Mobile

WASHINGTON--The wireless and TV broadcasting industries faced off for the first time at a congressional subcommittee meeting on the Hill on Tuesday, setting in motion what could be a long drawn out battle over whether wireless spectrum should be reallocated and where the government will get this new spectrum.

Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry group, and Gordon Smith of the National Association of Broadcasters, were among the witnesses gathered before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet to discuss what the CTIA and the Federal Communications Commission have … Read more

Smartphones will capture 37 percent of the worldwide cell phone market by 2014, a leap from 16 percent in 2009, predicts a new report from Pyramid Research.

The report, released late last week, sees much of the growth coming from outside the U.S., notably in emerging markets. Across the globe, China is likely to outpace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market next year. Latin America will be the fastest-growing region over the next five years, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48 percent for smartphone sales, forecasts Pyramid.

"Pyramid expects China to capture the … Read more

Updated at 4:20 PST with response from T-Mobile.

After a busy weekend where it made its very unofficial debut, HTC's Nexus One entered into full legitimacy Monday with approval by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC documents also reveal that the device will support North American GSM bands (850 and 1900) and T-Mobile's 1700 3G network.

Though at least one Nexus One sighted this weekend was running on an AT&T SIM card, the support for T-Mobile's 3G would leave AT&T out of the running for the Nexus One, at least for now. … Read more

As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.

Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their … Read more

The world's first commercial LTE mobile broadband services went live in Oslo and Stockholm on Monday, through the Scandinavian operator TeliaSonera.

Offering theoretical maximum speeds of 100Mbps and real-world speeds of 20Mbp to 80Mbps, the services are about 10 times faster than predecessor HSDPA. As of Tuesday, people in Norway and Sweden will be able to buy a mobile dongle that supports the long-term evolution (LTE) of 3G. (TeliaSonera is calling its network "4G," but the official IEEE definition of that term cites 100Mbps as a minimum speed.)

"We are very proud to be the first … Read more

Updated at 5 p.m. PST with additional details and at 10 a.m. PST December 13 with photo of the phone.

A blog post from a Google executive on Saturday morning dropped hints that the company would release a Google Android phone of its own.

In the post, Mario Queiroz, a Google vice president of product management, said the company had developed a "mobile lab" device that "combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android." According to Queiroz, Google has distributed the device to Google employees worldwide so that they could … Read more

Many people I know are frightfully attached to their iPhones. They treat them as if they were a peculiar and exotic lover, one they can hardly believe they have managed to seduce.

The finely calibrated minds at Strand Consult have taken this analysis to a particularly simple conclusion: iPhone users are, the consultants say, really quite nuts.

The Strand thinkers released an opinion entitled "How will psychologists describe the iPhone syndrome in the future?." It focuses on the sorts of people who buy into Apple's great success.

Here's a flavor of the somewhat-skeptical nature of Strand'… Read more

AT&T 3G wireless customers in San Francisco had problems making calls, sending and receiving text messages, and accessing data on Friday evening.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said that starting at about 4 p.m. PT on Friday afternoon, AT&T experienced a hardware issue in San Francisco that disrupted its 3G wireless network within the city. The hardware issue, which he did not elaborate on, was fixed by around 6:15 p.m. PT. And the 3G network has been working fine ever since, he said.

The problem did not affect AT&T's … Read more

Yet another wireless technology has been finalized by its backers, this one promising even faster speeds than current Wi-Fi specs.

The new WiGig standard has been finalized by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, a group comprised of such heavy hitters as Intel, Dell, NEC, Toshiba, and Microsoft. WiGig promises speeds as fast as 7 gigabits per second, about ten times quicker than Wireless N (802.11n).

But don't get ready to throw out your existing Wi-Fi network. WiGig will only work over short distances, for instance, within a single room. So it's not designed to replace 802.11, but … Read more