MediaFile

Nokia’s Weber devises U.S. plan of attack

Sinead Carew

Jan 10, 2012 17:25 EST

If Nokia’s big challenge this year is getting back in with US consumers and operators, it should be a busy 2012 for Chris Weber.

Weber –  who heads the Finnish company’s business here – took a moment with us at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to lay out some of his plans a day after AT&T announced it would sell Nokia’s Lumia 900, and a day before the Lumia 710 goes on sale at T-Mobile USA.

Weber told Reuters that he has to first find a way to convince enough consumers to at least try out Nokia’s Windows Phone-based devices, to at least give them a chance.

In this regard, he expects a lot of help from T-Mobile in the form of flagship phone status in their stores. This involves 6 Lumia display locations in each store, a poster out front, and a center island display to top it all off. At AT&T, Weber says, details on a promotional assist from the carrier are “still being worked out.”

But if the AT&T keynote announcement of eight LTE devices yesterday was anything to go by, Weber may have to fight harder for attention there. Weber also needs to gain attention at other U.S. operators, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

To do this, the executive promised to bring out a broader range of phones and more devices exclusive to carriers.

“We’re going to have a broad portfolio with multiple devices, mutiple price points, multiple user experiences and multip operators. That’s a lot of multipes,” Weber said. Asked about other operators, he said: “Certainly Verizon is a very important partner in that equation.”

In Super Bowl streaming deal, Verizon scores again

Paul Thomasch

Dec 20, 2011 15:29 EST

What a delightful week this is turning out to be for Verizon. First, archrival AT&T decides it will ditch its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA (as if they weren’t grinning madly in the halls of Verizon’s Art Deco building down on West Street) and then they get a piece of this NBC deal to stream the Super Bowl.  No doubt, in the greater scheme of things the AT&T news trumps the streaming deal — but every little thing helps in the crazy competitive telecoms world.

Here’s the upshot: For the first time NFL postseason games — including the Super Bowl — will be streamed live online over NFL.com and NBCSports.com and over mobile devices through an app supplied by Verizon.  This is NBC’s deal;  Fox tells us they have “no similar plans” while we’re CBS declined to comment on whether they would do a streaming deal..

The advantage for Verizon is clear: It’s just one more differentiator. (Verizon has really been on a roll lately. Beyond the events mentioned above, they swooped in to buy a ton of cable spectrum for $3.6 billion and made headlines with their plans to take on Netflix with a streaming service).

For NBC, the thinking is they can add an online audience to their already huge TV football  audience.  Joe Football Fan will watch the Super Bowl and all of its $3 million-plus commercials on the big TV screen at the same time he is watching the streaming coverage on his phone or PC, which will include a bunch of extra stuff such as additional camera angles, sideline updates and in-game analysis.  In other words, it will be complementary.

At least that’s the plan.  And  it’s likely to work out just fine for NBC.  When it comes to the Super Bowl, football fans crave all the information they can get, and having access to the game on your mobile phone while your sitting in a loud, crowded living room party would, frankly, be helpful.

There is a risk, of course. Perhaps this is just one more step toward cord-cutting, or allowing viewers to watch their favorite shows without the cost of subscribing to a cable distributor.  If the NFL — the NFL! — is available in real time online, then can every third-rate sitcom be far behind?

Comcast, which controls NBC, has obviously concluded the risk is very small. They’ve been streaming games on Sunday nights and, as the Associated Press reports, their broadcasts haven’t been hurt.

Verizon vs Apple: A royal battle

Aaron Pressman

Dec 13, 2011 10:35 EST

By Aaron Pressman The opinions expressed are his own.

Last week’s tiff over the Google Wallet app at Verizon Wireless may seem like just another minor dust-up among hardcore phone geeks. But the debate is an opening skirmish in a potentially huge battle, particularly if, as expected, a new iPhone model arrives that runs on Verizon’s high-speed “LTE” Internet service.

At stake is whether seemingly pro-consumer “open platform” rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission to promote choice and innovation on Verizon’s LTE network have any meaning at all.

The rules were supposed to let customers, not carriers, decide which devices and applications they could use on the LTE network. That would seemingly mean that customers who wanted to use the Google Wallet payment app on the Verizon network via the upcoming Galaxy Nexus phone would be allowed to do so.

After all, the FCC said carriers could not “block, degrade or interfere with the ability of end users to download and utilize applications of their choosing … subject to reasonable network management.” The Wallet app uses a special “near field communication” chip built into the Nexus phone which is designed to talk with the cash register at a local coffee shop, not bring down Verizon’s cellular network.

