In the three previous months, with the final day of the period being on June 30th, top wireless service provider At&t made over $3.77 billion in profit! This is over $800,000 more than what At&t made in such a period only a year before, marking a 30% increase in profits. And what can be attributed to such a rise? Mobile phones of course! Even though the giant lost over 1.5 million land line customers in the quarter, they have gain over 1.3 million back in mobile customers– and these mobile customers have some serious monthly plans. With their addition, wireless unit revenue grew 16% and data revenue rose a monstrous 52%. The global launch of the iPhone 3G was a huge influence, as the company said sales of the iPhone 3G were twice that of results from the first launch in the first 12 days. Looks like yet another sign of change towards a mobile world.
Less than a month ago, Harrah’s Entertainment and Microsoft Corp. placed their newly developed product, called Microsoft Surface, in a Las Vegas internet cafe/bar called iBar. The product itself is a 30inch table-like display that allows individuals, or even groups of people, the opportunity to interact with objects and computer applications through touch. No mice or keyboards required. The other remarkable thing is that the surface can recognize objects and devices that are placed on it, from a basic water glass to cameras and phones. Through the Microsoft Surface interface, digital information on electronic devices can be taken out and manipulated, and even transferred from one device to another. It’s a pretty hard idea to grasp, and I’m sure I didn’t do the best job explaining either, so I found a promotional video below to help out…
Apparently Microsoft is only selling these things commercially right now- At&t wireless stores are also among the group that currently use Microsoft Surface. You can go into a store and compare At&t cell phones by simply placing the two onto the table surface. It will recognize the phone models and display all their information automatically! Its such a cool concept; I can’t wait until they open it up to the public.
Sorry. I know I am a day late in covering the new iPhone. As you’ve probably heard by now, Steve Jobs and Apple officially announced that the iPhone is going 3G starting July 11th. This is what Engadget had to say:
Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they’re also making sure it’s available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps… and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 — and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data speeds.
The thing that interested me the most is the price. I was pretty shocked that Apple would lower the price at first. The 8GB version is now only $199 and 16GB is $299!
But of course, for such a hot product, you figure they gotta make you pay more somehow. AT&T already said that they are going to raise the data plan to $30 a month, which really isn’t that much.
Going to back to my previous article, I started thinking about how this is going to impact the mobile space in China. Like I said before, a mobile company selling off its CDMA unit… that just sounds weird, at least initially.
However, this deal is supposed to help everyone to compete with China Mobile at the end. For those of you who don’t know much about China Mobile, they are actually the world’s largest mobile provider (at least based on the number of subscribers). According to Wikipedia, they have over 380 million subscribers! To put it into perspective, AT&T Wireless “only” has 71.4 million customers. On numbers alone, China Mobile has 5 times more customers than AT&T Wirless.
Anyway, back to China Unicom and China Telecom. AP business writer Jeremiah Marquez wrote:
The deals could help China Unicom and China Telecom compete with the country’s cell phone heavyweight, China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile provider by subscribers. China Telecom could expand its new mobile business with its current fixed-line customers; China Unicom could grow its current mobile business with the new fixed-line subscribers.
It’ll be interesting to see how this race will turn out. Even the Chairman for China Unicom knows that catching China Mobile is going to be hard.
“It’s hard to say when the new company will become the largest mobile operator in China,” he told reporters. “Frankly, I still believe there is a significant gap between the new company and China Mobile.”
Like I said before, it will be very interesting to see how all of this is going to play out. Just in case you didn’t read the article yet, it’s right here.
So much for the iPhone black = the new 3G iPhone as shown on the AT&T site. Supposedly, AT&T said that it was only a “placeholder”.
In case you didn’t get to read the previous article, there was a new “iPhone black” option on the AT&T site today. A lot of people got really excited, thinking that it’s the new 3G iphone that’s rumored to have a black casing (hence the iPhone black).
Anyway, so much for that. It was just a “typo”. Sorry. The error was reported on Gizmodo.
AT&T Wireless, Apple’s exclusive iPhone provider in the United States, is now listing a second model of the iPhone in its device database called “iPhone Black,” AppleInsider has been informed.
Going back to the previous Android entry, T-Mobile has announced that they will be carrying Google Android cell phones by the end of 2008. It seems like Google’s dream is going to turn into reality soon.
What makes Android stand out is the fact that it’s open. For the longest time, the carriers, like AT&T and Verizon, have been reluctant to release that kind of information.
Less than a month ago, Harrah’s Entertainment and Microsoft Corp. placed their newly developed product, called Microsoft Surface, in a Las Vegas internet cafe/bar called iBar. The product itself is a 30inch table-like display that allows individuals, or even groups of people, the opportunity to interact with objects and computer applications through touch. No mice or keyboards required. The other remarkable thing is that the surface can recognize objects and devices that are placed on it, from a basic water glass to cameras and phones. Through the Microsoft Surface interface, digital information on electronic devices can be taken out and manipulated, and even transferred from one device to another. It’s a pretty hard idea to grasp, and I’m sure I didn’t do the best job explaining either, so I found a promotional video below to help out…
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