Michelle Maisto

Verizon Communications is considering buying Canadian wireless carrier Wind Mobile, after Cairo-based Vimpelcom dropped its bid to take over control of the carrier. “We’re looking at the opportunity. This is just us dipping our toe in the water,” Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo told The Wall Street Journal, according to a June 18 report. […]

Apple recently put a spotlight on the tax structures used by multinational corporations, which the Group of Eight (G8) leaders, meeting in Northern Ireland June 18, tried to ever-so-gently tackle. On the second day of a two-day summit , the G8 vowed to “take a tougher stance on fighting money laundering and tax evasion but […]

At a Cell Phone Unlocking Forum June 17, hosted by the nonprofit think tank TechFreedom and the nonprofit public policy organization Competitive Enterprise Institute, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai made two things clear: Changing the current legislation that makes unlocking a mobile phone illegal should be easy to do, and the Librarian of Congress, who could […]

Apple Is the Boost Smartphone Recycling Needs by Michelle Maisto An Apple Trade-In Program Could Boost the Industry Bloomberg reported June 7 that Apple plans to hire Brightstar to run a device buyback program. Apple already pays for some older Apple devices and will accept or recycle a variety of products at no cost to […]

Sprint’s bidding war with Dish Network for 4G provider Clearwire seemed to have come to an end June 12, with the Clearwire board’s unanimous recommendation to vote against Sprint’s latest offer of $3.40 per share and unanimous recommendation to accept Dish’s $4.40-per-share bid. However, Sprint, which already owns a 50.2 percent share of Clearwire, announced […]

Huawei has introduced what it’s calling the “world’s slimmest” smartphone, the Ascend P6. It’s a follow-up to the Ascend P2, which the company dubbed the “world’s fastest” smartphone. At just 6.18mm wide, the P6 is indeed lithe and lean. (To compare, the Apple iPhone 5 is 7.6mm wide and the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is […]

EleGreen, a relative newcomer to the growing smartphone recycling movement, has a focus on the upgrades of government agencies and large corporations, whether from old BlackBerry smartphones to iPhones, new BlackBerrys or Android-running devices. EleGreen buys phones to resell them to other markets—making sure, first, that they’re cleared of data, it says—or else makes sure […]

Samsung is at work on yet another Galaxy S 4 smartphone, this one with Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced 4G technology, according to a June 17 report from Reuters. LTE Advanced is said to transmit information at rates nearly double those of traditional 4G. Samsung will sell the smartphone in South Korea as early as […]

Apple is the latest major technology company to acknowledge that U.S. government agencies have been asking it for customer data. However, it only learned about the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance program on June 6, when news organizations asked about it, Apple said in a June 16 statement on its Website. “We do not […]

There was a tablet conference underway in a fashionable Manhattan event space the day that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins made headlines for telling an interviewer he doesn’t see much of a future for tablets. “In five years, I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins had said during an interview […]

Microsoft, tweaking the store-within-a-store concept, has announced plans to build Windows Stores inside of 500 Best Buy stores in the United States and another 100 in Canada. Unlike the traditional store-within-a-store model—boutique sections, such as those Samsung announced in April it will set up in 1,400 Best Buy stores and Apple already has in place […]

T-Mobile and MetroPCS completed their merger May 1, and the latter is now following the lead of its larger partner, encouraging consumers to switch to its network and bring their unlocked AT&T iPhones, or Android smartphones, with them. “Stay in love,” says the MetroPCS advertising. “Keep your number and save.” In the carrier’s refreshingly blunt […]