But, not so fast.

Verizon, which is backing a competing mobile payment service known as Isis, asked Google not to include the app for use on the Nexus phone. Defending the move, Verizon didn’t address the open platform rules directly. Instead, the carrier said the app “needs to be integrated into a new, secure and proprietary hardware element in our phones,” adding that “commercial discussions” with Google on the issue were “continuing.”

Tech wrap: Verizon feeds hunger for cable spectrum

Lars Paronen

Dec 2, 2011 16:50 EST

Verizon Wireless plans to pay $3.6 billion for wireless airwaves from a venture of cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Comcast said that the deal represented a 64 percent premium over the $2.2 billion price the cable consortium paid in 2006 for the wireless spectrum being sold to Verizon Wireless.

U.S. Representative Edward Markey asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether software maker Carrier IQ violated millions of mobile phone users’ privacy rights. Carrier IQ makes software that companies including AT&T and Sprint install in mobile devices. It runs in the background, transmitting data that the software maker says its customer companies use to better understand their devices and networks.

Zynga, which plans to go public in two weeks, slashed its value by more than 30 percent to $9 billion, hoping to avoid the fate of other recent Internet IPOs that have disappointed after stock market debuts. Just two weeks ago a filing listed the Facebook game maker’s value, based on a third party assessment, at $14.05 billion. CEO Mark Pincus, a serial entrepreneur before he founded Zynga, will hold a class of shares with 70 times more voting power than the common stock that will be sold in the offering.

RIM booked a huge charge to write down inventories of its underwhelming PlayBook tablet, capping a dismal year with a steep profit warning that sent its shares tumbling. The company said it now no longer expects to meet its full-year earnings forecast, due to weak sales, the PlayBook writedown and a charge related to a damaging service outage in October. RIM’s U.S. traded shares ended the day down almost 10 percent.

Google won approval from U.S. antitrust regulators to buy online advertising company Admeld without any conditions, the Justice Department said.

Britain’s consumer watchdog said it is investigating Groupon UK after receiving complaints about how the daily-deal company was conducting its business. The Office of Fair Trading said it had been investigating Groupon UK, which offers daily deals on products from hotel stays to calendars, in secret since July.

Hard disk drive maker Western Digital, the worst hit by the Thai floods, could recover the market share it has lost to smaller rival Seagate Technology faster-than-anticipated, analysts said. Western Digital said it partly resumed production ahead of schedule and raised its outlook for the December quarter, prompting at least three brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock.

Verizon throws weight behind Motorola’s Droid Razr for the holidays

Sinead Carew

Nov 3, 2011 20:14 EDT

(Correction: The name “Droid” was originally misspelled in the headline.)

Verizon Wireless is bringing its considerable marketing and promotional resources to bear on the Droid Razr from Motorola Mobility, kicking off an advertising blitz this week for a gadget that the once-mighty cellphone maker hopes will make a splash this feastive season.

The campaign launched ironically just a few hours after Verizon’s executives were honored guests at a splashy event to launch ReZound, a rival phone from HTC (pictured on the left).  “Today we’re focused predominantly focused on Rezound“, Verizon Wireless spokesman Howard Waterman said.

But he went on to describe how Verizon Wireless will  kick off sci-fi style teaser television ads for the latest Motorola phone that same evening.  While Verizon is  offering several new phones for the holidays, it plans to promote Motorola’s ahead of rivals Apple Inc’s  iPhone, the Samsung  Galaxy Nexus – and HTC’s Rezound.

Razr “is clearly going to be the phone we’ll focus on and have tremendous adertising weight on in the fourth quarter,” said Waterman.

The Razr is the first Motorola smartphone to be launched after Google announced its intention to buy the storied technology icon.

If past campaigns are any indicator, operator advertising can prove crucial to a phone’s success. Heavy promotion of Motorola’s first Droid in 2009 was the key to helping the embattled phone maker back on its feet after years of market share losses.

Tech wrap: Google fined over drug ads

Google has agreed to pay $500 million to settle a probe into ads it accepted for online Canadian pharmacies selling drugs in the United States, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday. The forfeiture is one of the largest ever in the United States, according to the DOJ. It represents Google’s revenue from Canadian pharmacy advertisements to U.S. customers through Google’s AdWords program and Canadian pharmacies’ revenue from U.S. sales.

