CNET - The second-quarter earnings report from AT&T is out today, revealing that the company activated 3.7 million iPhones, with 22 percent new to the company.
AT&T also posted its best-ever churn rate -- 0.97 percent for postpaid devices like the iPhone -- and total smartphone sales of 5.1 million, a third of them 4G-capable devices.
But it's the iPhone number that's most interesting. AT&T, of course, was the first American carrier to offer the industry-leading Apple device, and it enjoyed a domestic monopoly on four generations of the phone from June 2007 to February 2011. After that, Verizon joined the fray with the iPhone 4. Sprint followed later that year.
Much ink has been spilled about declining iPhone sales in the face of stiff competition from Google devices, and that's certainly an interesting angle. Just as interesting is AT&T's continued hold on the iPhone crown, five generations in -- and its slipping grip with each passing quarter. More
CNET - True to the Droid Incredible franchise, the new $149.99 HTC Droid
Incredible 4G LTE packs a solid amount of smartphone features in an
attractive yet compact size. On board is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
and access to Verizon's 4G LTE network.
PCWorld - See our neighborhood-by-neighborhood test results for 127 locations
in 13 cities. Click the map for raw speeds, as well as Web page and
video load times.
In our April 16 article "3G and 4G Wireless Speed Showdown,"
we reported the results of our exclusive 13-city tests of the four
national wireless services: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Our
study is the largest and best-known independent test of wireless
service in the United States.
Here, in Part Two of our story, we drill deeper into the massive
amounts of data that we collected over six weeks in February and March
of this year. Whereas the first article reported the 13-city average
speeds of the carriers, in this story we detail the carriers'
performance in each of the ten testing locations we visited in each
city.
We've assembled a full-page map showing all 127 of our testing locations
in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles,
New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington,
D.C. When you zoom in on a particular city, you'll see ten blue map
markers--one for each place we tested. Click the pin, and you'll see our
full testing results for that location.
T-Mobile's HSPA+ 21 service dominated the 3G testing, earning the
highest marks for upload speed and download speed in 11 of the 13 cities
we studied. The exceptions were Chicago (where AT&T captured the
best download and upload speeds for 3G) and Dallas (where AT&T took
the lead for 3G downloads, and Verizon won for 3G uploads).
Photograph by Robert Cardin
We saw three major patterns in our 4G test results. In five cities
(Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), AT&T
swept the 4G upload and download competitions; in four (Denver, New
Orleans, San Jose, and Seattle), Verizon swept both; and in the
remaining four (Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Washington, D.C.),
AT&T won for downloads and Verizon prevailed for uploads. Notably,
in two of the cities where Verizon ruled (Denver and Seattle), AT&T
doesn't offer 4G LTE service.
Web Page and Video Load Times
In addition to the speed results, you can see the results of our
"behavioral" tests, which are meant to closely approximate the wireless
usage of real people. At each of our testing locations, our field
researcher loaded a 100KB static Web page and viewed a 1-minute video
while connected to each of the 3G and 4G services of the carriers. For
each one, the researcher logged the time the Web page took to load, as
well as the time necessary to stream the video. More
Verizon Wireless subscribers will soon be able to get their hands on one
of HTC's newest Android 4.0 devices, the Droid Incredible 4G LTE.
Verizon Wireless will soon be selling the Droid Incredible 4G LTE from HTC.
(Credit:
HTC)
CNET - NEW ORLEANS, La. -- HTC announced a 4G LTE updated Droid Incredible
for Verizon Wireless, which looks very similar to the HTC One S offered
on T-Mobile USA.
The new Droid Incredible 4G LTE for Verizon is a variation of the HTC
One S that HTC is already selling on T-Mobile USA. But there is one
notable difference. This HTC device supports 4G LTE on Verizon's
extensive network.
The device also comes with an advanced camera with an 8 megapixel
resolution that can take up to three shots per second. It also has Beats
Audio integration for improved sound quality. It runs Google
Android
4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as well as HTC's own Sense 4 software. It has a
4-inch Super LCD qHD screen and a dual-core Snapdragon S4. It also has a
1,7000mAh battery and an expansion memory slot for up to a 32 GB
microSD card.
Pricing hasn't been announced yet for the new Droid Incredible 4G
LTE, nor is there an exact launch date.
The press release says it will
be available in "coming weeks." Some rumors suggested the phone could
cost consumers $299. But that sounds a bit high considering the T-Mobile
One S, which is very similar to this device, is priced at $199 with a
two year contract. More
The Yeshiva World - Thinking of upgrading your phone with Verizon? Better do it fast.
On April 22, Verizon Wireless will institute a $30 upgrade fee for
existing customers who purchase new phones with a two-year contract.
The fee would hit any Verizon customer signing up for a new two-year
plan and receiving a discounted device. Early upgraders who pay the full
price of a new phone would not be impacted.
“This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level
of service and support they have come to expect,” said Brenda Raney,
spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless.
Verizon is actually the last national carrier to charge an upgrade
fee. T-Mobile charges $18 for upgrades. Sprint and AT&T recently
doubled their fees to $36. More
PCWorld - Redbox and Verizon are working on a streaming video service to take
on Netflix, but so far have said little about how it will work.
