2008

Texas Instruments Inc. said last week that it will sell or shutdown its merchant baseband chip business, and focus on application processors and multimedia for smartphones. The news appeared to be driven by a slowdown in orders, increasing competition in …

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.The news from the heartland of America is that rural wireless carriers are …

The online ad market is slowing, and Chinese rival Baidu is a global search threat. But Google’s idea lab is still a powerhouse to bet on

Company behind an application that can turn video, images, and slideshows into a personalized ringtone experience inks a deal to bring its service to Turkey.

CenturyTel Inc.’s board of directors gave the company the green light to acquire Embarq Corp. in a projected $11.6 billion transaction. CenturyTel will also acquire $5.8 billion of Embarq’s debt.If the deal goes through, Embarq shareholders would own 66% of …

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN is coming under mounting pressure to postpone votes on major wireless items scheduled for Nov. 4. As Martin tries to round up support for the Verizon Wireless-Alltel Communications L.L.C. and Sprint Nextel Corp.-Clearwire Corp. …

Everyone loves a good horse race. But with macro-economic conditions reverberating throughout the wireless industry – handset vendors’ aggregate volume growth in the third quarter appeared to be stagnating – the situation calls into question the health of the horses.No …

In an attempt to keep up with the needs of today’s businesses, Alltel Communications L.L.C. launched a new service allowing workers with smartphones access to client information and data while on the go.According to the carrier, Webalo Mobile Dashboard allows …

Verizon Wireless added 2.1 million customers during the third quarter, just slightly behind numbers posted by rival AT&T Mobility last week.In organic growth, Verizon added 1.5 million retail net customer additions, essentially all postpaid, the carrier said in a press …

Cable company Cox Communications announced it will build a wireless network with the $500 million in spectrum the company has accumulated over the past several years, and will launch commercial services by next year. The company will work with Sprint …

Similar to Google Earth for desktop computers, the free software’s animated world rotates and zooms in on a map of one’s location.

SK Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile telephony operator, has seized upon the global market in the past decade and struggled to stay relevant.

During a press event, CEO Dan Hesse said Sprint would eventually sell Android phones, but that it needed a bit more time to put the Sprint brand on it.

Qik has announced an alpha version of the Qik video-sharing application for the BlackBerry. The Qik application will allow BlackBerry uses to stream live video around the world.

The discount retailer says it’s ready for holiday shoppers as it scales back growth of namesake stores.

The positive merits of social networking have been leveraged in a multitude of ways by consumers, businesses, and other organizations for some time.

One of the joys of the Mac community is that if you find something–a program, a method of doing something, what have you–there usually isn’t a shortage of people willing to suggest alternatives. That same sort of “Hey, did you …

AT&T has recently begun surveying some of its longer-term iPhone buyers asking what features they would most like to see added to the Apple handset.

Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News Washington Bureau Chief Jeffrey Silva asked the presidential campaigns of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to respond to e-mailed questions covering a wide range of policy matters confronting the wireless industry and …

Motorola Inc., struggling to return to sustainable profitability, will bring the Aura handset to market this quarter, the company said. With “state-of-the-art handcraftsmanship,” the device will set you back two (really) big ones – that’s $2,000.The launch’s timing aside – …

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. beat expectations on handset shipments in the third quarter, and gained market share partly through aggressive pricing. Handsets drove the Korean conglomerate’s revenue in the quarter as the company’s semiconductor business lagged. The results appeared to …

New enhanced 911 location accuracy proposals endorsed by public-safety groups and the nation’s three largest mobile-phone carriers, while less stringent than now-defunct 2007 federal guidelines, have failed to win ringing endorsements by T-Mobile USA Inc., small and mid-size operators and …

He is one of the most respected, accomplished and well-liked public servants ever to grace the Federal Communications Commission. Now, mobile phone carriers, TV network moguls and others want his head. Julius Knapp, chief of the agency’s Office of Engineering …