Motorola to trial m-commerce-enabled phones
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Motorola Inc. will conduct an m-commerce field trial of mobile phones enabled with MasterCard PayPass and Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, the company announced Tuesday.
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Sprint Nextel Corp. unveiled on Thursday a new service that allows mobile handset customers to buy and compare a wide range of products over their phone.
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Motorola Inc, the world's third biggest cell phone maker, on Thursday introduced a mobile media player that shows live television, on-demand video clips and programming saved on digital video recorders.
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(InfoWorld) - Motorola plans to acquire wireless mobile device developer Symbol Technologies for $3.9 billion, the companies announced Tuesday. Symbol makes a range of devices for businesses, including handheld computers that may include bar code scanners, RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies and WiFi. They are widely used by workers in warehouses and large retail outlets, and by delivery services. The acquisition would fit with Motorola's history as a developer of mobile phones and two-way radios, and advances its push into companies' mobile computing strategies, it said. Motorola has traditionally catered to businesses, notably with is push-to-talk technology used by Nextel in the U.S., and with its Canopy broadband wireless infrastructure business. While Symbolâs products have a broad customer base the company has faced hurdles in the past few years. In 2004, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined Symbol $37 million fine for fraudulent accounting practices. Eleven executives were charged with securities fraud including the former chief executive, who subsequently fled the U.S. Rumors had surfaced over the past few days that Symbol was looking for a buyer. The deal is expected to close later this year or early in 2007, subject to regulatory and other approvals. Symbol will become a Motorola subsidiary and continue to operate from its headquarters in Holtsville, N.Y.
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Motorola Inc.  said it will unveil plans this week for a line of outerwear that uses interactive cell phone and portable music technology in snowboarding jackets, in a bid to win over twentysomethings.
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Sprint Nextel Corp. S.N, the No. 3   U.S. wireless provider, on Tuesday said it would begin selling   three slim phones from Motorola Inc. MOT.N in early November,   about two years after its biggest rival, Cingular Wireless,   started selling Motorola's popular Razr phone.
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NTT DoCoMo, Japan&#39;s dominant mobile operator, is to start selling mobile phones from Nokia and Motorola next year in a bid to reduce its reliance on local manufacturers.
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Motorola Inc. on Friday launched its  first online-game-playing mobile phone, picking China for the  initiative in a bid to tap into one of the world's top game  markets.
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Motorola is to conduct a trial of mobile phones incorporating MasterCard&#39;s PayPass, a contactless payment technology. The handsets will allow customers to make payments by holding the device next to a reader
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As mobile phones start competing with iPod by incorporating music players in their functionalities, Apple is not staying behind. Rumors are floating that Apple wants to enable iTunes music shopping on mobile phones shipped by Motorola.
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Sprint and Cellular South separately announced wireless capabilities to find products and also a trial project to allow cell phones to serve as payment vehicles.
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Are there more changes ahead for Motorola?
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Motorola Inc., the No. 2 mobile phone  maker, said on Wednesday it expects sales of phones based on  the WCDMA third-generation technology to more than quadruple  next year, helping it claw back market share.
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(InfoWorld) - Motorola Inc. launched an entry-level cell phone on Tuesday, hoping to make up ground on rival Nokia Corp. by selling a large number of the simple handsets instead of relying on high-priced smartphones. Motorola launched the Motofone F3 in India, planning to roll it out soon to worldwide markets. The company will focus its sales efforts on developing countries in an effort to enlist the world's next billion mobile phone users, said Ron Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile devices division. The value-priced handset is designed to attract first-time users by substituting graphical icons and voice commands for the standard text-based interface. The phone saves weight and cost by using a plastic screen instead of glass, and extends battery life by using a monochrome "electronic ink" display. Motorola launched a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) version called the Motofone F3 Tuesday, and said it would launch a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) version called Motofone F3c by the end of 2006. The company predicted the phone will cost less than US$50, although specific prices are set by carriers. Motorola plans to use the product to win business in a different market segment than its high-end Q smartphone and ultra-slim Razr and Krzr cell phones. Sales of those phones pushed Motorola to sell 53.7 million handsets in the third quarter of 2006, an increase of 39 percent over that period last year and a larger gain than the market average. As a whole,Â worldwide mobile phone sales grew 21.5 percent in the third quarter, to 251 million units, according to market research firm Gartner Inc. Despite its strong performance, Motorola was not able to catch up to Nokia, which retained its position as the world's largest mobile phone vendor with 35.1 percent of the market. Motorola trailed with 20.6 percent market share, ahead of Samsung with 12.2 percent, Gartner said. Still, by launching its Motofone before the end of 2006, Motorola surprised some analysts who had predicted a seasonal slump for the company. "The Krzr is struggling to enjoy the same reception that greeted the Razr, and the Motofone might not be available until 2007. Christmas might not be so jolly for Motorola in some markets," Gartner said in its report. By targeting developing markets, Motorola has made a smart move to fight that challenge, said the report by Carolina Milanesi, Gartner's principal analyst for mobile terminals research. "Although sales of replacement handsets during the third quarter in more mature markets were not as buoyant as we have been accustomed to, they were offset by continuing momentum in sales to first-time buyers in emerging markets." With Motofone, Motorola has made a strong bet that she is right. The company relied heavily on its mobile devices division for $7.03 billion of its total $10.6 billion revenue for the third quarter. Â
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Nokia is about to start a trial in Germany that will see travelers paying for public transport with their mobile phone rather than cash.