Apple won another battle in the mobile tech patent wars on Wednesday when a Dutch court ruled that Samsung Electronics must stop marketing three of its smartphone models in some European countries. Apple, which has conquered the high end of the phone market with its iPhone, argued that Samsung had infringed on three of its patents. The court ruled that Samsung smartphones Galaxy S, S II and Ace breached just one of Apple’s patents.

BlackBerry users tired of the narrow selection of apps available to them should welcome news that models expected next year will be able to run apps designed for Google’s Android mobile platform. According to a Bloomberg report, which cites three unnamed sources, Research in Motion plans to make its forthcoming BlackBerry models Android-compatible in an attempt to boost sales of its smartphone models and win back consumers. The Android Market currently offers more than 250,000 apps, nearly six times as many as RIM’s own app store, the article notes.

Reversing its view from a year ago, a federal appeals court said Verizon Wireless customers must resolve disputes over alleged fraudulent cellphone charges individually through arbitration rather than as a class. Some consumer advocates say arbitration favors companies by making it too costly for consumers to bring small claims.

Guess who’s moving to Silicon Valley? Hollywood’s largest talent firm CAA is. The agency is considering opening an office in Silicon Valley to expand ties with the technology community, two people familiar with the firm’s plans told Reuters correspondent Peter Lauria.

TiVo, the maker of digital video recorders, said revenue rose 19 percent as it signed new deals with cable operators to use its technology, sending its shares up in after-hours trading.

Verizon Wireless crunches numbers for you — or tries to

Sinead Carew

Jul 6, 2011 18:51 EDT

Verizon Wireless customers getting stressed out about whether they’d charge past their 2-gigabyte download limit? The company is here to help, at least in theory. 

 Tomorrow the company is eliminating its $30/month, unlimited data plans for new smartphone customers (existing users can keep their plans).

But long before the change, Verizon Wireless had offered something called the data calculator on its website, a handy service that estimates how much data you’d use if you send, say, 250 text-only emails a day (the answer is apparently 73.24 megabyes of data).  That sounds really helpful — but then it gets a little confusing. 

Apparently some of the data on Verizon’s online caculator is actually incorrect, so they’re planning to fix  it all tonight before they roll out tiered pricing: starting at a $30/month fee for 2 gigabytes of data use.  

Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said the company “found some issues on the back-end so “we’re correcting it and getting it in place for the new usage-based plans.” She added that the company wants its customers to “use the calculator to select the best plan.”

Interestingly, some of the  usage numbers will look more palatable tomorrow than today, but some will look a little less so. Take video streaming.

Today, before the fix, the equation looks pretty different in the calculator:

Tech wrap: Verizon ditches unlimited data plan

Verizon Wireless customers, say goodbye to the days of  unlimited Web surfing for a set fee on your smartphone. The biggest U.S. mobile provider will stop offering its $30 all-you-can-surf  deal later this week, replacing it with a new tiered approach to data pricing. Customers who keep their smartphone use to 2 gigbytes (GB) of data per month or under won’t see a change to their bill, but those who go over that limit will be slapped with an extra $10 charge per GB. Heavy mobile users will have the option of signing up for a 5 GB or 10 GB plan for $50 or $80 respectively. AT&T made a similar move last year, meaning Sprint is now the last major wireless carrier offering unlimited data use. CNET reports that Verizon will also start charging for access to its mobile hot-spot service, which up until this week has been free and without bandwidth restrictions.

Aspiring cord cutters across Latin America and the Caribbean, rejoice. Netflix is on its way. The company, which offers TV shows and movies over the Internet and DVD rentals through the mail, will be expanding its online video streaming service to 43 countries in the regions later this year. Shows and movies will be available to subscribers in Spanish, Portuguese or English on PCs, Macs and other mobile devices that are able to stream from Netflix, the company said in a blog post. The overseas expansion marks the company’s second foray outside the United States. It began offering its services in Canada last year.

You’ve heard it before and now you’ll hear it again – the next iteration of Apple’s iPhone is on its way this September. Supply-side sources told Asian IT industry newspaper DigiTimes that Taiwan-based notebook maker Pegatron Technology has received an order to make 15 million iPhone 5/iPhone 4 handsets that are set to ship sometime in September.  The iPhone 5 is not expected to differ much from the previous model on the surface, according to the report. As AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski points out, the real differences are expected to be “under the hood” where you’ll find a faster processor and better rear camera among other improvements.

Another day, another lawsuit against Google and Microsoft. This time, a Louisiana company is suing the two tech giants for infringing on one of its patents with their map websites. Transcenic said in court documents that Google’s Streetview and Google Earth and Microsoft’s Streetside infringe on its technology, which covers systems for capturing and navigating within panoramic images.

