Mobile and Wireless Industry Reports

Promising to take consumers “beyond music” with a music-centric phone — a tri-band HSDPA Walkman W760 — Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications offered two Walkman handsets yesterday in a prelude to the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.The W760 offers built-in …

Those looking for Motorola Inc. to unleash a post-Razr platform to fuel the company’s turnaround are still searching at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. The company itself had raised expectations by promoting its launch event prior …

Sprint Nextel Corp. has become the first national mobile-phone operator to embrace targeted emergency-alert technology, choosing SquareLoop Inc.’s solution for testing in Contra Costa County, Calif., in advance of a wide-scale deployment on the No. 3 carrier’s CDMA and iDEN …

This “openness” thing is contagious.Yahoo Inc. is the latest to court third-party developers, announcing its intention to “enable and lead a mobile ecosystem” to spur the creation of mobile applications. The company unveiled a developer platform and said it will …

NAVTEQ subsidiary Traffic.com is teaming with mobile developer Skyward Mobile on a direct-to-consumer mobile traffic application.The companies launched Traffic.com2GO, a downloadable, J2ME-based offering that delivers real-time traffic updates, congestion information, travel times and construction news on the roadways of U.S. …

Mobile content company Handmark Inc. will bulk up its game library with the acquisition of Astraware Ltd., a U.K.-based game studio, for an undisclosed sum.Handmark, a Kansas City, Mo.-based firm, develops and distributes enterprise and entertainment applications for BlackBerry devices …

U.S. Cellular, the nation’s sixth-largest carrier in terms of subscribers, said it expects a shortfall in the number of its 2007 customer additions. The carrier also reported it spent $13.1 million to acquire eight spectrum licenses covering four states. The …

The biggest upset of this football season may have been Appalachian State University’s victory over Michigan. But for the mobile-marketing industry, it came the day ESPN had more visits to the NFL content on its mobile Web site than it …

San Francisco’s long-delayed plan to bring free, citywide Wi-Fi coverage to its more than 800,000 residents seems to have been revived. Meraki Networks Inc. announced that it will deploy such a network throughout the city by the end of the …

Standalone navigation devices will give way to mobile phones as the worldwide portable navigation market explodes over the next several years, according to a report from Telematics Research Group.The market research firm said 30 million dedicated navigation devices were sold …

Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. urged the Federal Communications Commission to embrace a plan to allocate vacant TV channels — known as white spaces — on a fixed-licensed basis for wireless backhaul services. The move injects a new …

Pudding Media announced it raised $8 million in its first round of venture funding. VC firms Opus Capital and BRM Capital led the round.Pudding, which offers technology designed to deliver ads based on phone conversations, said it will use the …

Sling Media Inc. announced its video-viewing software will run on Blackberry devices starting later this year. The company will demonstrate the new application on Research in Motion’s Blackberry Pearl 8120 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.Sling …

Verizon Wireless filed a civil suit against Alltel Corp., accusing the No. 5 carrier of false advertising. Verizon Wireless’ suit takes issue with an Alltel ad that claimed “only Alltel gives wireless customers the ability to change their calling plans …

A new study concludes drivers who talk on cellphones contribute to traffic congestion, a consequence compounding well-documented dangers of operating wireless devices while behind the wheel.“At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that …

Motorola Inc. unveiled a standalone broadcast mobile television device that it hopes will appeal to TV fans who want to go mobile. The device is the first of its kind from Motorola — housing a DVB-H chipset that includes no …

The crowded mobile search space welcomed a new player as ChaCha brought its online service to wireless.The Indianapolis startup unveiled a short-code based version of its search offering, which uses paid human “guides” instead of computer-generated algorithms to deliver information. …

OpenMoko Inc. has become an independent subsidiary of parent First International Computer Inc. (FIC) in pursuit of a slice of the mobile handset business based on an open-source software platform.OpenMoko, created last year by the Taiwanese computer giant FIC, will …

AT&T Mobility announced it completed its acquisition of Easterbrooke Cellular Corp., a rural wireless carrier with services in West Virginia operating under the Cellular One brand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.The transaction included licenses, network assets and more …

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 RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs …

New cellphone driver-distraction laws went into effect Jan. 1 in Oregon and Washington state.According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Oregon will now prohibit teenagers from talking on cellphones while driving. A new Washington law goes even further, prohibiting …

On Monday, a federal judge said that Qualcomm Inc. must end the sale in the United States of W-CDMA chips that infringe on three Broadcom Corp. patents.The ruling’s details are complicated, however, and Qualcomm said today that it is seeking …

Mobile entertainment publisher Twistbox Entertainment Inc. plans to go public through a reverse merger with Mandalay Media Inc., a Los Angeles-based shell company.Twistbox boasts more than 100 carrier partners including Verizon Wireless, Alltel Corp., Orange and Vodafone Group plc., and …

Nokia Siemens Networks started off the new year with a $206 million purchase of Apertio Ltd., which provides real-time subscriber data platforms and other applications for mobile, fixed and converged telecom operators.The deal, which is expected to close by the …

It looks as though most U.S. retailers won’t be getting the merry green holiday they’d hoped for.Despite a last-minute sales bump last weekend, the overall holiday retail scene continued its overall plodding underperformance compared with last year, with only a …