Hasta La Gadget!

Verizon just announced via a tweet that Samsung’s GALAXY S 4 handset will be arriving in May, although a specific release date was not provided. Along with the announcement is a picture of a Verizon-branded S 4, and a promise that more details will be revealed “soon.” This follows AT&T’s announcement that it will begin taking pre-orders for the handset on April 30.

Not much else is known about the carrier’s plans, such as how much it will be charging and when exactly buyers can get their hands on it. We can’t help but wonder if the flagship smartphone will be offered under Verizon’s recently announced Device Payment Plan, which will take effect on April 21. Unfortunately, the carrier didn’t state which phones would be available for the payment plan, only saying that it would be a select few.

Pre-orders for the GALAXY S 4 for US Cellular began this past Tuesday, April 16. T-Mobile got a jump on them, announcing back in March that Samsung’s handset would be available “about May 1,” meaning we could see it a tad sooner or later. The announcement was made in New York during the carrier’s Uncarrier event, during which time it launched its LTE network in seven markets.

And, as we noted, AT&T announced that GALAXY S 4 pre-orders can now be placed on the carrier’s website. Shipping is set to start on April 30, which is likely also when we’ll see the handset available on shelves, as well. Buyers will be able to get the 16GB variety of the S 4 for $199, or for a much higher $639 sans contract. We’ll be keeping an eye out for additional details from Verizon, so stay tuned!

[via Twitter]

Verizon announces GALAXY S 4 will be available in May is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Archos has launched an affordable unlocked smartphone line today, with prices starting at $99. The Archos Platinum range of devices offers users IPS screens, quadcore processors and 8 megapixel cameras all in a sleek design. The three devices, Archos 35 Carbon, Archos 50 Platinum and Archos 53 Platinum are priced $99, $219.99 and $249.99 respectively. All three smartphones offer pure un-skinned Android experience and are Google certified for access to Google Play and Google Mobile Services, which includes Google Now.

The Archos 35 Carbon (above) is the entry level device in this smartphone range. It has a 3.5″ IPS touchscreen with 320 x 480 pixel resolution, a Qualcomm 7225A 1Ghz processor with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. Both front and back cameras are VGA, there’s a microSD slot and a 1,300 mAh battery. It runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: US Cellular Confirms Windows Phone 8 Device Launch, Facebook Ports Free VoIP Calling To Android Platform,

We think it’s safe to say Apple’s iPhone can still be considered a smartphone that can sell millions on a regular basis. And Verizon just proved that by announcing it had sold 4 million iPhones in its first quarter.

Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo announced the news during a conference call earlier today and split the sales between the iPhone 5 and older iPhone models. Shammo said during the conference call half of the 4 million iPhones were LTE-ready, and seeing how the iPhone 5 is the only iPhone equipped with LTE, that means two million iPhone 5s were sold. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Chinese App Store Clone ‘KuaiYong’ Installs Pirated iOS Apps Without Jailbreaking, Pixuru Prints Your iPhone Photos Into Works Of Art,

Verizon said today on its earnings conference call that it had activated 4 million total iPhones during Q1 2013, of which half were LTE devices, and half were 3G-only. That means 50 percent, or around 2 million were iPhone 5, with the remaining 2 million making up iPhone 4 and 4S devices.

iPhones represented a little over half of its total smartphone sales for the quarter, or 55.6 percent. Verizon activated 7.2 million smartphones in total in Q1 2013, and 5.9 million LTE devices, which means iPhones accounted for around one-third of all LTE device sales at the carrier during the three-month period.

Last quarter iPhone represented 64 percent of all smartphone sales by comparison, with 6.2M devices sold. As with this quarter, around half of those were iPhone 5, with older models making up the rest. The dip is mostly in keeping with past iPhone sales performance at the carrier, though it likely was higher last quarter due to strong interest in the still newly-launched iPhone 5 heading into the holiday shopping season.

The decrease in share of total smartphone sales is consistent with past performance, but it’s worth watching those numbers over the next couple of quarters as new flagship Android devices like the Galaxy S4 make their way to market. And if Apple is indeed planning an iPhone revision in June as many now expect, we could see more changes, though based on current data it looks like iPhone sales share might be settling in to a regular pattern, at lest at Verizon.

Last quarter, Verizon gained a record high 2.1 million subscribers, but thanks to Hurricane Sandy and pension-related charges, suffered a $1.9 billion net loss. Now that the company is releasing its Q1 2013 figures, are we going to see some of those losses trimmed back? The latest jumble of spreadsheets says yes, revealing that Big V turned a profit of $1.95 billion whilst adding 677,000 new subscribers to its wireless service — giving it a total customer base of 98.9 million users. In the quarter, Verizon activated 7.2 million smartphones, of which 5.9 million were LTE-ready devices. It added that 28 percent of those activations were customers who had defected from other carriers.

The company’s wireline business saw 188,000 FiOS Internet and 169,000 FiOS Video customers, pushing that particular sector’s revenue up to $2.6 billion — 69 percent of Verizon’s consumer revenue. Customers who are hoping to trade up from DSL should take heart that Big Red has switched over 83,000 homes to fiber this year, and plans to upgrade a further 217,000 dwellings before the end of 2013. CEO Lowell McAdam was his usual upbeat self, painting a rosy picture for the company’s future without mentioning that other company that begins with V it’s got to deal with.

Update: Verizon got in touch to clarify that while the company raked in $4.8 billion, a big chunk of that cash which is hived off and sent back to Vodafone, which owns a 45 percent stake in the business. The figures have been amended to reflect the net income attributable to Verizon.

Filed under: Mobile, Verizon

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