Nearly a week after News Corp sold Myspace to Specific Media and pop singer Justin Timberlake, and news is finally starting to seep out about what the new owners plan to do with the social media site. Mashable reports that Timberlake, who now has an ownership stake in the company, may use it as a platform to host talent contests. That could be a good strategy given the site’s roots as a platform for bands and musicians.

Tech wrap: Apple beats Google to the music cloud

Lars Paronen

Apr 21, 2011 18:59 EDT

Apple has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies’ plans. The sources revealed that Apple’s plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection and that Apple has yet to sign any new licenses for the service and major music labels are hoping to secure deals before the service is launched. Amazon.com launched a music locker service earlier in April without new licensing agreements leading to threats of legal action from some music companies.

Verizon gained wireless subscribers with Apple’s iPhone, but the device’s affect on its financials failed to impress investors. Verizon Wireless posted 906,000 net new subscribers, roughly in line with expectations. That was much better than AT&T, which added only 62,000 net subscribers in the quarter as it lost iPhone exclusivity. However, a key sticking point for investors when comparing the two operators was the fact that AT&T won more new iPhone customers in the quarter than Verizon. Verizon announced that it would sell a new version of the iPhone later this year that, unlike its current iPhone, would work globally.

The risky attempt by The New York Times to charge fees to website readers looks to be paying off, although it still faces stiff challenges in turning around a fall-off in print advertising revenue at its core business. The company gained more than 100,000 new subscribers since it introduced its digital subscription service on March 28, representing at least an estimated $26 million in annual revenue and trouncing early expectations for the service.

Disruption to Amazon servers that host Internet services took down a raft of social networking websites including social network foursquare and Q+A aggregator Quora. Amazon’s “Elastic Compute Cloud,” part of the online retail company’s cloud-computing service that hosts websites for startups, experienced latency problems and other errors, according to Amazon’s status page. The latest update on Amazon’s status page said the company was “now seeing significantly reduced failures and latency and … continuing to recover. We have also brought additional capacity online in the affected availability zone.”

Cloud computing solutions have advanced beyond storage to the point where they now provide businesses with ways to improve operations, writes Microsoft’s Cindy Bates. Among her tips for businesses to get more from the cloud: Deploy cloud-based versions communication/productivity tools such e-mail, phone, chat, contacts, calendars, and document creation software to gain access to enterprise-level capabilities; if your business provides Web services to customers, moving applications to the cloud will allow you to scale them up or down depending on your needs and gives your developers more choice in where and how they manage, deploy and store data; and the cloud can give your business the ability to maintain a remote workforce. Workers can access e-mail, documents, calendars and more, as well as collaborate with colleagues through document-sharing programs and video conferencing technology, essentially experiencing “in-office” scenarios wherever they have access to an Internet connection, Bates argues.

Verizon iPhone gets dinged by Consumer Reports (Update)

Gabriel Madway

Feb 25, 2011 15:51 EST

“Antennagate” again?

The reception problem that plagued AT&T’s iPhone 4 last summer is also found on the Verizon version of the iPhone, according to Consumer Reports.  The influential nonprofit organization, which publishes guides on everything from cars to TVs, said Friday that holding the Verizon iPhone “in a specific but quite natural way” can cause the phone to drop calls.

Consumer Reports tested the device against five other Verizon smartphones — Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid 2 Global, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally, and Motorola Droid X — and said “the only phones in which the finger contact caused any meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4.”

The Verizon iPhone 4 launched earlier this month, but there has been no hue and cry about its reception, as there was with the AT&T device. “There has been no such outpouring of complaints about the Verizon version of the phone,” Consumer Reports noted. However, the tech blogosphere did take note of the problem when the phone went on sale.

Last July, a few weeks after the launch of the iPhone 4 with AT&T, a clearly irked Apple was forced to hold a special press conference to address the issue. Although it denied there was any problem with the phone, Apple gave out free cases — which fix the problem — to anyone who wanted them. The executive in charge of iPhone engineering left Apple weeks after the controversy erupted.

Consumer Reports said because of the reception issue, it will not include the Verizon iPhone in its list of recommended smartphones, despite its high ranking.  “The phone performs superbly in most other respects,” the magazine said.

UPDATE: Verizon Wireless says the Verizon iPhone is seeing less than one-half of 1 percent of calls dropped in major cities such as New York and San Francisco: “Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 customers are experiencing stellar network performance.”