Mobile Tech Today

Sprint Continues Flailing While AT&T, Verizon Grow

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:21:43 -0500

Despite carrying the No. 1 smartphone in its lineup after years of waiting, Sprint is still bleeding. In fact, Sprint's losses have grown larger since adding the iPhone to its smartphone mix. But it's not all bad news.

For 2011, the company posted the largest sequential increase in net operating revenues in more than five years, largely attributed to the iPhone. Sprint now serves more than 55 million customers, more than ever. And Sprint added a net 1.6 million subscribers, its best since 2005.

"Our strong fourth-quarter performance illustrates the power of matching iconic devices like the iPhone with our simple, unlimited plans and industry-leading customer experience," said Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint.

"During the past year, Sprint added more than 5 million net new customers and grew wireless service revenue by more than 5 percent, including 17 percent for the Sprint platform. This momentum gives us confidence as we execute our Network Vision upgrade and 4G LTE roll-out."

Sprint's iPhone Strategy

What Hesse didn't talk about were the fourth-quarter losses. Sprint reported a net loss of $1.3 billion. Much of the loss came from costs associated with subsidizing the iPhone on its network. Sprint sold 1.8 million iPhones in the fourth quarter. About 720,000 of those iPhone buyers were new Sprint customers. That drove up the carrier's subsidy expenses to about $1.7 billion.

Sprint's 1.8 million iPhone sales compares with AT&T's 7.6 million and Verizon's 4.3 million in the fourth quarter, despite the third-largest carrier's value-adds. For example, Sprint offers an all-you-can-eat data package, something its competitors do not do. In fact, AT&T is throttling heavy users on its network. Rolling out the iPhone with an initial unlimited data plan has been the go-to-market strategy for each of the U.S. carriers.

Sprint's plans start at $69.99 a month plus a $10 premium data add-on charge. Sprint's...

Nokia Shifting Handset Assembly Operations to Asia

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:33:20 -0500

Nokia said Wednesday that the company plans to shift its mobile-handset assembly operations to Asia, with more than 4,000 jobs at Nokia's factories in Finland, Hungary and Mexico gradually being eliminated this year.

Following the lead of Apple and other smartphone makers, Nokia expects the movement of its handset assembly activities to Asia will help increase the company's competitiveness.

"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market," said Nokia Executive Vice President Niklas Savander. "By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive."

Nokia's factories in Komarom, Hungary; Reynosa, Mexico; and Salo, Finland, will continue to play an important role serving the company's smartphone customers, Savander said. "They give us a unique ability to both provide customization and be more responsive to customer needs," Savander said.

Nokia's Asian Focus

Nokia's relocation of handset assembly activities to Asia are part of Nokia's goal to reduce the company's longer-term operating expenses by more than $1.32 billion by 2013. At the same time, however, Nokia is "investing in smart-devices marketing to support Lumia, and we are also investing in mobile-phones R&D to support the Internet for the next billion strategy," said Nokia CFO Timo Ihamuotila.

The job reductions announced Wednesday are in addition to the 14,500 job cuts made by Steven Elop since becoming Nokia's CEO last year. The changes come at a time when the European Union as a whole is struggling to deal with debt issues that threaten the region's economic viability.

"We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition," Savander said.

Greater China and the Asia-Pacific collectively accounted for 43.5 percent of Nokia's handset...

HELIOS and callas Team for Automated PDF Preflight

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:10:22 -0500

HELIOS Software GmbH, announced it has integrated callas pdfToolbox 5 into its PDF HandShake UB2 server software. The combined solution offers higher performance, simplified PDF preflight inspection, and full compatibility with Adobe Acrobat X. HELIOS is a leading developer of cross-platform file, print, image, proofing, remote collaboration, and PDF server software. callas software develops and markets PDF technology for publishing, print production, document exchange and document archiving.

The central benefit of the integration of callas pdfToolbox with HELIOS PDF HandShake is automation. PDF creation can be combined with preflighting in one simple, automated process.

