Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Culture, Sony Ericsson, Misc

“Planned” and “executed” are two very different things, and while we knew Sony Ericsson was mulling the idea of hacking 2,000 jobs, the hammer has finally fallen in Research Triangle Park, NC. The company will soon be axing 450 employees at its North American headquarters as part of a large reorganization, with most everyone knowing by the week’s end whether they’ll stay or go. According to Aldo Ligouri, Sony Ericsson’s head of global communications and public relations, the RTP cuts are “part of company-wide changes that Sony Ericsson declare in July,” and in whatever context, he added that “this is our map of how we see things moving forward.” Just to put things in perspective, the outfit only has about 750 workers in the North Carolina-based facility, which is primarily seen as an R&D hub. Tough news to hear, no matter how you spin it.

[Image courtesy of Flickr]

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Filed under: Handsets, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA, Apple

unverified information are coming fast and furious today citing unnamed tipsters that Apple is hard at work hammering out a CDMA iPhone for its friends at Verizon to be declare and released next year, the carrier it had initially approached about carrying the device back in 2005. Way we see it, though, 2009 ain’t 2005; Apple’s wielding boatloads more power in the wireless biz than it was before the first model launched, the industry’s economics have changed, and technology roadmaps have been rewritten.

So why isn’t this happening, precisely? First, Apple appears to be having no trouble finding enough customers (carriers, that is) to keep iPhone 3G production at a nice clip. Second, CDMA represents a minute fraction of the world’s mobile customer base that GSM / UMTS does — no matter how big Verizon, Sprint, Telus, Bell, KDDI au, and the remaining CDMA stalwarts may be. Third, CDMA is a dying technology that will be finished off in the early part of the next decade as networks make the migration to LTE and other 4G platforms. Fourth, we have to believe Apple would sooner pour its engineering efforts into advancing the iPhone platform in the same direction as the world’s networks than divert considerable resources to busting out a one-off special.

Might this mythical CDMA iPhone yet exist? Yeah, Verizon’s a very big carrier, and yes, stranger things have happened — but until Steve and Ivan get on stage together at Macworld 2009, we’re not buying it.

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Android

When a major player like Google comes up with a new mobile operating system that’s better than the competition and is totally free, you would certainly expect handset manufacturers to be interested. But there’s interested, and then there’s interested. After lingering for nearly a year in the former category Motorola is at this time firmly moving to the latter, hiring and headhunting in an effort to build up a 350-person group entirely focused on development of Android phones. The company was one of the original members of the Open Handset Alliance, but seems to have waited for the release buzz from HTC’s G1 before diving in head-first. There’s talk that Nokia (and its “real phones“) may be feeling the vibrations too, allegedly forming an internal team to do the same — on the down low.

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