BROWSING: Apple

Tracfone Wireless Inc. has turned up the heat on the cellphone black market, securing a slew of court judgments to halt the resale of prepaid phones altered to work on cellular networks other than those of the prepaid mobile-phone company."TracFone is committed to putting...

The good news is that Apple Inc. has a lot of fans.The news that's too fresh to characterize as "good" or "bad" is that Apple fans include inspired hackers and mere meddlers who seek to break the tenuous bond between Apple and its exclusive...

Looks like Apple is warning (read: threatening) its iPhone users with a statement about the horrors of unlocking the device. Key, terror-inducing phrases like "irreparable damage," "permanently inoperable" and "voided warranty" are littered throughout the company's missive on the topic. Our question is: Should...

Qualcomm Inc. hired Apple Inc.'s top attorney as its general counsel, while Apple replaced that attorney with Oracle Corp.'s general counsel.Donald Rosenberg leaves Apple after less than a year of service to take the reins of Qualcomm's worldwide plate of legal challenges. Rosenberg served...

Apple Inc.'s latest software update for the iPhone apparently is turning unlocked devices into bricks, according to media reports and Internet blogs today.iPhone owners with unmodified devices also are reporting that the software update is eliminating contact information, photos and music.Unlocking a device for...

Hello! And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCR Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the...

Thick as a brick. That's how dumb you'd have to be to fiddle with your iPhone, according to Apple Inc. Indeed, the company warned that fiddling may well turn the high-end gadget into a brick.The iPhone maker yesterday attempted to sow the seeds of...

Sometimes when you're in the thick of things in this industry, it's difficult to remember the big picture, so today I want to go to the top of the summit and look down.The technologies under construction today, whether it's WIMAX, LTE, UMB or something...

"It's official" is the phrase that introduces news from Apple Inc. when months of Apple-fueled media frenzy reach fruition with actual announcements.Last week, the top operators in the United Kingdom (O2), Germany (T-Mobile) and France (Orange) said they will sell the iPhone at roughly...

The next big thing in mobile virtual network operators may not look much like the MVNOs that have been launching-and sometimes crashing-in the past couple of years. With the hype around the space settling into caution, observers see a new kind of MVNO-like partnership...

Record labels and carriers are looking for creative ways to keep the lucrative ringtone party alive. But a handful of startups have taken a cue from music group REM, asking, "Why don't we give it away?"Ringtones for years have been the most popular type...

AT&T Mobility announced earlier this month that it has expanded its W-CDMA/HSDPA service to McAllen, Texas (population: just over 125,000). That's great news for McAllen, but a stark reminder that the nation's No. 1 carrier has yet to launch its much-hyped "3G" network in...

The Apple Inc. iPhone was expected to cause a shift in the industry on services, and its visual voicemail component may very well be initiating new ways for consumers to retrieve and review their audio messages.In recent weeks, applications developer Acision announced its own...

Welcome to our Friday feature, Week in Review. Every Friday, RCR Wireless News runs through the major events of the past week, outlining what happened and speculating on what to look for in the coming weeks, months and years. Check below for news about...

Like any European vacation, by the time you reach your third historic capital, you're running out of steam. At least the kind of steam that fuels international media coverage of the iPhone.With rumors no doubt carefully planted-speculation in the European business press over the...

Nokia Corp. introduced a beta version of a downloadable application that groups text conversations by contact.Conversations, as the offering is dubbed, enables threaded SMS messages similar to offerings available on the Apple Inc. iPhone, Palm Inc. Treos and Windows Mobile-enabled handsets. The application is...

Todd Achilles, the face of HTC Americas in the United States and throughout the Americas, resigned about a month ago, Achilles confirmed today. The smartphone vendor is actively pursuing candidates to replace Achilles, said Jason Gordon, an HTC spokesman. Achilles said today that...

Apple Inc. continued its weeklong roll through Europe today as Deutsche Telekom AG's wireless subsidiary T-Mobile in Germany announced that the iPhone will launch Nov. 9 at $566. The companies offered no word on monthly service costs, or on the length of an expected...

Nokia Corp. announced with little fanfare the impending launch of its E51 smartphone at BT, an operator in the United Kingdom and rival to O2 UK. But the Finnish company's timing spoke volumes. Nokia touted the E51's no-nonsense e-mail solutions in an apparent attempt...

Verizon Wireless said today that in the 12 months since it launched the LG Chocolate in the United States it has sold more than 3.4 million units-an obvious comparison to the one million units-per-quarter performance of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which sells at rival carrier...

Cellular One customers will now be able to entertain callers with more exciting sounds than the traditional ring.The No. 11 carrier, Dobson Communications Corp., which is behind the Cellular One brand, signed a pair of deals with L.M. Ericsson for AnswerTunes, a ringback tones...

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., held forth from London this morning to orchestrate consumer frenzy over the iPhone's arrival in the United Kingdom, the first in as many as three European markets to announce this week.One can only imagine the spectacle of a...

Editor's Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.--Vodafone announced...

Editor's Note: In this monthly feature, RCR Wireless News talks to retail managers across the country to get a first-hand view of what's hot in wireless.Search for "wireless phones" on Google, and Letstalk.com is one of the first sites that pops up. The online...