Oct 19

Sprint proves money can solve problems, buys iPCS to settle litigation

Posted in: business, carrier, industry, lawsuit, legal, Sprint, Today's Chili

Considering Sprint’s financial position and the overall credit market, we’re not exactly sure where the carrier managed to pick up $831 million, which it promptly used to acquire affiliate iPCS and take on $405 million of net debt. If you’ll recall, the aforesaid youngin’ was worrying papa way back in May of 2008, and it seems that Sprint has finally had enough of this whole “litigation” thing. The acquisition puts all of the court battling to rest (or at least it’s expected to), enabling the operator to stop divesting its iDEN network in select iPCS markets. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure buys a good muzzle.

[Via Reuters]

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Sprint proves money can solve problems, buys iPCS to settle litigation originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 30

Borders pulls a B&N, offers free WiFi to all patrons

Posted in: business, industry, retail, Today's Chili, verizon, wifi

In the gory, never-ending war for book store supremacy, Borders has just tapped Verizon in order to match Barnes & Noble’s summer efforts to bring gratis WiFi to all who enter. Details of the arrangement are scant, but the takeaway is this: in “virtually all” of its more than 500 stores nationwide, Borders is hooking up with Verizon to bring free internet to anyone who sashays in (note: you literally have to dance upon entering) with a WiFi-enabled device. The service is expected to be fully rolled out by mid-October, giving you plenty of time to select the scarf and skinny jeans you’d like to be seen in by your fellow hipsters.

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Borders pulls a B&N, offers free WiFi to all patrons originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 28

Iridium to merge with GHL, get back into sat phone game

Posted in: business, industry, motorola, satellite, Today's Chili

Aside from pushing out around one phone per year (at best), Iridium Satellite really hasn’t had a major impact on the market over the past ten years. ‘Course, that’s probably because it’s hard to have much impact after seeking bankruptcy protection in 1999, but we digress. Starting tomorrow, new life will be breathed into Iridium thanks to a merger with publicly traded GHL Acquisition. If all goes to plan, the merger will add over $200 million to the company’s bank account, enabling it to pay down debt and develop a next-generation network of satellites to be launched in 2014. Furthermore, $160 million will be raised by issuing another 16 million shares at $10 a pop, and a new label (Iridium Communications) will be thrown on for good measure. Only time will tell if the world really is ready to adopt satellite phones en masse, but if TerraStar’s latest deal is any indication, we’d say chances are good halfway decent.

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Iridium to merge with GHL, get back into sat phone game originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 24

Clearwire branding true 4G WiMAX rollouts ‘CLEAR,’ upgrading pre-WiMAX areas nationwide

Posted in: 4G, business, industry, Today's Chili, WiMAX

Clearwire’s far too young of a company to be dealing with a mid-life crisis, but just a year or so after it really began rolling out its Clear WiMAX services in select portions of America, it appears that the outfit is changing names. Confusingly enough, the company (currently Clearwire) will be renaming itself as the service (currently Clear), leaving us to wonder what exactly CLEAR (the rebranded company) will call its WiMAX offerings. There’s no indication on the company’s website as to when it plans to make the rebranding official, but a customer in Charlotte, North Carolina has informed us that the change is already underway in the Queen City. According to him, his equipment was recently swapped out, with the new modem boasting a Motorola logo and a “CLEAR” logo instead of the “Clearwire” emblem as before. Interestingly, he also claims that his download speed received a (gratis) bump from 1.6Mbps to 5Mbps, which resulted in a “huge improvement in speed.” So, any other users out there getting their modems swapped out? Call us crazy, but we’re guessing it’s just a matter of time.

[Thanks, Rick]

Update: Clearwire pinged us with a few clarifications here. Ready? Good. Clearwire, as a company, is not changing its name. So far as the SEC knows, the corporate entity will remain “Clearwire.” The new “CLEAR” branding is a push to market its true 4G WiMAX services (as opposed to “pre-WiMAX service”), which are rolling out to over 40 existing Clearwire markets around the country. Seems that explains the speed boost Mr. Rick experienced, huh?

Gallery: Clearwire renaming itself CLEAR, getting a logo makeover too

Continue reading Clearwire branding true 4G WiMAX rollouts ‘CLEAR,’ upgrading pre-WiMAX areas nationwide

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Clearwire branding true 4G WiMAX rollouts ‘CLEAR,’ upgrading pre-WiMAX areas nationwide originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Verizon CEO doesn’t care about landlines anymore, feels ‘liberated’ by new outlook

Posted in: industry, phone, Today's Chili, verizon

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg isn’t too upbeat on the future of landlines, telling the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference today that the company is just not interested in telephones connected with wires. The chief exec of one of the nation’s biggest telecommunications firms continued with his gospel, saying his “thinking has matured” and that trying to predict when the dwindling landline business will plateau is akin to “the dog chasing the bus.” He says the new way of thinking is “liberating,” but of course, endeavors like the Hub technically don’t count as landlines to the company since it’sVoIP, and the coupled with its continued success as the largest cellular provider in terms of subscriber base, yeah, we’re sure it’s not too tough a pill to swallow. So how abut ramping up FiOS installations just a wee bit faster, eh Ivan?

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Verizon CEO doesn’t care about landlines anymore, feels ‘liberated’ by new outlook originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 14

European retailer hacks €100 from PlayStation 3 in run-up to gamescom

Posted in: business, console, europe, industry, playstation 3, Playstation3, ps3, sony, Today's Chili

If you know anything about European retailer Fnac, you know it’s not the go-to place for bargains. However, it’s this very outlet that’s now selling an 80GB PlayStation 3 bundle (which includes the console, a single controller and inFamous) for €100 less than its “everyday low price” as of yesterday. Of course, one major French retailer slashing the price on a system that’s long overdue for a break isn’t reason in and of itself reason to believe anything’s on the horizon, but pair this up with everything else we’ve heard over the past few weeks, and we’d say all the vague omens are pointing to a leaner, cheaper and altogether more dashing PS3 on August 18th. In our magical fantasy land, anyway.

