I’ve got some wonderful news for the eight people that still own a Motorola Cliq 2 on T-Mobile! Your prayers have been answered, and you’ll soon be getting an official update to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. All it took was 13 months after the Cliq 2′s January 2011 release, and a full 14 months after the availability of Gingerbread itself. So…. hooray. If you’d like to get in on the action a little early, you can head over to the official Motorola forum and sign up to beta test the update for the manufacturer. The new software still includes the MOTOBLUR UI layer.
The Motorola Cliq 2 was released on January 19th, 2011 as a mild refresh of the original Cliq, including its sliding QWERTY keyboard. The screen was bumped up to 3.7 inches with a resolution of 854×480 (the same size nad density as the original DROID) with a 5-megapixel camera and Android 2.2, which at the time was downright timely. T-Mobile was the only US carrier to bite, though it seems to have hit its end of life between then and now – likely superseded by phones like the MyTouch Q by LG.
Motorola has been getting a lot of flak lately for its poor update schedule, thanks to the reveal that most of its high-end phones wouldn’t be seeing Ice Cream Sandwich until at least the summer of 2012, and probably longer. Updating a year-old phone with year-old software isn’t likely to change that perception. All this is set to the backdrop of Google’s acquisition of the American company, which seems to clash with their continuing habit of poor support and locked-down software. We can only hope that the big G will be a positive influence of Moto’s customer-facing policies, but that seems less and less likely as the acquisition begins its final stages.
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http://best-mobile-operator-review.blogspot.in/
Rogers Fourth-Quarter Profit Advances 8.3% on Wireless Gains
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Rogers Communications Inc., Canada’s largest wireless carrier, said fourth-quarter earnings rose 8.3 percent, helped by wireless revenue as customers spent more time on smartphones.
Net income climbed to C$327 million ($328 million), or 61 cents a share, from C$302 million, or 50 cents, a year earlier, the Toronto-based company said today in a statement. Rogers also said it will buy back as much as C$1 billion of stock and raised its annualized dividend by 11 percent to C$1.58 a share.
Chief Executive Officer Nadir Mohamed is trying to stay ahead of BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. by touting Rogers’s network speed while also promoting its no-frills Chatr business. BCE and Telus posted quarterly earnings that trailed estimates as they spent more subsidizing expensive smartphones to avoid losing subscribers to Canada’s new carriers that offer mainly cheaper, contract-free plans.
Wireless competition remains “intense,” Mohamed said on a conference call with analysts. Even though Rogers said it sold more smartphones, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, last quarter, Rogers’s churn -- or defection rate for customers on contract -- climbed to 1.49 percent last quarter from 1.35 percent a year earlier.
“We have some work to do” reducing churn, Rob Bruce, the head of Rogers’s wireless business, said on the call.
Sales Climb
Rogers’s sales climbed 1.2 percent to C$3.18 billion, missing the C$3.2 billion average projection by analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
During the quarter, Rogers added 42,000 subscribers on contracts, the long-term customers who typically buy a smartphone and spend more on data. That was down from 49,000 a year earlier and missed the 85,000 estimate of Maher Yaghi, a Desjardins Securities analyst in Montreal. He rates Rogers shares “hold.” On that basis, BCE added 131,986 subscribers last quarter and Telus gained 148,000.
“Rogers continues to underperform Telus and Bell in wireless subscriber additions however the company has been able to contain costs in both its wireless and cable business to grow earnings in the face of flat revenue,” Yaghi said in a research note.
Rogers’s average monthly revenue from both contract and prepaid customers, who usually opt for cheaper calling plans, was C$58.82, down from C$61.31 a year earlier and also missing Yaghi’s C$59.20 estimate.
Rogers climbed 1.5 percent to C$38.34 at 9:55 a.m. in Toronto, buoyed by news of the buyback and dividend increase. The shares had dropped 3.8 percent this year before today.
The annualized dividend rises to C$1.58 from C$1.42, starting with a 39.5 cent quarterly payout on April 2 to shares of record March 19.
Per-share profit excluding some items rose to 70 cents, exceeding the 65 cent average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
(Rogers held a conference call on the results that began at 8 a.m. Toronto time. To listen to a replay, go to RCI/B CN <Equity> CWP <GO> and click on the link under Investor Relations.)
--Editors: Ville Heiskanen, Jeffrey Tannenbaum
To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Toronto at hugomiller@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net=============================================================================================================================================
http://best-blackberry-mobile-review.blogspot.in/
New features in version 2.0 of its operating system make the PlayBook what it was supposed to have been last year: A truly impressive device. But is the market too impatient for it?
In the blood sport that passes for tablet journalism, Research In Motion was trampled when it stumbled and fell in the game of Last Tablet Standing. The PlayBook, RIM’s much-delayed entry, arrived in April last year and was instantly criticized for not having as many apps as Apple’s iPad, for having a 7-inch screen, which Steve Jobs promptly dismissed as being too small, and for not having a native e-mail application.
