Michelle Maisto

WiMax is getting a boost. Global standards body Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has approved IEEE 802.16m, the wireless standard for the next generation of WiMax, known as WiMax-2, or WirelessMAN-Advanced. The standard potentially could offer downstream speeds of more than 300M bps. The standard was the work of “hundreds of creative and diligent […]

The Apple iPad and the media-tablet market it has given rise to continue to affect the larger tech world. Market research firm Gartner, since deciding to add media tablets to its worldwide IT spending projections, has raised its outlook for 2011. The firm now expects IT spending in 2011 to reach $3.6 trillion-a 5.6 percent […]

Verizon Wireless is hard at work building out its 4G capabilities. After beginning to take orders March 29 for the Samsung 4G Long-Term Evolution Mobile Hotspot, the wireless company announced it will also accept orders for a new Novatel Wireless USB-based 4G LTE wireless modem, starting March 31. The Samsung Hotspot, which can act as […]

Sprint has come out publically against AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. Verizon Wireless is the nation’s largest carrier, followed by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. If AT&T gets regulatory clearance to purchase the number-four player, it “would reverse nearly three decades of actions by the U.S. government and the courts that modernized and opened […]

Led by Google’s Android operating system, the worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow by nearly 50 percent this year, according to a March 29 report from IDC. Compared with the 303.4 million smartphone units that shipped in 2010, vendors are expected to ship 450 million units in 2011. With both enterprise users and consumers […]

Apple has announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held June 6 through June 10 in San Francisco, at the Moscone West convention center. At the five-day event, Apple plans to unveil “the future of iOS and Mac OS,” it said in a March 28 statement. It’s widely expected that Apple will […]

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has acquired startup tinyHippos and with it Ripple , a mobile environment emulator that makes it possible to test mobile applications across various platforms. The tiny team-from RIM’s own hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-has experience in Web, mobile Web and widget development, Tyler Lessard, vice president of global alliances and […]

The Samsung Mesmerize from carrier U.S. Cellular is the latest Galaxy S smartphone to receive an OS update to Android 2.2, or “Froyo.” It follows Sprint’s Samsung Epic 4G smartphones, as well as its Galaxy Tab, which began receiving over-the-air updates March 21, according to Wireless and Mobile News. The Froyo upgrade for the Mesmerize […]

BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion has high hopes for the BlackBerry PlayBook, its answer to the Apple iPad that will begin shipping April 19. RIM has invested enormous resources in the tablet-from promotional dollars to the April 2010 purchase of QNX, the operating system platform the PlayBook runs on. RIM is betting big that […]

The semiconductor industry in Japan continues to remains a question mark for industries affected by production slowdowns resulting from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that hit the country March 11. Nearly 25 percent of the world’s semiconductor production capacity is in Japan, and more than 60 percent of the silicon wafers that semiconductor chips […]

AT&T’s decision to buy T-Mobile may have been partly motivated by a desire to keep the latter out of the hands of competitor Sprint. However, should regulators approve AT&T’s bid to acquire the nation’s fourth-largest carrier, Sprint may still get a part of T-Mobile, according to analysts at Citadel Securities. While it has been widely […]

Ericsson has introduced two new mobile broadband modules that, among other feats, are likely to escalate the current battle between tablet makers, all working to shave millimeters off the size of their iPad competitors. The modules, unmemorably named the H5321gw and C5321gw, are thinner, 40 percent smaller and three times faster than the company’s previous […]