Michelle Maisto

Lenovo’s marketing line says it’s “for those who do,” and during its fiscal 2013 third quarter, it did. Even as the global PC market crumbled, Lenovo posted a quarter packed with records. The world’s second-largest PC maker brought in record annual pre-tax income of $801 million and record annual sales of $34 billion, sold record […]

Amazon.com has considerably expanded its reach, announcing that its Appstore is now available in 200 more countries and the Kindle Fire HD, in 7- and 8.9-inch HD display options, can now be preordered in more than 170 additional countries. The Kindle Fire HD tablet is Amazon’s best-selling item in the world, Kindle Vice President Dave […]

T-Mobile is not the only carrier taking aim at industry giants Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Leap Wireless brand Cricket announced May 22, the opening day of the 2013 CTIA trade show, that it will roll out a major media campaign June 3 that takes direct aim at Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Called “Half Is More,” […]

As Sprint and Softbank, Japan’s third-largest wireless carrier, move toward the completion of a merger first announced in October 2012, Softbank has said it will make certain concessions to help win U.S. regulators’ approval of the deal. Softbank has said it will allow the federal government to approve one of the directors it names to […]

The information that mobile apps collect and share about users is an area of concern and confusion. A new, free consumer app for Android devices at least addresses the matter of confusion. Bitdefender’s Clueful for Android is a tool that claims to monitor and analyze Android apps and clue-in users about which ones can do […]

Clearwire has accepted Sprint’s bid to buy the approximately 50 percent stake in the 4G provider that it doesn’t already own. Sprint increased its offer for the Clearwire shares on May 21 to $3.40 per share, up from the $2.97 of its Dec. 17, 2012, offer. The increase, said Sprint, represents a 162 percent premium […]

Apple, like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other multinational organizations, uses a complicated fiscal system to help it avoid the 35 percent tax rate that the U.S. government charges on money earned abroad and brought home. Apple’s system helped it to avoid paying at least an additional $9 billion in federal taxes last year, the Senate Permanent […]

People don’t like carrying wallets. The latest organization to announce this news is, unsurprisingly, mobile payments company PayPal. According to a global study it commissioned from Wakefield Research, 83 percent of respondents across five countries said they’d ditch their wallets if they could. Further, even when they are lugging around those pesky wallets, people often […]

Softbank has granted Sprint a “waiver of various provisions” on their merger agreement, allowing Sprint to disclose non-public information to Dish Network, which is competing with Softbank to seal a merger agreement with Sprint. The waiver also allows Sprint to “engage with Dish in discussions and negotiations,” Sprint said in a May 21 statement. It […]

Apple has submitted written testimony, in advance of CEO Tim Cook’s May 21 appointment to speak before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Apple’s tax-payment policies—and how U.S. regulators might update tax policy to make it more business-friendly. The New York Times reported May 20 that Apple has avoided paying billions in taxes and, according congressional […]

Jolla, the Finnish company formed by former Nokia employees unwilling to scrap the work they’d done on the MeeGo operating system, has introduced its first smartphone, the Jolla (sounds like YO-LUH). The phone runs an operating system that has since been renamed Sailfish. Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon, in a video posted to YouTube May 20, […]

Mignon Clyburn’s position as acting chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went into effect Saturday morning, May 18, and on Monday morning she was being asked to push back against AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the industry’s two largest players, in advance of next year’s spectrum auction. In a letter signed by representatives from Sprint, […]