The joint venture will launch in the second half of 2012. According to a press release,
it will offer “subscription services and more in an easy-to-use,
flexible and affordable service that will allow all consumers across the
U.S. to enjoy the new and popular entertainment they want, whenever
they choose, using the media and devices they prefer.”
Redbox’s parent company, Coinstar, has been toying with the idea of a
streaming video service for at least a couple years. In 2010, the
company began gauging customer interest with surveys, and a year ago Redbox confirmed that it was working on something. (At the time, a partnership with Amazon was rumored, but Amazon has since launched its own streaming video service without Redbox.) More
CNET - Verizon Wireless may soon introduce a new service plan that allows
families to share data among multiple subscribers across a single
account, according to a post on Engadget.
The gadget blog said today that it has received employee training
material from a source that indicates there is a new version of the data
plan that will soon be introduced. In a screen shot on the blog, there
is a section labeled “account level data plans” and a charge of $9.99
charge per additional line.
Engadget said it doesn’t know when Verizon will introduce the new
billing option. But Verizon executives have been talking about such a
plan recently.
Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said on the company’s earnings call last week that the company is looking at how to implement a smartphone family data plan.
“We need to make sure it’s a win-win for customers and for us,” he
said. “So we will continue to work on that. But it’s important to note
that we are a premium priced service in the market. And we will continue
with that strategy, and we’ll continue to win.” More
CNET - Verizon just made the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx ship date official. Enhanced with a big battery designed for maximum endurance, Android fans can scoop up the pricey $299.99 superphone in stores on January 26.
First unveiled at CES two weeks ago, the Droid Razr Maxx boasts a fat 3,300mAh battery pack yet still manages to keep a slim 0.35-inch silhouette.
LAS VEGAS—At CES 2012, Motorola and Verizon Wireless have launched
the Motorola Droid 4 and the Droid RAZR MAXX, two 4G LTE-powered
smartphones for Verizon’s network.
The two companies are billing the Droid 4 as the thinnest 4G LTE
QWERTY smartphone on the market—4G LTE and QWERTY being two things that
usually lead to thicker phones. The Droid 4 measures 5 by 2.7 by 0.5
inches (HWD) and weighs 6.3 ounces. That’s no Droid RAZR, but it’ll certainly do given what’s under the hood. The new version looks a little softer and classier than the Droid 3.
In addition to the five-row physical keyboard, which features
sharp-looking, edge-lit keys, the Droid 4 also includes a 1.2GHz
dual-core processor (bumped from the Droid 3′s 1GHz)and 1GB RAM.
The 4-inch qHD (540-by-960-pixel) display features “scratch- and
scrape-resistant” glass, but is otherwise similar to the Droid 3′s
panel. Motorola says the entire Droid 4 is enclosed in a water-repellant
nanocoating as well. There’s still an 8-megapixel camera on board with
1080p video recording, plus 16GB internal storage, a microSD memory card
slot, and a useful mirroring mode to throw images or video on a living
room or hotel HDTV.
One annoying downside: The Droid 4 ships with Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread), instead of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
Motorola is promising an upgrade to ICS in the second quarter of 2012,
but we’re moving past the point where at least high-end phones should
come preloaded with Android 4.0.
As a Motorola Android phone, the Droid 4 is another device that works
with Motorola’s increasingly large array of convertible accessories,
including the 10.1-inch Lapdock 100, the 14-inch Lapdock 500 Pro, the
Vehicle Navigation Dock, and the HD Docking Station, plus Motorola’s
Webtop mode, which runs a desktop version of Mozilla Firefox and sports
task automation features. The keyboarded Droid 4 also keeps up
Motorola’s business end of the equation, with support for
government-grade FIPS 140-2 encryption for data security and a Citrix
Receiver for Android client preloaded. It also sports a 4G LTE mobile
hotspot mode that works with up to eight devices simultaneously with the
appropriate Verizon Wireless plan.
All told, the sharp-looking Droid 4 gives the Droid3 the LTE radio it
should have had, but is now stuck on an OS that the world is already
moving away from, at least for a few months—presumably thanks to
Motorola’s relatively heavy UI layer and all that Webtop mode stuff, it
has to move over to ICS. More
Better get in line now: Verizon announced that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be available in stores and online starting tomorrow, December 15th.
Retailing for $300 with a new two-year contract, the Galaxy Nexus is
the first device in the United States to run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). More
As I noted in an earlier post, Verizon Wireless
this morning announced a deal to spend $3.6 billion to buy a block of
spectrum that has been owned (but unused) by SpectrumCo, a joint venture
of the cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable
and Bright House Networks.
The companies also agreed to cross-sell each
others’ products: the cable cos will have the right to buy wireless
service wholesale from Verizon, and the phone company will resell cable
services in their retail stores.
Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett asserts in a research note
this morning on the deal that the transaction is a transformative one
for the telecommunications sector – it is, he says “a complete
reordering of the competitive universe as we know it today.”
