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Sprint will be launching the Sanyo Incognito messaging phone November 30 -- Cyber Monday.
The phone, featuring a glow-through hidden QWERTY keypad, will be sold online at Sprint.com. It will be officially unveiled on Dec. 6 at all Sprint outlets.
The Incognito features a glossy black, streamlined form factor sports an external OLED status display, but reveals a full QWERTY keypad and a 2.6-inch QVGA display when flipped open.
You can now buy the Palm Pixi smartphone for $25. Amazon.com cut the original retail price of $100 by 75 percent, less than a week after the phone went on sale at Sprint, which still is sticking with the original price.
For the details on the price cut, check out the story on Computer World Web site.
From Bloomberg News
MetroPCS Communications Inc., the pay-as-you-go mobile-phone carrier, gained the most in a month on speculation that it may be acquired, an analyst said.
“It’s a story of telecom stocks, PCS in particular,” said Robert Dezego, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Inc. in Atlanta. “It’s a pattern that we see whenever there’s a new story or article on mergers and acquisitions.”
MarketWatch reports that Moody's Investors Service on Friday downgraded its corporate family rating on Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:S) to Ba2 from Ba1, saying the wireless-services provider's ability to stem the deterioration of its earnings is taking longer than it had originally anticipated.
Sprint declined to comment Friday on the rating action.
The agency said the company's leverage, therefore, is likely to deteriorate before stabilizing at much weaker levels than previously expected. The outlook for Sprint Nextel's ratings is negative. Moody's said earnings pressure is likely to persist until the loss of post-paid subscribers decreases more significantly.
With a whole new line of smart phones coming onto the market, Verizon Wireless said that starting November 15 it is doubling to $350 the penalty fees for subscribers who leave their contracts early.
More here.
iPCS, an affiliate of Sprint Nextel, said it settled shareholder lawsuits related to its acquisition by Sprint.
As part of the settlement, iPCS will provide new disclosures related to the deal in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing to be submitted later today.
On Tuesday, iPCS and other parties to the suiits reached a preliminary "memorandum of understanding" to settle all claims in the lawsuits, according to a statement.
The Associated Press
U.S. union officials are teaming up with their German counterparts in a bid to organize workers at wireless carrier T-Mobile USA.
Leaders at the Communications Workers of America say the new arrangement with German union ver.di will help show a “double standard” between how European companies treat workers in their home countries compared with the United States.
The largest union for Verizon Communications Inc. workers said the phone company is laying off more than 1,000 employees in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.
Verizon spokesman Alberto Canal said the layoffs are part of the already announced plan to cut 8,000 jobs before the end of the year. The spokesman confirmed that here have been layoffs this week, but could not confirm the number given by the union.
From Bloomberg News
IPCS Inc. investor Greywolf Capital Management LP urged the carrier’s board to hold out for a higher takeover offer from Sprint Nextel Corp.
Sprint’s $24-a-share bid “reflects neither the fundamental business value of IPCS nor the value of IPCS’s breach of contract claims against Sprint,” Greywolf Chief Executive Officer Jon Savitz wrote in a letter to the IPCS board, dated Nov. 16.
Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin created quite a buzz in Sprint shares Monday when he boosted his rating on the hometown company to outperform from neutral and set a 12-to-18-month price target of $6 a share.
Sprint closed up 40 cents at $3.50. The stock -- while not exactly taking off at the speed of the space shuttle -- continues to move higher this morning. Shares were up nearly 6 percent to $3.71.
From the New York Times
In the land ofcell phone giants, Palm is a mouse.
Palm is tiny compared with Apple, Research in Motion, Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Nokia, which are battling to control the future of smartphones.
Palm invented the category of a Web-surfing pocket-computer phone with its Treo line in 2002. But more recently it lost its way in the market as some of its rivals developed more innovative phones. Its new management team, heavily laden with talent from Apple, introduced a new generation of smartphones in June with the $199 Palm Pre on Sprint’s network. The second phone in the line, the $99 Pixi, went on sale on Sunday.
From the Associated Press
T-Mobile USA resumed selling Sidekick phones Tuesday, more than a month after a server meltdown at Microsoft Corp. caused contact numbers, pictures and other personal information to disappear from many of the phones.
In the intervening time, Microsoft managed to restore most of the missing user data. T-Mobile provided $100 gift cards to affected customers.
From staff and Bloomberg
Internet phone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. has agreed to pay $3 million to 32 states, including Kansas and Missouri, to settle an investigation into some of its business practices.
In a filing Monday with the Securities Exchange Commission, the company said it also agreed to provide refunds to affected customers.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said his office received complaints from consumers who said they found it difficult to cancel their service with Vonage amid pressure from the company to keep their accounts.
From the Associated Press
Minnesota customers of Sprint Nextel Corp. who think their cell phone contracts were extended without their say-so can file for refunds of early termination fees under a legal settlement announced Monday.
State Attorney General Lori Swanson said her office will accept claims through March 15. Swanson spokesman Ben Wogsland said about 400,000 Minnesota customers who signed contracts with Sprint Nextel since Sept. 26, 2001 are potentially eligible.
Sprint added two I-35 corridor links to its 4G high-speed wireless network today.
Austin and San Antonio are among the first cities in Texas to be connected to Sprint's latest generation mobile broadband service, the company said this morning.
They join Dallas-Fort Worth, Abilene, Amarillo and several other cities in the Lone Star state that now have 4G service.
Sprint says its 4G service is ten times faster than 3G.