Mobile

Apple’s dominance in smartphone customer satisfaction evaporated last year, with rivals like Samsung and Motorola dramatically closing the gap, a national survey said today. Although the iPhone remained the top smartphone by customer satisfaction, with a score of 81 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) published Tuesday, Apple’s lead largely evaporated. Not only did Apple’s score fall two points from the year before, satisfaction in competitors’ devices jumped. Samsung’s... 

Sprint Nextel has increased its offer to acquire Clearwire, bidding US$3.40 per share, to counter a competing offer by Dish Network. The new bid marks a significant boost from its earlier offer of $2.97 per share and beats Dish’s $3.30 bid. Clearwire shareholders had been scheduled to vote on Sprint’s offer at a special meeting Tuesday, but that meeting has now been postponed until May 30. Sprint already owns roughly half of Clearwire, which has been its partner for 4G WiMax service... 

Finnish startup Jolla has announced its first smartphone, which debuts its Sailfish OS on a 4.5-inch screen. The device integrates the company’s unique back covers with the software, allowing the look to change and new features to be added. Jolla, which was founded by former Nokia employees who wanted to continue the development work the Finnish phone maker had done on the MeeGo OS, is with the introduction one big step closer to entering the ultra-competitive smartphone market. “The... 

BlackBerry’s free Messenger service is being updated to work with Android and iOS devices. Analysts regarded the move — announced today at BlackBerry Live — as mostly positive, since it could help an improving BlackBerry expand its reach beyond its own new Z10 and Q10 smartphone customers. Today, there are 60 million BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) customers, a tiny fraction of the number of messages sent via Facebook or Twitter. But BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said BBM users are very... 

The major U.S. mobile carriers are all joining a campaign against texting while driving that will include a blitz of advertising and a driving simulator touring the country this summer. On Tuesday, Verizon, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA joined the “It Can Wait” campaign that AT&T began last year. Next Monday, the campaign will kick off TV, radio and online ads warning consumers about the dangers of texting and driving, and a driving simulator will tour the country to demonstrate... 

Yahoo has purchased a mobile gaming company, Loki Studios, taking its total acquisitions this month to four. The company said over the weekend it welcomed Loki, Astrid, GoPollGo and MileWise to its growing mobile team. “We recently added 22 entrepreneurs to our growing mobile team,” the company said in a Twitter message in a possible reference to some of the people from the four companies who have moved to Yahoo. Loki’s flagship application is its location-aware game, Geomon. “We... 

Nokia will offer a new high-end smartphone through U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless, it said on Friday, hoping to expand its share in the high-margin premium market after years of falling behind Samsung and Apple Inc. The new Lumia 928, priced at $99 if customers mail-in a $50 rebate and agree to a two-year deal with Verizon Wireless, is similar to the 920 model currently sold through AT&T, but is lighter and slightly different in appearance. It weighs 162 grams compared with 185 grams for the... 

A former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente appeared on CNN to claim that most of the great unwashed did not know the real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state. The comments stem out of anonymous government officials claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between one of the Boston Bombers and his wife to see if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way. The only problem with that was that if the calls were already made, how could the... 

SoftBank Corp President Masayoshi Son may get a less than enthusiastic reception when he comes to the United States this week to meet Sprint Nextel Corp’s major shareholders, as he tries to drum up support for the Japanese company’s proposed takeover of the No. 3 U.S. wireless service provider. SoftBank’s billionaire founder, who proposed a $20 billion deal for a 70 percent stake in the U.S. wireless carrier, said on Tuesday that he would discuss the deal with shareholders in a... 

The Pentagon has cleared BlackBerry and Samsung mobile devices for use on Defense Department networks, a step toward broadening the military’s variety of technology equipment makers while still ensuring communications security. Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department cleared the use of BlackBerry 10 smart phones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets using its Enterprise Service 10 system, as well as Samsung’s Android Knox. “This is a significant step... 

Facebook posted revenue gains  of 38% in the first quarter that was bolstered by broad engagement across the site, the company reported on Wednesday. Revenue for the social networking company increased to $1.46 billion for the quarter ended March 31, up 38% from $1.06 billion from the same period last year. The company’s advertising revenue was $1.25 billion, representing 85% of Facebook’s total sales and a 43% increase from 2012′s first quarter, the company said. Mobile advertising... 

Softbank’s CEO, in a battle with Dish Network to purchase U.S. mobile operator Sprint Nextel, slammed a $25.5 billion offer made by Dish, saying it is based on “imaginary” numbers and would create a company with “insane” amounts of debt. Softbank chief Masayoshi Son said Tuesday the company would not increase its $20 billion bid for Sprint, made in October. The outspoken Son, who normally speaks in Japanese, made a rare English presentation filled with financial minutiae... 

Analysts for IBM have issued a new report concerning the growth of mobile commerce in the retail sector. The report with the catchy title “Online Retail Index” shows that mobile commerce has been growing in popularity among mobile consumers that favor their smartphones and devices over traditional means of shopping. Many of these consumers have become comfortable with the concept of shopping online but are becoming less likely to remain tethered to stationary computers while they do it. Mobile... 

Six years after the sale of the first iPhone and 14 years after the first BlackBerry email pager was debuted, smartphone shipments have outnumbered sales of other types of mobile phones, according to IDC. IDC said 216.2 million smartphones were shipped globally in the first quarter of 2013. The smartphone total accounted for 51.6% of all mobile phones shipped. Shipments of other mobile phones, which IDC calls feature phones, totaled 202.4 million in the quarter. Total shipments of all mobile phones... 

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd snatched more smartphone market share from its biggest rival, Apple Inc in the latest quarter, with sales of its phones surging to account for one third of the global market. Sales of the iPhone 5 helped Apple’s volumes grow 6.6 percent to 37.4 million phones in the quarter from a year earlier, but that was not enough to stop its share of the market dropping to 17.3 percent from 23 percent, research firm IDC said. A flood of cheaper Android-powered devices from...