This last criticism was particularly deserved for a company that led the way in portable e-mail: to use the PlayBook as an e-mail client when not near a Wi-Fi connection, users had to have a BlackBerry smartphone and to connect it via Bluetooth to their PlayBook. When the tablet was released, RIM immediately announced it would rectify the situation with a software update due in 60 days.
That update finally arrived Tuesday, some 240 days after it was promised, in the form of a new operating system called BlackBerry OS 2.0. (The updated operating system can be downloaded free for PlayBook owners via its Wi-Fi connection.) It addresses many of the original criticisms, but 10 months is an eternity in an impatient industry that demands a revolution every six months.
An early examination of the new system shows a slick device that has been properly beta-tested, a successful piece of hardware. But it will still have a long way to go to win back the popularity contest it lost to Apple, the Google-made Android devices and even Amazon’s Kindle Fire. And then it will face even more competition later this year from the iPad 3, also due soon, from Microsoft, when it unleashes Windows 8, and perhaps from a new device from Motorola, which Google now owns.
How this will shake out is anybody’s guess — a scant 18 months ago RIM appeared to be the company to beat in the corporate sphere; now, the online punditocracy has been quick to write RIM’s obituary. Still, when RIM cut the price of its PlayBook to $299, there was a run on the item, and there are reports that the PlayBook now holds a 15 per cent share of the tablet market, which despite the obituaries is a significant share.
One thing that the obituaries are missing is that the PlayBook hardware has not changed. BB OS 2.0 runs fluidly and properly on the device, and since the OS upgrade is free, this makes the tablet a strong product.
This release answers most of the prayers people had for the original PlayBook. It now includes a native e-mail client, a calendar and contacts list; its unified inbox gathers all messages in one place, including those from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as personal and work e-mail accounts. (There are also integrated Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn apps.) The calendar application uses data from social networks, and populates contact cards with the updated information.
As a device for businesses, which has been RIM’s strongest market, BB OS 2.0 has also beefed up its document editing functions and added a new Print To Go app. A feature called BlackBerry Balance offers better control over corporate data, and another, called BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, supports both PlayBook tablets and BlackBerry smartphones for deployment by enterprise IT departments. This version of Mobile Fusion is a partial launch; a full version, to be released in late March, will offer enterprises management of various other smartphones as well, through a single unified console, with added support for Apple iOS and Android devices. This last bit is timely, because the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), a movement to open businesses to encourage employees to use their own devices, has been gaining traction among enterprise customers recently.
There are, moreover, a few nice surprises. There’s a feature in BlackBerry Bridge that offers wireless control over the tablet by letting your BlackBerry smartphone act as its keyboard and mouse, via a Bluetooth connection. Bluetooth also plays a role when connecting the PlayBook and core apps on a BlackBerry smartphone (e-mail, contacts, calendar and browser) that make smartphone documents, web pages, e-mail and photos appear on the larger tablet display.
There is an Open On feature, which allows users to open documents (PowerPoint, Word, and PDF), photos and links from a BlackBerry smartphone on the PlayBook tablet with one click.
The PlayBook’s updated virtual keyboard now includes auto correction and predictive text, and has a “learning” function to help users to type more quickly and accurately.
And answering the chorus of critics who said there were just not enough apps for the PlayBook, RIM has also included the ability run apps from Google's Android operating system, and has been tempting developers with free PlayBooks to port their apps to the new operating system. The company’s promotion claims that there are (or would be) “thousands” of new apps on BlackBerry App World, including games such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, but the allure of a free PlayBook doesn’t appear to have yet beefed up the BlackBerry App World with a significant number of them.
This version of BlackBerry PlayBook, then, is what it was supposed to be almost a year ago. Its operating system, based on a rock-solid product from RIM-owned QNX, operates the way it should, and does so attractively.
The problem is that the handheld world has devolved into two warring camps, Apple iOS and Android, and fans have been entrenching themselves, much as they did in the old Apple-Microsoft wars. These people, most of them “early adopters,” are fiercely committed people, and not likely to want to shift again. But then again either Google or Apple can stumble, which is not likely, or Apple’s iPad 3 makes the fans gasp with awe, or the Microsoft juggernaut jumps into the lifeboat and threatens to swamp everyone.
In that case, the BlackBerry PlayBook will end up being a wonderful product that few people want. And that will be too bad, because the PlayBook, with BB OS 2.0, is a fine product.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320028#ixzz1n7xGr4fK
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http://best-iphones-reviews.blogspot.in/
Apple's iPhone almost singlehandedly saved AT&T and Sprint. But it come at a steep price, one that the mobile carriers will be paying for years.
By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
apple-iphoneFORTUNE – The iPhone has been, by many measures, one of the most successful products in business history. Nearly 200 million iPhones have been sold in four and a half years, 37 million of them in the last three months of 2011. Apple's market cap has soared from $104 billion in June 2007, when the first iPhone was sold, to $480 billion today.