Utilizing the HELIOS ImageServer UB2 ScriptAssistant, hot folder automated workflows can easily be created to handle and integrate in-house PDF checking. With HELIOS WebShare UB2, web access for the file and print server, PDF delivery, and preflighting is available 24 x 7, facilitating remote collaboration.

Features of the HELIOS PDF HandShake integration of callas pdfToolbox 5 include:

- Preflight inspection checks PDFs for compliance with industry standards such as PDF/X-1, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4, PDF/A and PDF/VT

- Informative multi-layer PDF and HTML preflight reports for quick assessment of compliance, XML reports for accounting or automation

- Apple Spotlight compatible indexing and searches of PDF text content

- Full text Unicode UTF-8 export from PDF documents

- Better overall performance and compatibility enhancements

- Full compatibility with Adobe Acrobat preflight profiles

Detailed information about HELIOS PDF HandShake UB2 with the integrated callas pdfToolbox 5 can be accessed at the HELIOS web site http://www.helios.de and at the callas software web site http://www.callassoftware.com.

Motorola's Droid 4 Added to Verizon Lineup

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:28:29 -0500

Verizon Wireless stores will soon have more Droids hanging around than the Mos Eisley spaceport, with the latest of the Star Wars-themed devices hitting the shelves on Friday.

Motorola's Droid 4, the latest incarnation of the original Droid released in November 2009, will cost $199 with a two-year contract. Like its predecessors, the smartphone has a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard, but it now packs a dual-core, 1.2-gigahertz processor and is the latest device capable of surfing Verizon's high-speed, long-term evolution data network.

Droid Fatigue?

The Droid 4, introduced last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is only a half-inch thick.

In addition to Motorola, Samsung and HTC also make Droid devices, which Verizon considers its top-shelf Android-based smartphones, offering a superior user interface.

And the nation's top carrier seems to have no reservations about expanding the lineup on a regular basis, as fast as its partners can make them.

Are they risking Droid fatigue? Not likely, says analyst Charles King of Pund-IT.

"The smartphone audience is large and diverse enough that it can absorb or tolerate more updates and new versions than many product categories, so long as they're properly targeted," King said.

The Droid 4, he said, is aimed at users who prefer slide-out keyboards, while other devices, such as HTC's Droid Incredible, are entirely touchscreen devices.

That doesn't mean, however, that too many similar devices and upgrades can't confuse the market.

"As the success of Apple's iPhone 4S demonstrates, there are huge potential benefits in delivering a new device with a true killer app -- in Apple's case, Siri," King said. "By comparison, simple OS upgrades or nominally improved features can appear a bit dowdy."

No Ice Cream Sandwich, Yet

The Droid 4 won't ship with the latest version of Android, 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, but with 2.3.5, Gingerbread,...

Unlocking Customer Satisfaction: Top 5 Key Indicators

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:44:19 -0500

Tech issues, even small ones, can have an enormous impact on customer experience. Today's contact centers are extremely complex, featuring multiple communication channels, self-service applications, routing schemes, agent groups and vendor equipment. Often times, companies may not even know there is an issue until it is reported by a customer. Frustrated customers today have no problem taking their business elsewhere, and they're likely to tell others about their experience. A complaint that a few years ago would have been aired to a small circle of family and friends can now easily reach thousands, potentially even millions, via social media.

To illustrate this point, consider the global retailer attempting to provide better service with a CTI screen pop via its newly deployed CRM system. Unfortunately, they experienced multiple integration issues. Although everything worked properly at low call volumes, the solution was not able to handle peak traffic loads. The screen pop response time went from less than two seconds to an astounding 38 seconds.
In addition, while the agent waited for the screen pop, the entire custom CRM application froze, making it impossible for the agent to assist the customer at all. This resulted in hundreds of frustrated customers.
To better understand the customer experience, it is important to track certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). By closely monitoring these KPIs in real-time, companies can spot service degradations and possibly preempt their impact on customers. The top five KPIs to watch include:

Voice Quality of Service: Poor voice quality reflects badly on any company. It also leads to an increase in call length when customers and agents cannot understand each other and are forced to continuously repeat themselves. In extreme cases, customers will hang up and try again. Either way, these delays can be...

