Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Sagem

Remember back in those freewheelin’ days of 2006 when men were men, phones were phones, and Motorola was rumored to have been seriously considering taking Sagem off Safran Group’s hands? Yeah, well those days are long gone; Moto’s a mere husk of what it once was at the peak of the RAZR craze, and Concerning Sagem, they’re getting ready to fly the “under new ownership” banner in front of headquarters. Venture capital firm Sofinnova has purchased 90 percent of Sagem for around €220 million ($343 million) off current parent Safran, intending to rename it Sagem Wireless (don’t get too crazy with the name change there, guys) and turn it into an all-ODM shop not unlike fellow French firm ModeLabs. Roughly half of Sagem’s staff will survive the transfer intact, while most of the rest should be offered jobs in Safran’s other lines of business or firms in which Sofinnova holds a stake.

[Via mocoNews]

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Tags: Current, Euro, Fly, French Firm, Husk, Jobs, Motorola, Nbsp, Safran Group, Sagem, Sizzles, Sofinnova, Stake, Steaks, Venture Capital Firm

Filed under: Software, Sagem, Verizon Wireless, Linux

Following a new round of partnership announcements back in February, LiMo Foundation today added 8 new members, bringing the grand total to 40 — and perhaps most notably, Verizon Wireless becomes the first American carrier to team up with the group and the Foundation’s final board member (in other words, they seem to be taking this initiative pretty seriously). Other new players include South Korea’s SK Telecom, France’s SFR, Sagem, chipmaker Infineon, and Mozilla, suggesting that there’ll be plenty of mobile Firefox support for LiMo’s nascent platform. LiMo represents the largest Linux-based threat to Android’s plans for world domination, having declare its initiative some time before Google while collecting a veritable who’s-who of world players from NTT DoCoMo to manufacturers like LG and Motorola — and with the depth of Verizon’s commitment to this, evident by its nabbing of an actual board seat, we wouldn’t be surprised to see LiMo-based products actually go beyond its Any Apps, Any Device initiative and get real on the carrier’s official lineup.

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Tags: American Carrier, Android, Apps, Board Member, Board Seat, Google, Grand Total, Infineon, Initiative, Mozilla, Nbsp, Ntt Docomo, Partnership Announcements, Sfr, Sk Telecom, South Korea, Telecom France, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, World Domination

Filed under: Handsets, Sagem, GSM

Squint a little, and you might think this is a two or three hundred dollar handset. Then you unsquint, see the Sagem logo, and say, “ahh, nevermind.” No offense to Sagem, either; we think they make some decent looking phones — not that we’d really know how they work in this place in the US — but let’s be honest, their specialty lies on the low end of the spectrum. The my220x candybar was released a few weeks back across the pond and appears to be making Truly a splash on account of its tastefully applied gold accents and exceptionally low price. It’s being sold for £14.99 (about $30) or less in retail outlets — an aggressive price, yes, but without even a VGA camera to its name, just be forewarned that the gold trim is the fanciest feature of this simple candybar.

[Via Slashphone and Mobilewhack]

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