Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"The price of cellular phone calls should decline more slowly in 2006 than in recent times as the duration of phone calls expands less rapidly, a top executive at Sprint Nextel Corp. said on Wednesday. U.S. operators have driven down the price of mobile phone calls in recent years as they tried to win new customers or steal each other's subscribers in the fiercely competitive market, which had as many as six national operators at one point. But as increases in the amount of time customers spend on the phone slow, operators will likely be less aggressive in lowering their prices this year, according to Len Lauer, chief operating Officer of Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. cellphone service."

Cheaper minutes might not get much cheaper, but I wonder what will happen to data plans in the USA? Based on what I've read about data plans, they've gotten better but still have a way to go - especially on the EVDO side of things. I feel a twinge of jealousy when I compare plans from American carriers with what carriers in Canada offer. It's like we're going backwards in time up here - we used to have flat-rate GPRS for about $75 a month, which at the time (2003?) was revolutionary. Since then Fido, the carrier that was offering it, was bought by Rogers, their only competitor in the GSM space, and the flat-rate pricing is no longer offered. Now rates are $100 CND ($90 USD) for 100 MB of data per month. Meanwhile I've heard of people on T-Mobile in the US getting unlimited GPRS for $4.95 a month. 8O

Europe isn't much better off with their data plans from what I know - Paul from MoDaCo in the UK was thrilled that his carrier was finally offering flat-rate plans, years after other places in the world. What about where you live? Do you feel like your rate plans have been getting cheaper, or has your usage of data plans for your Windows Mobile devices been offsetting the savings?

"Cingular Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, said on Wednesday its quarterly profit fell more than 56 percent on higher costs, but revenue rose as its subscriber base grew. Since October Cingular's profit has been hurt by efforts to combine with AT&T Wireless, including technical projects and layoffs of an equivalent of 11,000 full-time workers. ... The venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth Corp. said earnings fell to $147 million from $339 million a year ago as its costs rose to $8.1 billion from $3.5 billion a year ago. It reports on a proforma basis that assumes it owned AT&T Wireless in the year-ago quarter. Revenue grew to $8.6 billion from a proforma $8.2 billion a year earlier. But average revenue per user (ARPU) fell 5.6 percent to $50.43 from a year ago as customers signed on to discount family plans or rate plans that allow users to save unused phone time from month to month. Chief Financial Officer Peter Ritcher said Cingular hopes to improve its ARPU by increasing rates for its family plans."



The merger with AT&T Wireless, as we all know, had derailed Cingular's financial scorecard. It now seems, at least from the official report, that the merger is working well and Cingular's financial operations are slowly getting back on track. :? Current subscribers, especially the ones on family plans, watch out for a rate hike. :-( On the plus side, the report mentions the launch of Audiovox SMT5600 and also states that ARPU from data services based plans continued its strong growth.

"AT&T Wireless today adjusted its phone lineup, removing the Motorola MPx200"

We all knew that was going to happen sooner or later. I'm guessing that its replacement is coming along shortly. We'll keep you posted. :)

"UK mobile phone handset maker Sendo has settled its patent infringement lawsuit against Orange, agreeing to contribute to Orange's legal costs. Sendo has withdrawn the lawsuit, but the terms of the settlement remain confidential, according to Sendo."

"The lawsuit was filed last month, as part of the fallout of a failed smartphone project developed by Microsoft and Sendo. In a separate and ongoing lawsuit against Microsoft, Sendo alleged that the software giant stole Sendo technology and gave it to other smartphone manufacturing partners, of which one is Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC). HTC is the manufacturer of the SPV, as well as O2's xda wireless handheld computer and other handheld devices."

"The handset maker said that the lawsuit against Orange centres on a patent relating to miniaturisation in the SPV's circuit-board design. The lawsuit was filed in the High Court of Justice in London."

"Sendo sued Orange rather than HTC because its circuit-board patent only covers the UK, but the company has applied for the same patent in other territories worldwide, a Sendo spokeswoman told ZDNet UK."

In addition to the above information from ZDNet, netimperative.com is reporting that this news is related to the fact that Texas Instruments (who manufacture the chip used in the HTC Smartphones) licensed unspecified smartphone-related patents from Sendo last week.

Note that the lawsuits between Microsoft and Sendo continue with no end in sight. The licensing deal between TI and Sendo combined with Sendo dropping the lawsuit against Orange may have an interesting side effect. If TI is acknowledging that they infringed on Sendo's patents, then it would appear that Sendo's claims against Microsoft for sharing Sendo's intellectual property with other partners are at least partially validated.