Moffett says that while the spectrum purchase is important, it is the
other part of the deal that really matters: the joint marketing deal
between Verizon Wireless and the cable operators. That part of the
transaction, he says, “amounts to a partnership between formerly mortal
enemies, not just outside of Verizon’s FiOS territories, but even within
them.” He contends that the deal is “a strategic masterstroke for
Verizon.”
Here are some of the key elements of the deal, in Moffett’s view:
He says that within a matter of weeks, “the marketing machine that
is Verizon Wireless” will become a marketing engine for cable broadband,
video and voice services. Moffett says that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts
asserted that pretty soon the best wireless deal in town in markets like
Denver, Atlanta and Chicago will be a bundle of Comcast’s broadband,
voice and video service and Verizon Wireless mobile service. “Upfront
handset subsidies, for example, could be significantly increased if a
customer also signed up for Comcast’s terrestrial service offerings,”
Moffett theorizes.
Moffett says the deal is a reminder that telcos are not the natural
enemy of the cable industry. Verizon’s FiOS video service only reached
14% of U.S. households. Roberts, he says, points out that 700 of Verizon
Wireless’ 900 stores in Comcast’s footprint are not in FiOS territory.
“Those outlets will immediately become outlets for cable broadband,
video, and voice service.,” he writes. “Perhaps more surprisingly, even
within FiOS markets, Verizon will market cable services at parity with
their own FiOS.”
The good: The HTC Rhyme boasts a beautiful, compact design. The Android Gingerbread smartphone comes bundled with a number of accessories, including a handy desktop dock.
The bad: The Rhyme’s purple color and cell phone charm won’t be for everyone. Camera quality could be better.
The bottom line: Though certain aspects of the phone limit its appeal to a larger audience, the HTC Rhyme is a solid and stylish midrange Android device that comes with some nice accessories.
Editors’ note: This chart was originally published on Dec. 2, 2010. It has been updated with new information.
With AT&T finally announcing its first LTE markets, 4G (or some form of it) has finally made it to all of America’s major carriers. But just as is the case with regular cell phone coverage, the scope and scale of each carrier’s 4G network vary widely. Some cover a lot of ground and some cover barely any at all. As a result, it can take a lot of effort to determine where in the country you can find high-speed data access and how the different carrier networks contrast and overlap.
To save you time, we’ve compiled a handy chart that details 4G coverage for Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, MetroPCS, and AT&T. Verizon has been the most aggressive with its rollout, but in most major cities, and many medium-size and smaller markets, you can get 4G from at least two wireless providers. Almost all 50 states are covered, with just five–Alaska, Wyoming,
Montana, Maine, and Vermont–left out (a corner of southeastern New Hampshire gets coverage from the Boston market).
Now, we know what you’re saying about T-Mobile: though it can be just as fast as WiMax, its HSPA+ technology isn’t really 4G. That’s certainly true, but if you want to get technical, neither are LTE and WiMax as they currently exist. And regardless of definitions, we included T-Mobile’s network because it is the carrier’s fastest network at the time of this writing.
Now before you move on to the chart, there are a couple of other things you should know. For most metro areas, you can assume that neighboring cities and immediate suburbs are covered as well, even if we don’t list them separately. So, for example, even though T-Mobile lists Bethesda, Md., and Alexandria, Va., as distinct HSPA+ markets, we included them under Washington, D.C. Similarly, Oakland and San Jose, Calif., are listed under the San Francisco Bay Area. We also grouped together cities with common associations like Dallas/Ft. Worth and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Please let us know if we missed a carrier’s 4G presence in your area or if we missed your town entirely. See the coverage chart
The good: The Motorola Droid Bionic has a nice slim and sleek design, with a 4.3-inch qHD display and the double whammy of a dual-core processor and Verizon 4G LTE support. Multimedia features are plentiful and business users will be pleased with its enterprise abilities like the Webtop application and solid security.
The bad: The Motorola Droid Bionic is saddled with Motorola’s custom UI, which might not be for everyone. It’s also quite expensive, and the Webtop accessories aren’t cheap.
The bottom line: The Motorola Droid Bionic is everything you want from a high-end smartphone–it’s sleek, fast, and powerful, with features that will please both consumers and business users–if you’re willing to pay the high price.
Commentary Verizon Wireless' move to a tiered data plan will cement Sprint Nextel's role as the go-to carrier for heavy data users.
On Thursday, new Verizon customers will have to sign up for a usage-based data plan to go along with their handset. With AT&T having already moved to a tiered model and T-Mobile USA slowing down excessive data hogs, that leaves Sprint as the only national carrier offering unlimited data with no strings attached.
It's a rare advantage for Sprint, which routinely gets outgunned by AT&T and Verizon both in marketing clout and in handset selection. Sprint, which has hinged its turnaround on more affordable, simple, flat-rate pricing plans, is expected to press its advantage. It could also become a major selling point if it also ends up carrying Apple's iPhone.
"(Sprint) is becoming a haven for heavy users," said Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics.
Verizon's switch, unlike AT&T, seemingly targets high-end users. When AT&T moved to tiered pricing, it offered a lower-end $15 plan with limited data access. Verizon offers no such option, instead introducing more expensive plans for heavy data users. More