Update: Our friends at Engadget Spanish just let us know that there’s been a price drop in Spain as well. Getting warmer…

[Thanks, Nelson]

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European retailer hacks €100 from PlayStation 3 in run-up to gamescom originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 11

Xbox 360 officially the only console to stream Netflix — sorry, PS3 and Wii

Posted in: breaking news, BreakingNews, business, exclusive, industry, Microsoft, netflix, partnership, streaming, Today's Chili, watch instantly, WatchInstantly, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, Xbox360, XboxLive

We actually had to brush the fog off of our spectacles to ensure that hazy conditions weren’t clouding our comprehension abilities, but sure enough, that Netflix streaming that Xbox LIVE members have grown to love won’t ever land on Sony’s PlayStation 3 nor on Nintendo’s Wii (PlayOn notwithstanding). At the very bottom of Microsoft’s long list of details surrounding today’s Xbox LIVE update, we’re clearly told that the Netflix Watch Instantly integration is now an “exclusive partnership,” with Microsoft going so far as to say that the “Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience, available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix unlimited plan subscribers.” Of course, we’d heard rumors over the years that Netflix could sashay over to other consoles in due time, but it looks like the suits in Redmond had the foresight to lock things down while they still had a chance. So, are you reconsidering that Xbox 360 purchase, or just looking that much more intently in Roku‘s direction? Full blurb is after the break.

[Thanks, David]

Continue reading Xbox 360 officially the only console to stream Netflix — sorry, PS3 and Wii

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Xbox 360 officially the only console to stream Netflix — sorry, PS3 and Wii originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 03

HTC sees revenue falling due to “delays in product launches”

Posted in: Android, business, delay, earnings, Google, HTC, industry, motorola, pricing, sales, Sony Ericsson, SonyEricsson, Today's Chili

HTC’s been on somewhat of a hot streak here lately, but word on the street has it that the aforesaid outfit may not be able to ship all of its forthcoming handsets on time. A new Wall Street Journal report on falling revenue in the HTC camp notes that an undisclosed amount of delays, a larger-than-anticipated drop in contract orders and lower-than-expected sales in China could lead to drooping income in the short term, and some analysts are pointing out that the company’s average selling price per phone is sliding due to looming Android competition from the likes of Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Aside from the Touch Pro2 that’ll probably never, ever land on Sprint, HTC has about a gazillion other rumored handsets on the horizon, but it’s hard to know for sure which “product launches” are expected to be stalled. So, is HTC secretly retooling a smattering of its handsets in order to stay one step ahead of SE and Moto? Or are old fashioned supply chain inefficiencies to blame?

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HTC sees revenue falling due to “delays in product launches” originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 31

Motorola posts $26m Q2 profit, promises cheap Android thrills, does a little dance

Posted in: Android, business, earnings, Google, industry, moto, motorola, snapdragon, Today's Chili

See that image there on the right? Yeah, it’s a pretty drastic departure from the Sad Moto[TM] face that had become all too common when talking about the company’s financials. Just a quarter after posting a dreadful $291 million loss, the outfit responsible for creating the RAZR and then doing nothing for half a decade is finally showing a profit once more. The Q2 numbers show an “unexpected” $26 million profit on sales of $5.5 billion, $1.8 billion of which came from the handset division. Of course, that very division managed to lose $253 million and see its global market share slip to 5.5 percent, but with a big bang from Android reportedly just months away, CEO Sanjay Jha ain’t taking time to frown.

Just hours after the Verizon-branded Sholes smartphone surfaced, Mr. Jha was quoted as saying that two Android devices would be “in stores for the holiday season,” with launches occurring on “two major carriers in North America and multiple carriers outside the US.” He also noted that plans were in place to ship “several additional Android-based devices in the first quarter of 2010,” but details beyond that were vague. So, is this the beginning of a new, happier Moto? Our aged copy of Photoshop certainly hopes so.

Read – Motorola’s Q2 results
Read – Jha on future Android devices

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Motorola posts $26m Q2 profit, promises cheap Android thrills, does a little dance originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 30

Nintendo finally sees Wii demand slowing, calls iPhone a DS / DSi competitor

Posted in: Apple, business, console, DS, earnings, gaming, handheld, industry, iPhone, nintendo, recession, Today's Chili, wii

While it seemed that all was going well for the Big N, it looks like those jovial times are finally coming to a (temporary) end. In an earnings report filed today, the company posted a 66 percent fall in quarterly operating profit on “slowing demand for its Wii console and a stronger yen.” It’s not so much the profit slide that’s surprising, but the sudden admission that Wii demand has finally (finally!) slowed from a raging boil to simply piping hot definitely caught us off guard. Still, Nintendo maintained that it would sell 26 million Wii consoles before the year was out alongside 30 million DS handhelds, the latter of which has seen momentum slow due to “increased competition in the handheld business from Apple’s iPhone.” Now, we’ve known for some time that the suits in Cupertino have always viewed the iPhone as a game console, but to hear it called out as such from an entity not named Apple is another matter entirely. Maybe it should reconsider that whole “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” thing? Nah.

[Image courtesy of QuiteCurious]

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Nintendo finally sees Wii demand slowing, calls iPhone a DS / DSi competitor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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