — Microsoft’s Zune portable media player saw its revenue decrease by over $100 million, or 54 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2008. Microsoft blames price cuts on the 30 gig model (you know, the one that had the massive failure) as well as a shrinking MP3 player market. Funny, iPod sales still went up during the same time period. mocoNews has more.
Yes. We (The tech industry). Can. – Looks like… Continue Reading
Palm Pre: Possibly as low as $149?
Now that everyone has seen Palm’s new phone, the Pre, and wants one, the biggest question is pricing. Initially, it seemed that Palm planned to charge more than the $199 (and $299) that AT&T and Apple charge for the iPhone, since Palm’s chief executive Ed Colligan indicated it was a better device that could command a higher price tag. This was seemingly confirmed by a report a few days ago that the Pre may be… Continue Reading
Text messaging further exposed as a colossal rip-off
I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am that The New York Times decided to take on the colossal rip-off that is text messaging in a story this weekend. Text messaging is a great service, but it should be included for free with your “unlimited” data plans. Instead, carriers charge an absolutely ridiculous rate to send a tiny amount of data.
It took the iPhone 3G price change to realize what a rip-off it… Continue Reading
Sprint unboxes free Pandora across its network
Us iPhone users are spoiled: We get to listen to Pandora’s streaming web music for free thanks to its brilliant application (the top downloaded app for all of 2008 in the App Store). Owners of other devices, on other networks, haven’t been so lucky, as many have to pay a monthly fee to access Pandora. But that’s not the case with Sprint subscribers anymore as Pandora will now be free on phones that support it.
Previously,… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo cuts data retention, Sprint pushing WiMax and more
Here’s the latest action:
Yahoo cuts data retention to 90 days — The search company’s new policy will likely push Google and Microsoft toward similar reductions in the amount of time they keep user data.
Sprint plans first WiMax device for Dec. 21 — The first device that will work both on Clearwire’s growing WiMax network and Sprint’s existing network infrastructure will go on sale in time for Christmas. Clearwire previously released cards that worked only with WiMax.
California pushes… Continue Reading
Interview with Arvind Sodhani: Intel Capital isn’t backing off on venture
Arvind Sodhani is one of those investors who isn’t blinking. But he’s not your typical venture capitalist. Sodhani is the chief of Intel Capital, the venture arm of the world’s biggest chip maker. He just closed on a billion-dollar investment in Clearwire, a provider of WiMax broadband wireless service that has raised $3.2 billion total to create a next-generation cell phone network through a merger with Sprint. That’s just one of many bets Sodhani is… Continue Reading
Microsoft goes for The Guild
The Guild, the popular web series, premieres its second season today with a Microsoft twist — the episodes will be distributed through Microsoft’s platforms of XBox 360 Live, MSN and Zune. The deal between series creator/producer Felicia Day and Microsoft was announced on Monday.
The comedy series, about a motley crew addicted to the online game World of Warcraft, was a breakout hit on YouTube in 2007 and 2008, gaining over 9 million views. Felicia Day… Continue Reading
With the iPhone 3G around the corner, Google Android sees delays
Were you considering holding off on getting Apple’s new iPhone 3G until you saw what Google would be offering with its Android platform? Well, hopefully you can afford to wait a while.
Though it’s still technically the 2nd half of 2008, Google is now indicating that delays will push the first phones based on its Android platform into the fourth quarter, a member of Google’s corporate communications team confirmed with us.
The reasoning for the delays is… Continue Reading
Roundup: AP inserts foot in mouth, Tesla looks for another $100M, Zawodny lands at Craigslist and more
Here’s the latest action:
The AP tries to set a new standard, doesn’t follow it — The Associated Press wants bloggers to pay it for quoting excerpts of its stories, and is threatening to sue if they don’t. Of course, that position is kind of hard to take when you yourself don’t abide by such standards, as the AP didn’t when it lifted a quote from TechCrunch on the matter for one of its stories. Arrington rightly… Continue Reading
Why it’s too early to call the WiMax deal a disaster
Updated
Well, TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld certainly isn’t pulling his punches. Last week, while most reporters (including me) were writing enthusiastically about the new partnership between Sprint and Clearwire to build a mobile wireless network using WiMax technology, Schonfeld slammed the deal as “a disaster waiting to happen.” Then he followed up on Friday with even more reasons why the deal is a bad idea.
So did I jump the gun? Was I (along with Eric Schmidt, chief… Continue Reading
It’s official: Sprint teams up with Clearwire for wireless partnership
Sprint and Clearwire have confirmed yesterday’s reports that they’re teaming up to create a new wireless broadband company. The new company, which will also be called Clearwire, should be the first to create a national mobile network using Intel’s WiMax technology, delivering broadband Internet at a much higher speed than existing 3G networks.
Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner and cable company Bright House Networks will invest $3.2 billion in this new company, while wireless veteran John… Continue Reading