New ‘Google phone’ coming in August

US telecom carrier T-Mobile announced on Monday that the latest version of a touch-screen smartphone featuring Google’s Android software would be available in August.

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G is being seen as T-Mobile and Google’s answer in the highly competitive smartphone market to the newly released Apple iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre and the latest Blackberrys from Canada’s Research in Motion.

Apple announced on Monday that it had sold more than one million iPhone 3GS in just three days.

T-Mobile, the US operation of Deutsche Telekom and Google released their first phone, the T-Mobile G1, in October of last year.

The G1 and the myTouch 3G are made by HTC of Taiwan and run on Google’s open-source Android software, which the California-based Internet search giant is hoping will be adopted as a platform by other mobile phone makers.

T-Mobile said the myTouch 3G would feature a touch-screen display with a virtual keyboard and increased ability to personalize the phone through the use of applications available through the Android Market.

T-Mobile said the myTouch features a 3.2-megapixel camera, a music player with a four-gigabyte microSD memory card, enhanced video capabilities as well as one-click upload capability to sites such as YouTube and Picasa.

MyTouch also features one-touch access to other Google services such as Google Search by voice and Google Maps.

T-Mobile said the myTouch will cost 199.99 dollars with a two-year service agreement — the same price as the new iPhone and the Palm Pre. It will be available in US stores in early August.

More American Mobile Phone Users Drop Landlines Entirely

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For the first time, the number of U.S. households opting for only cellphones outnumber those that just have traditional landlines in a high-tech shift accelerated by the recession.

In the freshest evidence of the growing appeal of cellphones, 20% of households had only cells during the last half of 2008, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released Wednesday. That was an increase of nearly three percentage points over the first half of the year, the largest six-month increase since the government started gathering such data in 2003.

To read this AP report in the Wall Street Journal in full, see:
online.wsj.com/article/SB124164303801393063.html

Sprint sees strong growth in prepaid subscribers.

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NEW YORK (May 05 2009): Sprint Nextel Corp posted a surprise quarterly profit excluding items, thanks to cost cuts and strong growth in a new service where customers pay for calls in advance, sending its shares up 16 percent. However

the No 3 US mobile service suffered its worst ever loss of valuable monthly bill-paying customers, who sign contracts of up to two years, as they defected to rivals.

Business clients also cancelled service due to the weak economy. "There are no clear signs that the business has made its turn," said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. "There's a mixture of good and bad there." Sprint's net loss swelled to $594 million, or 21 cents per share from a loss of $505 million, or 18 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago.

Excluding unusual items such as amortisation, Sprint's profit per share was 3 cents, compared with the average analyst forecast for a per share loss of 4 cents, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue fell 12 percent to $8.21 billion. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $8.29 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Sprint said it ended the quarter with an employee base of 49,000, down 7,000 from the fourth quarter, and told analysts on a conference call that it would cut its workforce by another 1,000 people in the current quarter. Chief Executive Dan Hesse said on the call that he was pleased by growth in some areas, but that the company was being hurt by the economy and needed to do more to stem defections of monthly bill paying customers, called post-paid subscribers.

Sprint lost a net 1.25 million post-paid customers in the quarter, compared with the average forecast for a loss of 1.1 million customers from eight analysts contacted by Reuters. "The impact of the economy in our disproportionally sizable business base continues to be a challenge to us," Hesse told analysts to explain the deterioration in post-paid losses.

However, the company added 764,000 net new Boost prepaid customers, who pay for calls in advance and do not commit to long-term contracts. Sprint said growth was primarily driven by a new $50 unlimited service plan launched by the Boost unit. Eight analysts contacted by Reuters had on average been expecting Sprint to add about 185,000 prepaid customers, with estimates ranging from a loss of 150,000 to a gain of 600,000.

"Prepaid turned around but your highest value subscriber is your post-paid subscriber and that was the weakest to date," said Commresearch analyst Greg Lundberg. Hesse expects a similar level of prepaid customer additions in the current quarter, due to the popularity of the new Boost plan.

Sprint expects 2009 post-paid and prepaid subscriber losses to improve compared with 2008. The CEO said post-paid numbers would be helped by Sprint's Pre, a high-profile phone from Palm Inc, in the current quarter but he did not give a specific launch date. Sprint shares rose 74 cents or 16 percent to $5.41 in morning trade on New York Stock Exchange.

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