Mobile

Telefonica, China Unicom swap $1 billion in stock

Telefonica, one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, has announced a $1 billion share swap with Chinese operator China Unicom.

Under the agreement, announced Monday, each company will buy $1 billion in shares in the other company. In addition, the partners will cooperate in business areas. For example, they will jointly acquire infrastructure and equipment and jointly develop wireless service platforms.

"We are looking forward to enhancing the partnership and achieving a win-win situation for both parties," Chang Xiaobing, China Unicom's chief executive, said in a joint statement from the companies. "We believe that the … Read more

Orange, T-Mobile to unite in U.K. merger

Orange and T-Mobile are to merge their British operations to create the U.K.'s largest mobile carrier, their parent companies said Tuesday.

The as-yet-unnamed joint venture will have a combined customer base of about 28.4 million people, or 37 percent of the market, with the deal expected to complete in November. Orange chief executive Tom Alexander will be chief executive of the new company, with T-Mobile UK chief executive Richard Moat as chief operating officer.

The companies said the merger will cost between 400 million and 600 million pounds ($655 million and $983 million). It is expected to … Read more

Fennec's third alpha now ready for Windows Mobile

On Friday, Mozilla released Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile, the latest in Mozilla's effort to put its Firefox browser on a mobile phone. As with Fennec 1.0 beta 3 for the Maemo platform found on some Nokia Internet Tablets, Fennec for Windows Mobile makes changes to the mobile browser's theme, and its scrolling and panning performance.

In particular, it's using what's called a tile cache rendering system to hold onto the part of the screen that has already been rendered. As you scroll and pan around, it should take less time to refresh the … Read more

Nokia launches beta of Ovi development kit

Nokia has released a test version of the software development kit for its Ovi application platform.

The kit's availability was announced Thursday at the Nokia World 09 event in Stuttgart, Germany, along with the release of a new application programming interface (API) for developers who want to integrate navigation capabilities into their applications.

The Ovi software development kit, or SDK, is a Web-based toolbox for developers that lets them create Web services and applications for handsets running either of Nokia's two smartphone operating systems: Symbian and Maemo.

Developers can write applications using standard Web technologies such as CSS, … Read more

Google tweaking Android Market

Google's Android Market is undergoing renovation.

The Android app store will soon launch several new updates in its upcoming 1.6 version, according to an Android Developers blog post from Google's Eric Chu on Thursday.

Developers will be able to provide screenshots, icons, and descriptions to better promote and highlight their applications.

Four new app subcategories--sports, health, themes, and comics--are being added, Chu said. Developers can target any of those subcategories for both new and existing applications.

For reasons Chu did not explain, Android app developers in Italy are getting some special attention. Italian developers will be able … Read more

Qwest long distance goes down for some

Qwest Communications confirmed Thursday that the company experienced a long distance outage that lasted about two and a half hours.

The outage caused some of Qwest's customers to not be able to make and receive long distance phone calls. However, Qwest officials said that calls are now able to be completed.

The company was not able to provide details about what caused the outage nor was it able to provide details of how many customers were affected. But it's believed that the outage disrupted service in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and parts of North Carolina and Florida. … Read more

iPhone will get MMS September 25

Congratulations, iPhone, you can finally join the cell phone family. AT&T announced Thursday that the long-awaited multimedia messaging would arrive on Apple's device in the United States starting September 25. The iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G will support the service, but owners of the original iPhone will miss out since that handset lacks the proper radio.

In its brief statement, AT&T offered few reasons why it's taken so long to get such a basic cell phone feature. It only said MMS "required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the … Read more

Backfires, retardant helping to save Mt. Wilson

Mount Wilson's famed observatories and broadcast towers now seem in a better position to survive Los Angeles' Station wildfire, thanks to the ongoing and relentless efforts of firefighters.

Officials on Monday and Tuesday braced for the worst as they expected the wildfire to hit the Mount Wilson Observatory. But by setting a series of backfires and dropping retardant, firefighters kept the flames from spreading as initially feared.

Today's report from the Incident Information Web site offered encouraging news:

"Yesterday the fire continued to move west toward Mount Wilson. Currently there is a large contingent of fire engines, … Read more

T-Mobile unveils pay-as-you-go Android phone

T-Mobile has demonstrated the first pay-as-you-go Android handset to go on sale in the UK.

The Pulse, which is manufactured by Huawei, was announced on Thursday. Huawei is best known in the UK for manufacturing mobile broadband dongles for operators such as T-Mobile, and the Pulse marks its entry into the British handset market.

"The T-Mobile Pulse represents another Android milestone from T-Mobile," said Nicola Shenton, who currently heads the operator's handset business in the UK, in a statement. "We introduced the first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1, to the UK back in October 2008, launched … Read more