Hasta La Gadget!

Well, look at Ma Bell now, wishing it’d all just go away. Tied up in lawsuits, the company has filed motions to dismiss the two complaints brought by Sprint and C Spire Wireless (formerly Cellular South), which seek to block AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. In the filings, it’s argued that the two providers represent their own interests, rather than that of the public. AT&T further reveals that C Spire had pursued private negotiations prior to the lawsuit, where the regional provider agreed to support the merger “if AT&T would agree not to engage in facilities-based competition in Mississippi.” Ma Bell goes on to state, “This inappropriate proposal confirms that what Cellular South fears is competition, not lack of competition.” Given the latest maneuver (which smacks heavily of PR spin), there’s no doubt that lawyers for Sprint and C Spire will have a bit of homework for the weekend.

AT&T asks court to dismiss lawsuits filed by Sprint and C Spire Wireless originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It appears that Verizon’s showing no signs of slowing its LTE expansion efforts, as 26 markets lit up last week and at least another 21 are ready to debut on October 20th. The most recent switching of the flip, which took place on September 15th, rose the grand total of cities blanketed by LTE to 143, covering more than 160 million people; the upcoming effort to expand will increase it to 164 cities. The carrier’s goal by the end of the year is 175, which means it’ll be just 11 cities away from achieving its 2011 objective with two months to spare. Notable highlights include: Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Buffalo and Niagara, New York; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Stockton and Modesto, California. Los Angeles and San Diego will also be getting more coverage. Check the list after the break to see if your city will be the fortunate recipient of some 4G love, as well as the press release to take a look at the entire list of available cities.

Continue reading Verizon continues nationwide LTE expansion tour, edges closer to year-end goal

Verizon continues nationwide LTE expansion tour, edges closer to year-end goal originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re raising our glasses to the original Galapagos e-reader this morning, because Sharp has decided to discontinue it. Today, the manufacture announced that it will stop taking orders for its 5.5- and 10.8-inch Android tablets on September 30th, just nine months after they first launched. A company spokeswoman, however, confirmed that Sharp isn’t leaving the market altogether, as it plans to continue churning out the 7-inch A01SH that launched last month. The Japan-based firm is confident that “the market for electronic books will continue to expand,” but decided to terminate its older slates because they’ve already “fulfilled the purposes that they were designed for.” Sharp declined to disclose sales figures for the doomed devices, though local media outlets are reporting that they may have been squeezed out of the Japanese market by the iPad — a decidedly Darwinian explanation.

Sharp to discontinue original Galapagos e-readers, 7-inch species survives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm may be facing some new competition in the mobile chip space, now that NTT DoCoMo and three other Japanese firms are looking to join forces with Samsung. According to Japan’s Nikkei business daily, the quartet of firms (which includes Fujitsu, NEC and Panasonic’s mobile unit) is currently finalizing negotiations with Samsung over a proposed joint venture that would design, develop and market smartphone chips. The partners are reportedly planning to incorporate the new chips into their own devices, while selling them to other handset manufacturers, as well. DoCoMo would hold a majority stake in the ¥30 billion (about $390 million) partnership, which could help lower procurement costs, while reducing the partners’ dependency upon industry-leading Qualcomm. A DoCoMo spokesman acknowledged that the provider is exploring a variety of collaborations, but was quick to point out that nothing’s been finalized. Samsung and Fujitsu, meanwhile, have yet to comment.

Samsung, NTT DoCoMo to develop smartphone chips in proposed joint venture originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During a sitdown with reporters yesterday, NVIDIA Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang discussed his company’s near- and long-term financial outlook, while providing some insight into the chipmaker’s quad-core future. According to Huang, NVIDIA expects to rake in between $4.7 and $5 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2013, with revenue from its mobile chip unit projected to mushroom tenfold by 2015, to a whopping $20 billion. Huang acknowledged that these predictions could be affected by external factors, including the ongoing patent wars between tablet and smartphone manufacturers, but didn’t seem too concerned about their immediate impact. “At this point, it looks like it’s much ado about nothing,” he said. In fact, Huang foresees rather robust growth in the mobile processing sector, estimating that there are about 100 million devices that will need chips this year — a figure that could soon rise to one billion, on the strength of more affordable handsets, efficient ARM processors and the rise of ultra-thin notebooks. And, despite his recent disappointment, Huang expects Android tablets to comprise a full 50 percent of the market in the near future, claiming that NVIDIA’s Tegra chips can currently be found in 70 percent of all slates running Google’s OS, and about half of all Android-based smartphones.

In the short-term, meanwhile, NVIDIA is busy developing its quad-core mobile processors — which, according to the exec, should appear in tablets during the third or fourth quarter of this year (quad-core smartphones, however, may be further down the road). Huang also sees room to develop wireless-enabled, Snapdragon-like processors, thanks to NVIDIA’s recent acquisition of Icera, but he hasn’t given up on GPUs, either, predicting that demand for graphics performance will remain stable. The loquacious CEO went on to divine that Windows 8 will support apps designed for Windows 7 (implying, perhaps, that Microsoft’s Silverlight platform will play a major role in future cloud-based developments), while contending that smaller, “clamshell devices” with keyboards will ultimately win out of over the Ultrabook strategy that Intel has been pursuing. For the moment, though, Huang seems pretty comfortable with NVIDIA’s position in the mobile processing market, citing only Qualcomm as primary competition. “We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm,” he argued, adding that companies without a solid mobile strategy are “in deep turd.” You can find more of Huang’s insights at the source links below.

NVIDIA CEO sees major growth in mobile processing, quad-core tablets coming this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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