RIM Pushes BlackBerry as App Platform

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:34:43 -0500

It's an app world, and smartphone makers have to live in it. This week, Research In Motion, propelled by new executive leadership, is attempting to rally application developers about what a great platform they have in the BlackBerry.

On Tuesday, RIM Vice President of Developer Relations Alec Saunders told a DevCon Europe event in Amsterdam that BlackBerry users download an average of 6 million apps every day. More important to developers, he said that BlackBerry apps create 40 percent more revenue for their creators than Android ones do, with more paid downloads than on the Android Market.

Carrier Billing for Apps

Saunders said that this dynamic has resulted in about 13 percent of BlackBerry app developers having made more than $100,000 each, a higher percentage than from apps for Android or Apple's iOS. He added that the company's App World, whose 60,000 apps are a relative handful compared with other platforms, is the most profitable platform for developers after Apple's iTunes App Store. The App Store has more than 550,000 apps.

RIM said its App World has had more than 2 billion downloads total as of January. That figure, while impressive, is still dwarfed by the App Store's 10 billion as of a year ago.

A plentiful flow of great apps, and an enthusiastic developer community, is essential to righting the ship of RIM -- and getting the momentum needed to transition the company's products to the coming BlackBerry 10 platform.

RIM's strategy includes charging for paid apps on bills from carriers, an arrangement that is now available in nearly three-dozen countries. Carrier-based billing is considered an easier transaction for users, while Apple, as a comparison, conducts billing through iTunes.

Europe, Middle East, Africa

Industry research firm GfK Group said last week that BlackBerry is still the best-selling smartphone in the United Kingdom, with about 27...

FBI Using GPS Surveillance Less Often

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:32:05 -0500

The FBI has begun cutting back GPS surveillance in an array of criminal and intelligence investigations following a Supreme Court ruling last month restricting its use, a federal law enforcement official said.

The bureau began implementing the change the day after the Jan. 23 ruling in which the court found that attaching such a device to a car amounted to a search covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring police to seek warrants in many cases.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter, said the GPS directive was issued until further legal guidance is provided on the use of the technology.

Meanwhile, the official said, additional FBI agents have been dispatched to cover costly, labor-intensive surveillance operations that had previously relied on GPS technology.

The FBI's actions represent the first evidence of a tactical change by federal law enforcement prompted by the court's ruling, which has raised new questions throughout the criminal justice and intelligence communities.

The Justice Department is in the midst of evaluating the ruling's implications, Justice spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said.

It was unclear whether the court decision will force a change in the department's manual guiding federal law enforcement operations.

In that document, known as "The Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations," a list of approved investigative methods includes the use of GPS-type "direction finders and other monitoring devices," which "usually do not require court orders or warrants."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said GPS surveillance is the subject of legal analysis within the intelligence community.

"We are now examining the potential implications for intelligence, foreign or domestic," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.

"That reading is of great interest to us. In all of this, we will -- we have and will -- continue to abide by the Fourth Amendment."

Ray Mey, a former FBI counterterrorism official, said the...

Love Gone Wrong? Go Digital To Get Over an Ex

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:33:38 -0500

You thought you found your one true love online, but now you've been dumped by text or defriended on Facebook without a peep of explanation. Hours of bad TV in your bathrobe haven't helped. Your friends are tired of your whining.

Forget a pampering makeover to help heal your broken heart this Valentine's Day. Go for a "digital breakover" instead, using a growing number of tech tools to save you from yourself or to sob on a safe shoulder in the ether.

