Michelle Maisto

T-Mobile’s executive team headed to the New York Stock Exchange July 31, to announce, with television cameras waiting for post-call interviews, the throw-a-party level success of their fiscal 2014 second quarter. EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) reached $1.45 billion, up 33 percent from the quarter before. T-Mobile also led the wireless industry […]

The British government announced a competition July 30, asking cities to put forward proposals to be among potentially three cities to host driverless car trials beginning in January 2015. The cities will be able to share roughly $17 million, and the trials are expected to last between 18 and 36 months. Business Secretary Vince Cable […]

Sprint, finally nearing the completion of a network overhaul it calls “one of the most complex network upgrades in history,” saw second-quarter income of $23 million, compared with a loss of $151 million the quarter before and a loss of $1.7 billion a year ago, it announced July 30. It also managed to reduce the […]

NEW YORK—BlackBerry, at a security event here July 29, announced its plans to acquire Secusmart, a German software company that specializes in anti-eavesdropping and high-security voice and data solutions. “BlackBerry changes the way mobile workforces work, and now it will do the same with voice,” Secusmart CEO Hans-Christoph Quelle said during the event. Quelle explained […]

Apple, a company that likes to keep quiet about its acquisitions, has recently been tied to two deals. Apple has negotiated a deal to buy Swell, a Pandora-like app for talk-radio listeners, for $30 million, Re/Code reported July 27. Much of the Swell team, including CEO Ram Ramkumar, will join the Apple team, said the […]

HP, Showing Off Printing Labs, Proves 2D Can Also Impress By Michelle Maisto HP Wall of Print, in Vancouver HP introduced its first ink-jet printer in 1984. “We’ve been doing this for over 30 years … and we have one of the best electro-mechanical firmware labs in the world,” said Brad Freeman, director of research […]

Samsung is delaying the launch of the Samsung Z, its first smartphone to run the Tizen operating system. In a July 28 statement, Samsung cited a need to “further enhance” the OS, and said it will “actively work with Tizen Association members pursuing to further develop both Tizen OS and the Tizen ecosystem.” The Association’s […]

Families are the new big fish that wireless carriers are casting for, and T-Mobile has announced a new deal with which to reel them in: four lines, sharing 10GB of LTE data, for $100 a month. The deal will be available July 30 through September, and last until 2016. Four-line family deals from AT&T, Verizon […]

The Amazon Fire is a bit of a devil in the repair department, iFixit announced July 25, following a teardown of Amazon’s first smartphone. This may not come as a surprise, given that the phone boasts what Amazon calls Dynamic Perspective—the result of four low-power special cameras, four infrared LEDs, a dedicated processor, real-time computer-vision […]

The House, on July 25, unanimously approved the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, following a vote of approval by the full Senate on July 15. The bill, now headed for the president’s desk, will make it legal for consumers to “unlock” phones they own and use the devices on their wireless carrier of […]

Amazon Fire Phone With Firefly Is Quick and Cool, if a Little Flakey by Michelle Maisto The Amazon Fire Phone AT&T is for now the exclusive provider of the Amazon Fire. The 32GB version is $199 with a two-year contract, or a monthly pricing plan can be had for $27.09 or $32.40 (depending on how […]

Amazon is on to something. After a day with the Amazon Fire (normally I would spend several days, so take that for what it’s worth), my feeling is that it’s a phone for a specific band of society—a stratum. Not business professionals for whom efficiency is a priority, not teenagers or college kids who may […]