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The T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Inches Towards Closure

by Eddie Hold on July 29, 2019 at 5:18 pm

The T-Mobile/Sprint merger is (almost) complete, having passed the major hurdle of gaining approval from the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday. As part of the deal, Dish Networks has emerged as the new “number four” carrier, and is spending $5 billion to purchase Sprint’s prepaid assets, notably Boost and Virgin, as well as a swathe of 800 MHz spectrum from Sprint. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a major victory for T-Mobile and Sprint.

Speak and Spell

by Eddie Hold on June 23, 2019 at 4:21 am

In an era of smartphones and tablets, schools are beginning to change their curriculum, taking the focus off skills such as cursive writing. As voice-based interfaces become more pervasive, what additional changes will the future bring?

The Emperor Only Wears Underpants

by Eddie Hold on June 3, 2019 at 6:55 am

I’m starting to get concerned that the marketing hype surrounding 5G will struggle to meet the reality of the situation. Beyond any technical reservations (we’ll get to those) there seems to be a growing sentiment that 5G will cause fundamental upheavals in society and business – the like of which have never been seen before. Consider me a skeptic.

The Huawei Challenge

by Eddie Hold on May 24, 2019 at 7:49 pm

There are dark times ahead for Huawei, due to the U.S. Government’s decision to blacklist the vendor. And while the move was inevitable, it will now not only impact the network infrastructure side of the business, but also its ability to support Android smartphones.

Your Signal May Vary

by Eddie Hold on May 2, 2019 at 12:49 pm

Traveling across some of the more rural parts of America has given me a healthy dose of reality when it comes to national coverage of U.S. mobile carriers. While the movement towards national mobile coverage has been around since Craig McCaw in the early 80s, I still found pockets of emptiness on my travels.

Edgy Phones Bring Hope At MWC2019

by Eddie Hold on March 4, 2019 at 2:55 pm

MWC2019 is over, and before we start thinking about the next show that will pull us all away from our offices, it’s time to do a quick recap of what we saw. The inevitable big theme of the show was, of course, 5G with a smattering of VR to prove out possible use cases. But it was also a show that saw OEMs starting to develop more interesting smartphones, and not just foldables.

MWC and The U.S. Unlocked Market: A Shining Opportunity for OEMs Squeezed by Top Vendors

by Brad Akyuz on February 25, 2019 at 12:06 pm

MWC19 is upon us and it’s poised to be an exciting show thanks to the hype around 5G and revolutionary hardware innovations, such as foldable displays. While 5G will be the buzz word of MWC19, we are unlikely to see many consumer-oriented 5G device/service unveilings because of the premature state of the technology in terms of network deployments and device hardware developments. Nevertheless, there will still be a lot to get excited about at the show.

Google Finally Doubling Down on Wear OS

by Weston Henderek on January 23, 2019 at 12:02 pm

Google has announced that it is buying wearable tech intellectual property rights - along with an un-named number of engineers – from the Fossil Group for $40 million. This move could indicate that the tech giant is finally getting serious about the development of its Wear OS platform after seeing its share of the smartwatch market fall below 25 percent, according to NPD’s latest Consumers and Wearables survey. The purchase of Fossil IP could also lay the groundwork for the eventual launch of a long rumored Google branded Pixel smartwatch.

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