Personal communications

Facebook denied a story published this weekend that says the company is "building a mobile phone," but CNET has confirmed that the social-networking giant has reached out to hardware manufacturers and carriers seeking input on a potential Facebook-branded phone.

TechCrunch published a story saying "Facebook is building a mobile phone...or rather, they're building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware." Facebook quickly tried to discredit the story, with a spokesman telling CNET that "Facebook is not building a phone. Our view is that almost … Read more

Facebook is denying a report in TechCrunch that the social-networking giant is working in secret on producing its own mobile phone.

In a report accompanied by the headline "Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone," TechCrunch reported earlier today that the social-networking giant is developing an operating system to be used on hardware created by a third party. The report named two senior Facebook executives with experience developing operating systems--Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos--as working on the project. Papakipos, a former engineering director at Google, left the search giant for Facebook in June after working on the Chrome operating … Read more

A few days after Clearwire and, by extension Sprint, announced a big expansion of their WiMax 4G network, representatives from AT&T and Verizon Wireless made their own 4G promises at separate conferences. Though both carriers have chosen the competing LTE standard for 4G, Verizon is in the lead.

At the Bank of America Merrill and Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference today in Newport Beach, Calif., AT&T Operations CEO John Stankey said the carrier will launch commercial LTE service by the middle of the next year. Stankey didn't specify initial cities, but he said AT&… Read more

Research in Motion today reported higher than expected revenue for the second quarter of the fiscal year.

The company's second-quarter outlook from June pegged revenue somewhere between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion, but the final reported amount came in a little higher, tallying $4.62 billion. The company says that's up 9 percent from the previous quarter.

Based on the GAAP accounting standards, net income for the quarter was $796.7 million compared with $768.9 million in the first quarter.

The handset maker also said that it had shipped more than 12 million BlackBerry devices … Read more

LONDON--Rising mobile phone power HTC began an effort to rise further on Wednesday--and not just with phones.

The Taiwanese company introduced two Android phones, the Desire HD with a large, 4.3-inch screen and the Desire Z with a flip-out hardware keyboard. Both are set to arrive in October in Europe and Asia; the Desire Z will arrive in North America later this year.

Like Apple, Samsung, and many other competitors, HTC is trying to differentiate the products through software and services, though. The phones come with an updated version of HTC's Sense user interface and tie in with … Read more

As it enters the final stages of its 4G expansion in New York City, Clearwire finally acknowledged today that its 4G WiMax service is already intermittently available in the Big Apple.

In a carefully worded statement, the company said it has started "operational readiness activities" not only in New York, but also Los Angeles and San Francisco. During the final construction phase, and as some New Yorkers have discovered, 4G service will be available in select areas.

Clearwire did not announce specific dates for when the cities would be fully covered, though it repeated its earlier promise that … Read more

Mobile phone customers thinking of switching to a different carrier are pinning the blame on dropped calls, which have grown over the past six months, according to a new survey from J.D. Power and Associates.

For its survey, the market researcher questioned wireless customers across the U.S. to gauge the quality of cell phone calls. The study focused on different types of call problems, including dropped calls, static or interference, failed calls on the first attempt, voice distortion, no immediate voicemail notification, and no immediate text message notification.

Among those surveyed, 14 percent said they definitely or probably … Read more

Symbian and Android will dominate the mobile operating system market by 2014, research firm Gartner said Friday.

Gartner expects that Symbian and Android together will account for 59.8 percent of the total worldwide mobile OS market by 2014, split almost equally--Symbian with 30.2 percent, and Android with 29.6 percent.

Android is already closing the gap with the market leader. By the end of 2010, Gartner says, Google's Android will sneak into second place behind Nokia-backed Symbian with 17.7 percent market share, compared to Symbian's 40.1 percent. At the end of 2009, Android OS … Read more

Apple's battle with developers might be heading toward a truce.

The company plans to allow developers to create applications with just about any tool they want. It will also publish its App Store Review Guidelines.

The changes could also mark a shift in Apple's contentious relationships with both Google and Adobe Systems.

Saying that it has "taken [developer] feedback to heart," Apple has decided to relax "restrictions we put in place earlier this year" on the company's iOS Developer Program license. Going forward, developers can use any development tool they want to build … Read more