No doubt, the iPhone is a revenue machine. Last quarter, it generated $24.4 billion in revenue for Apple (AAPL), greater than the $20.9 billion Microsoft (MSFT) made in all of its various businesses. It is, to say the least, obscenely profitable: iPhones make up 75% of the profits of cell-phone makers, despite being only 9% of all units shipped.
Less visible in such soaring statistics, is the impact on the mobile carriers. Even with the heavy subsidies phone companies must pay to Apple and some five years after its introduction, the iPhone may well be the best thing going for the mobile industry.
Even though AT&T (T) has lost its exclusive status with the iPhone, it's likely to keep fighting for iPhone customers. According to Hudson Square Research, iPhone users have a net present value -- a measure of cash flows over a product's lifetime -- that is twice as high as subscribers using the old, clamshell feature phones.
MORE: Apple just doubled its addressable market in China
The smartphone, as conceived by Apple, seems designed to generate carrier fees. Unlike the standard feature phones, which are primarily used for phone calls and text messages, iPhone users also pay for wireless data connections. AT&T has raised data fees and introduced costlier tiers for heavy users. And many users find they are making fewer phone calls, even though their monthly phone rates are remaining steady.
That's all true for other smartphones too, of course. But more than any other device, the iPhone is responsible for inspiring all those categories of fees -- voice, texting, data -- as well as the class system of data usage. By influencing the look and operability of other Google (GOOG) Android and other smartphones, the iPhone had a broader impact on the wireless industry as a whole. "We believe that without the iPhone, the wireless industry would look very different today -- smartphones would still be a niche product, average revenue per user would be about $15 lower, and the service would be mostly commoditized," Hudson Square analyst Todd Rethemeier recently wrote.
For Sprint (S), which began selling the iPhone 4S last fall, the iPhone has been something close to a lifeline. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the iPhone helped Sprint see a net gain of 161,000 subscribers, well below AT&T's net gain of 717,000 and Verizon's 1.2 million but the first quarter of net gains in a year. Sprint said 40% of customers buying iPhones were new, perhaps drawn by its unlimited data plans.
Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse has been vocal about the importance of having an iPhone among the company's smartphone offerings. "Having the ability to sell the iPhone removes the number one reason people had churned in recent years," Christopher Larsen, a Piper Jaffray analyst wrote after a meeting with Hesse. "It is also important to have for the customers who remained at Sprint knowing that the carrier would one day carry the device."
MORE: Intel's (latest) mobile comeback
But there's a catch. AT&T is down 26% from the day it started selling the iPhone. Sprint is down a depressing 52% since it began selling the iPhone. And Verizon (VZ), (buttressing the adage that single-letter tickers are bad luck for stocks these days) is up 8% since it began selling iPhones a year ago.
And herein lies the double-edged sword of the iPhone for carriers. Apple earns its fat profit margin largely because people love the iPhone, but also because of the subsidies it wrings from carriers -- by some estimates 40% higher than those of other smartphones. And all carriers, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T, are investing heavily in LTE networks to accommodate the next generation of high-bandwidth smartphones.
So yes, analysts are bullish on Sprint because it's stemming the flow of subscribers who crave an iPhone. But they are also concerned that subsidies and other expenses of network investments will easily cost Sprint $15 billion over the next four years. And yet Sprint doesn't have any choice but to spend that money. Because it could die without the iPhone.
It's not just Sprint who lives by that double-edged sword. A report this week from Morgan Stanley said AT&T's profit margins fell to 28.7% from 37.6% a year earlier, thanks largely to the subsidies it must pay to Apple for selling millions of iPhone 4S's. And even Verizon's margins fell to 42.2% in the most recent quarter from 47.5% in the same period.
MORE: Nielsen: 66% of Americans ages 24-35 own a smartphone
The costs of subsidies and LTE networks are so weighing on AT&T that it's looking to shed off its non-core assets, like wired lines in rural areas. They are still profitable, but will eat into profit margins as each quarter passes.
You might ask why Verizon's profit margin is so much higher than AT&T's (let alone Sprint's, which posted an operating and net loss last quarter). That's because the subsidies that Verizon has negotiated with Android device makers gives it between $100 an $200 more per device than the iPhone does.
But even Verizon knows it can't thrive without the iPhone. Thanks to Google and Samsung and Research-in-Motion (RIMM), there are some great alternatives to the iPhone. But buying them doesn't save you any money. Buy an iPhone on Verizon and your money goes to Apple. Buy an Android phone, it goes to Verizon.
And judging from the reception of the iPhone 4S, this smartphone is the consumer's choice for now. If you're a mobile carrier, you have to sell it. If you do, the iPhone will be your ticket to the future. But it's going to cost you.
Raj Rajput [ MBA ]
Mobile Reviews Expert
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