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Motorola plans to sell mobile phone network equipment that uses Linux-based code, a step forward in network gear makers&#39; efforts to rally around a standard.
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(InfoWorld) - The groundwork is being laid for a risky experiment in consumer electronics as manufacturers prepare for Sprint Nextel and Clearwire's Xohm WiMax service. Motorola unveiled a WiMax client chipset on Tuesday and praised Sprint's strategy of leaving WiMax clients to device makers and retailers. But that plan, a change of pace from U.S. carriers' usual practice of selling and subsidizing phones themselves, could take years to pay off in the mass market. The chipset, introduced at WiMax World USA in Chicago, is small, economical, and more power-efficient than 3G platforms, according to Gary Koerper, Motorola's vice president of platform planning and architecture. It will hit the market in client devices in the second half of 2008, with the company initially focusing on building WiMax phones that carry its own brand, he said. The devices will be offered for various WiMax services around the world, including Xohm. With Xohm, Motorola will have free rein to make whatever kind of device it wants as long as it's certified to work on the carrier's network, Koerper said. Motorola calls that great news, but some observers see a hard road ahead with device makers or carriers pushing an alternative to carrier-subsidized phones. "The model Sprint is pursuing is really taking the shackles off Motorola innovation and Motorola's brand," Koerper said. Typically, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker has to develop a new product and then get a carrier to buy in on it. With WiMax devices designed to work with Xohm, Motorola can look straight to the consumer and build what they want. This could make it easier for Motorola to compete with Apple's hot iPhone, he said. Apple's product has stolen the thunder from Motorola's popular Razr line even though it commands a full, unsubsidized price. Sprint's whole WiMax initiative is a risky bid to gain an edge in the U.S. mobile market, where Sprint is in third place by subscribers. The technology promises a fat pipe to the Internet that subscribers can take with them all over a metropolitan area. Motorola said its chipset offers 10Mbps downstream and 3 to 4Mbps upstream, far faster than current 3G and comparable to a cable modem. But it will take more than fast Internet access to attract and keep paying customers, said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. There are other ways to get fast data service, and there will be more in the future, so Sprint needs to create attractive services such as a VoIP application, high-quality video content, and easy tools for professionals to access corporate networks over VPNs, Lin said. Ease of use, support, and coverage will also be key because cellular services already have those established, he added. "You don't automatically get hundreds of thousands of early adopters," Lin said. The lack of a subsidy isn't even the biggest concern for vendors trying to sell devices for such a service, but it is a long-term problem, he said. Although down from about 95 percent a few years ago, the percentage of phones sold with subsidies in the U.S. is still 85 percent or more, according to Lin. Worldwide, about half of all cell phones are sold with subsidies, he said. As people look for more special features on their phones, they are looking outside of carriers' offerings more often, but it will be three years before the average U.S. consumer will want an unsubsidized phone, Lin predicted. Len Lauer, an executive vice president at mobile technology giant Qualcomm, was also pessimistic in an interview earlier this year. He doesn't think the mobile industry can be transformed by new strategies like Sprint's nor by the any-device, any-service band planned for the 700MHz wireless spectrum to be auctioned next year. U.S. consumers are too addicted to subsidies to buy many devices sold outside the carrier channel, said Lauer, a former Sprint executive. Motorola is pitching its chipset as competitive with 3G instead of an expensive, futuristic new technology. The cost of the chipset is already low and will keep falling to the point that Motorola could soon bring the chipset to inexpensive phones to be used primarily for voice in developing markets, Koerper said. The chipset, consisting of a baseband modem and a radio reference design, has been tested and verified with WiMax network infrastructure from Motorola and other leading vendors, the company said.