March 16 at 3:39 p.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Chicago executives
By Wailin Wong
Sanjay Jha. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. has modified Chief Executive Sanjay Jha’s employment agreement to give him a monthly housing allowance instead of reimbursing him for his relocation from California to Illinois.
Jha, who was chief operating officer at San Diego, Calif.-based Qualcomm before taking the co-CEO position at Motorola Inc. in 2008, makes regular commutes from his West Coast home to the Chicago area. Motorola Mobility, which was split off from Motorola at the beginning of this year, is headquartered in Libertyville and has an office in San Diego. Get the full story »
By Reuters
Apple Inc. shares slid for a second straight day after a rare broker downgrade stoked worries that the company’s torrid pace of growth will slow.
Shares in the world’s largest technology company were down 4.4 percent to $330.08 in early afternoon trading, a loss in market value of about $10 billion. The shares fell 2.3 percent Tuesday. Get the full story »
March 15 at 10:34 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Telecommunications,
Wireless
By Wailin Wong
Verizon displays the HTC Thunderbolt during the Consumer Electronics Showin January. (AP/Isaac Brekken)
Verizon Wireless announced on Tuesday the first mobile phone for its 4G network, unveiling a handset by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC that will be available March 17.
Verizon lit up its 4G network in Chicago and 37 other cities in early December. The inaugural 4G devices were USB modems that enable connectivity for a laptop. The carrier’s first 4G phone is the ThunderBolt by HTC, which will cost $249.99 with a two-year contract. Get the full story »
March 15 at 7:58 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
M&A,
Technology
By Dow Jones Newswires
Network equipment vendor Nokia Siemens Networks is seeking to renegotiate its $1.2 billion acquisition of network equipment assets from Motorola Solutions Inc., Bloomberg news agency says Tuesday citing “two people close to the situation”. Get the full story »
March 14 at 7:38 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Consumer electronics
From the Associated Press | Users of Apple’s iPhone peppered Twitter and blogs with complaints that their phones bungled the one-hour “spring forward” to daylight savings time that went into effect overnight Saturday.
Some users’ phones fell back one hour instead of springing forward, making the time displayed on the iPhone two hours off. This is just the latest clock woe for Apple’s chic iPhone. A clock glitch prevented alarms from sounding on New Year’s Day, causing slumbering revelers to oversleep. The devices also struggled to adjust to the end of daylight savings time back in November. Get the full story>>
March 11 at 9:59 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Chicago executives,
Policy
By Wailin Wong
Motorola Solutions Inc. Chief Executive Greg Brown has been named to President Barack Obama’s Management Advisory Board, a group of former and current CEOs tasked with advising administration officials on how to bring private-sector practices to the government.
The White House made its announcement on Thursday and the group is scheduled to meet for the first time on Friday. Brown joins nine other corporate chiefs, including Jeffrey Kindler, the former CEO of Pfizer Inc., BET Networks CEO Debra Lee and American Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern. Get the full story »
By Reuters
Clearwire Corp. CEO Bill Morrow has resigned, two other top executives are leaving and the finance chief is moving to an operational role in a massive management shakeup at the wireless service provider.
Morrow will be replaced on an interim basis by Chairman John Stanton, according to the company, which is seeking billions in funding to expand its high-speed wireless network. Get the full story »
March 8 at 12:53 p.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
M&A,
Telecommunications,
Wireless
By Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal
Sprint Nextel Corp. and Deutsche Telekom AG are again discussing options for combining Sprint with the German company’s U.S. subsidiary, T-Mobile USA, though a deal is unlikely in the near term, people familiar with the matter said.
A deal would combine the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the U.S. and create a substantial counterweight to industry leaders AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group. Get the full story »
March 7 at 2:32 p.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Telecommunications,
Wireless
By CNN
Android is now the most-used smart phone operating system in the United States — a stunning race to the top from a platform that didn’t exist 25 months ago.
Nearly one third, or 31.2 percent, of U.S. smart phones ran Google’s Android OS in January, according to a study released Monday by comScore. That outpaced the 30.4 percent of American smart phone owners who use BlackBerry devices, which are made by Research in Motion. Get the full story »
By Reuters
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has expressed interest in developing an iPhone based on China Mobile’s fourth-generation telecoms standard, the chairman of the Chinese telecoms operator said Friday.
“Jobs has said he’s very interested in developing an iPhone that will run on TD,” China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou said on the sidelines of the Chinese Communist Party’s consultative meeting. Get the full story »
By Wailin Wong
Microsoft has launched a daily deals service, integrating offers from industry leaders such as Groupon and LivingSocial into its Bing search engine for the desktop and mobile devices.
The move puts Microsoft into the daily deals space, but as an aggregator rather than a direct provider of discounts. Yahoo! launched an aggregation service, Local Offers, in November. Get the full story »
March 3 at 5:48 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Consumer news,
Technology
By CNN
Gadget analysis group AnandTech, which was the first to diagnose the iPhone 4 antenna issue, ran a thorough test of the new Verizon iPhone 4 and found that the “death grip“ problem has been mitigated.
“Apple fixed the problem,“ said Brian Klug, author of AnandTech’s report. “You can use the Verizon Wireless iPhone with no case without any concern for losing signal because of how it’s held.“ Get the full story »
Bloomberg News | Amazon.com plans to open an app store to sell software for the Android operating system. It will join the more than 30 stores selling the mobile-phone downloads.
By Wailin Wong
Motorola Mobility is planning to make its webtop application, which connects a smart phone with a laptop dock to simulate a desktop experience, a common feature on most of its high-end devices by year-end, Chief Executive Sanjay Jha said Monday.
Motorola introduced the webtop functionality at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, when it unveiled the Atrix, a smart phone running Google’s Android operating system. The Atrix, which will go on sale at AT&T stores next week, nestles into a thin laptop dock with an 11.6-inch display and full keyboard. The phone powers the set-up, which gives the user full PC capabilities, including Web-based desktop applications. Get the full story »
By Associated Press
In a first for a wireless carrier, AT&T Inc. said Monday that it will use its phones’ location-sensing ability to target text ads with coupons and other offers to participating subscribers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.
Kmart, part of Sears Holdings Corp., is one of the chains that have signed up for ShopAlerts by AT&T. That means AT&T could send discount offers to subscribers who are close to a Kmart store. Get the full story »
