Sharp investing $1.2b in expanding smartphone LCD production, Apple fingered as the major client
Apple's practicing its self-imposed rule of supplier polygamy this week and Japan's Nikkei is telling us all about it. It started off on Monday, when we learned that Toshiba's throwing down some cash to build a new smartphone display production plant, with Apple as the key investor and subsequent consumer, and today we're hearing pretty much the same story, only with Sharp playing the role of Japanese producer to Apple's hardware whims.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: apple, iphone, japanese, much-the-same, plans, portion, production, result, roadmap, screen, toshiba
Mobilicity ponies up attractive $30, $40 plans for the holidays
Canadian upstart carrier Mobilicity is doing what the little guys often do best -- undercutting its bigger rivals -- and it's doing that in an especially dramatic way this holiday season with a pair of pretty enticing new plans. The "exclusive holiday offers" include CAD $30 and $40 price levels ($30 to $40 US, coincidentally) that include unlimited calling and messaging, while the $40 option throws in unlimited US long distance, global text messaging, and unlimited data
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: guys, holiday, holidayoffer, holidays, long-distance, mobilicity, offers, option-throws, parity, plan, plans, rungs, upstart-carrier
Verizon execs propose speed-based pricing for LTE data plans, say LTE has ‘drawn the interest of Apple’
Paying for data overage is the new hotness in the wireless biz, and Verizon was the latest to dive head-first into the nasty world of usage-based pricing for its wireless data plans just a few weeks ago . But how about paying for speed instead
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: helped-it-score, ipad, lte, plans, tiered, verizon
T-Mobile keeping Even More Plus around, but not online
Remember how we said yesterday a customer service rep told us T-Mobile was in the process of "sneaking away" its discounted, no-contract Even More Plus plans for full-price hardware ? So yeah, the good news is that the plans apparently aren't going away -- but the bad news is that the carrier is trying to make them a little harder to get to
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: annual-contract, breakingnews, contract, customers, existing, its-discounted, mobile, news, omega1202-notes, plans, rep, result, said-yesterday, user
Verizon’s tiered data plans go live, including $30 for a smartphone buffet or $15 for 150MB
It's October 28th, and Verizon's full suite of data plans have changed just as foretold -- if you want to save a few bucks, you can revise your megabyte-munching lifestyle right now. There's no need to fear for unlimited 3G smartphone data, as it's still available for the usual $29.99, but that plan's no longer required when buying a new Droid, as you can opt for a new $14.99 plan if you can bare to live with just 150 megabytes.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: 28th, Data Plan, dataplan, droid, lifestyle, longer-required, mifi, plans, smartphone-data, tiered data, vzw
T-Mobile busts out new prepaid plans with data options, mix-and-match voice and text
Come October 18, T-Mobile USA will be shaking things up in the prepaid market with a handful of new options that finally acknowledge users -- yes, even those on prepaid plans -- are gobbling data in droves.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: busts, capability, droves, messaging, plans, prepaid data, press, resist-the-urge
UK carrier’s roadmap points to October 21 release for Windows Phone 7, over 2,000 apps at launch
The whole world and his neighbor's dog may already know when Windows Phone 7 will be announced , but when are the actual phones going to hit actual shelves? If you're in the US, that time still looks to be a month away , but the UK release window has just been narrowed down from late October to a single, albeit still speculative, date: October 21. Our tipster forwards the above snapshot from a Three UK document showing a "Windows 7Phone" nestled in between the BlackBerry Torch and Samsung Europa
Categories: BlackBerry, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: apps-at-launch, BlackBerry, microsoft, neighbor, plans, samsung, sgh, sgh-i916, Snapshot, speculation, super amoled, superamoled, three uk, torch
Rahul Sood sees an awesome, but distant future for webOS devices
Rahul Sood, founder of Voodoo PC and current innovation tzar at HP , has some good and some bad news for us. On the one hand, the way he sees webOS development from the inside of the HP Palm coupling makes Rahul believe that "everyone will want in once the presentation of hardware is in front of them," but then on the other, far less happy hand, he urges us to abandon hope of seeing that happen soon
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: abandon-hope, bad, coupling-makes, hp palm, hppalm, innovation, innovation-tzar, opinion, palm, plans, presentation, rahul-sood, voodoo
Virgin Mobile USA fortells unlimited prepaid mobile broadband for $40 a month
Whereas AT&T's move to tiered smartphone data pricing signaled "the end of unlimited" to some, Sprint subsidiary Virgin Mobile USA has just defied that notion with an all-you-can-eat broadband buffet priced at $40 per month.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: Carrier, Data Plan, data plans, data-pricing, facebook, network-packets, plans, totally-sweet, unlimited, unlimited-data, virgin mobile usa, virgin-mobile
Virgin Mobile rolls out payLo: your choice of two $20 prepaid plans
Ironically, we doubt payLo's presumed namesake -- J-Lo -- is going to be taking advantage of this service with her zillions upon zillions of entrepreneurial profits, but Virgin Mobile's new line of plans should find a happy home with plenty of customers. The service actually consists of two pay-as-you-go plans from which you can choose, both running $20: 400 voice minutes good for a month, or three months at 20 cents a minute.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: ironically, light, namesake, pay, paylo, plans, plans-should, three-months, virgin, zillions