You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
As expected and predicted, today the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of American mobile company Sprint with Japanese mobile giant Softbank and broadband service company Clearwire. In its conclusion, the FCC writes, “approval of the proposed transactions, subject to the conditions set forth herein, is in the public interest.” This comes just a week after Sprint shareholders gave the thumbs up for proceedings to go forward, and a few weeks after the US Department of Justice did the same. Further, the conclusion goes on to say that the deal has “public interest benefits that likely would result from the proposed transaction, and thus we conclude that the transaction is in the public interest.”
The tri-company transaction is through the wringer of governmental bureaucracy, but still has to receive approval from Clearwire’s shareholders; that decision is expected on July 8th, and its board of directors have reportedly recommended approval.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Tablets, Mobile, Sprint
It looks as if nine months of hard politicking is coming to an end, now that the FCC has reportedly rubber-stamped the deal to tie up Softbank with Sprint and Clearwire. Bloomberg’s cabal of insiders have said that two out of three commissioners have voted to support the transactions, meaning that Dan Hesse and Masayoshi Son should soon start cracking open the champagne and cigars. Now that the pair have charmed shareholders, convinced the Justice Department and bloodied Joseph Clayton’s nose, all that’s left to do is tell John J Legere that his services are no longer needed.
Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, Sprint
Source: Bloomberg
SoftBank is going to release a 94g ultra-lightweight waterproof dustproof smartphone “DIGNO R SoftBank 202K” manufactured by Kyocera on July 5.
“DIGNO R SoftBank 202K” has a 4.3inch (1280 x 720 dots) HD TFT LCD screen and 1.5GHz dual core CPU MSM8960 built-in. It’s a “SoftBank 4G” compliant smartphone so that it is capable of download speeds up to 76Mbps.
There is high-capacity 1800mAh battery built-in in this 94g compact smartphone.
Size: 60 x 122 x 10.4 mm
Weight: Approx. 94 g
Camera: Main 8.1 million pixels, Sub 0.32 million pixeles
Color: Turquoise green, Pink, Black, White
Compatible with: One-seg, Bluetooth
Fast smartphones are great and all, but they’re useless once the battery goes flat. Fujitsu aims to solve that with the ARROWS A 202F. Launching with SoftBank in Japan later this week, the phone features a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdraon 600, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded via microSD, a 5-inch 1080p display and a generous 3,000mAh battery in a package that’s less than 10mm thick. Fujitsu’s “Human Centric Engine” is said to further increase battery life, to the tune of two days worth of juice, but details of how that works are light. Chances are slim the ARROWS will make it to US shores, though the recently announced HTC Butterfly s, with an even larger 3,200mAh battery, just might.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: The Next Web
Source: Fujitsu
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
We’re deep into a bona fide bidding war here — Sprint and Dish are both battling for an approximately 50-percent stake in Clearwire, and as of today, that former contestant’s bid makes it the new front runner. To catch you up, last month Dish offered $4.40 per share for Clearwire, following Sprint’s offer of $3.40 per share made way back in December. Now, the carrier has increased its bid to a whopping 5 bucks per share, which values Clearwire at just about $14 billion. (As you can probably imagine, CLWR’s trading price has jumped today to match that new target.) This comes just days after Sprint filed a lawsuit to prevent the other two parties from moving forward. Whether or not CLWR’s spectrum and other assets make it worth that sum is a different story, but Sprint clearly sees some solid value there.
Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, Sprint
Source: Sprint (BusinessWire)
The latest move in the standoff between Softbank, Sprint, Dish Network and Clearwire has been made, as Dish stated today it will not submit another bid for Sprint. This comes after Sprint sued to stop Dish from buying Clearwire, which the satellite company called an attempt to deflect attention from its own unfair dealings. If you’ll recall, Dish Network jumped in with a $25.5 billion offer to buy Sprint, but after Japanese carrier Softbank improved its proposal slightly, Sprint put Dish on a deadline to respond. That time limit expired today, and Dish is choosing to consider its options on Sprint, while focusing on completing the Clearwire deal. Dish cited some specific changes in the Softbank deal that made it impossible to meet the deadline, including higher break-up fees if the deal didn’t go through. so what’s next? Softbank’s still waiting for FCC approval before it can go through with the acquisition, and reports it expects to close the deal in early July.
Source: Reuters, Bloomberg, Dish Network
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