Online dating sites and apps for hooking up on the go are abundant. Only one of the Apple app store's recent top 12 downloads for the iPhone was about something other than romantic love, but breakup tech hasn't kept pace.

Melissa McGlone, 46, in Alexandria, Virginia, turned to The Ex-App after a three-year relationship ended recently with an unceremonious text. After a weak moment or three of electronically stalking her dumper, she used the text, call and email blocker to hold his digits at bay until she could resist temptation on her own.

"I no longer humiliate myself by trying to contact him," said McGlone, a divorced mother who was 18 years out of the dating scene when the two first met.

The free app took off last March with about 3,000 downloads in the first nine months. Unlike other blocking tools, The Ex-App also tracks the number of consecutive days spent NOT trying to ferret out a former love.

In New York, 28-year-old Amanda Green relied on the well-established Dear Old Love Tumblr blog after she was dumped on Independence Day 2009 a year into a relationship. The site for the lovelorn describes itself as an anonymous safe haven for "short notes to people we've loved (or at least liked). Requited or unrequited." A selection of notes from the site was later turned...

Congress Passes FAA Bill That Speeds Switch to GPS

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:36:01 -0500

A bill to speed the nation's switch from radar to an air traffic control system based on GPS technology, and to open U.S. skies to unmanned drone flights within four years, received final congressional approval Monday.

The bill passed the Senate 75-20, despite labor opposition to a deal cut between the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House on rules governing union organizing elections at airlines and railroads. The House had passed the bill last week, and it now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The bill authorizes $63.4 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration over four years, including about $11 billion toward the air traffic system and its modernization. It accelerates the modernization program by setting a deadline of June 2015 for the FAA to develop new arrival procedures at the nation's 35 busiest airports so planes can land using the more-precise GPS navigation.

Instead of time-consuming, fuel-burning, stair-step descents, planes will be able to glide in more steeply with their engines idling. Planes will also be able to land and take off closer together and more frequently, even in poor weather, because pilots will know the precise location of other aircraft and obstacles on the ground. Fewer planes will be diverted.

Eventually, FAA officials want the airline industry and other aircraft operators to install onboard satellite technology that updates the location of planes every second instead of radar's every six to 12 seconds. That would enable pilots to tell not only the location of their plane, but other planes equipped with the new technology as well -- something they can't do now.

The system is central to the FAA's plans for accommodating a forecast 50 percent growth in air traffic over the next decade. Most other nations already have adopted satellite-based technology for guiding planes, or are heading in that direction, but...

Looking for Work? There May Be an App for That

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:34:40 -0500

Looking for a promising career in a lousy economy? A new study suggests you're apt to find it in apps -- the services and tools built to run on smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook's online social network.

The demand for applications for everything ranging from games to quantum physics has created 466,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2007, according to an analysis released Tuesday by technology trade group TechNet.

The estimate counts 311,000 jobs at companies making the apps and another 155,000 at local merchants who have expanded their payrolls in an economic ripple effect caused by increased spending at their businesses.

The study asserts this so-called "app economy" is still in the early stages of a boom driven by the mobile computing and social networking crazes unleashed by Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Facebook's online hangout.

"This is a telescope into what the future looks like," said Michael Mandel, the economist hired by TechNet to put together the report. "This is one part of the economy that is actually expanding and hiring. Once you point people in that direction, they can realign their compass pretty quickly."

Apps makers were adding jobs even when the overall U.S. unemployment rate climbed to as high as 10 percent in late 2009, Mandel said. That bodes well for even more vigorous growth if the economy can extend a gradual recovery from the Great Recession. The national unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent in January, the lowest level in three years.

Government labor statistics don't yet track jobs focused on apps, partly because the market is still relatively new. That prompted TechNet to try to fill the void. The 15-year-old group represents executives at companies that employ more than 2 million people and generate more than $800 billion in annual revenue combined.

The app economy began to percolate in 2007 -- the...