iPhone Adds To Sprint’s Losses

Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected.

Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected.

Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 37 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Its profit margin based on operating earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) fell to 9.5 percent from 16 percent a year earlier but beat expectations for 8.6 percent, according to eight analyst estimates Reuters compiled.

“It’s still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations,” said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint’s targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.

The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.

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Microsoft and Others Enable IPv6

The so-called worldwide launch of IPv6 has been set for 6 June 2012, when companies will permanently enable IPv6 connectivity in their products and services.

Following the relative success of 2011′s IPv6 day, a number of firms including Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have pledged support for “World IPv6 Launch” day, which has been set as 6 June 2012. On that day the companies have pledged to permanently enable IPv6 connectivity to their associated products and services.

IP address allocation bodies such as ARIN and RIPE have been pushing IPv6 adoption for years but it took last year’s dramatic exhaustion of IPv4 addresses to jolt companies into action. IPv6 day was supported by many of the firms taking part in the IPv6 launch later this year, to drum up awareness and see how much disruption there will be when IPv6 connectivity is enabled.

Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC said, “Operational experience and measurements on World IPv6 Launch will help content providers and ISPs to identify and rectify any potential problems with delivering services over IPv6.”

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at&t Vows To Continue Quest

AT&T Inc plans to forge ahead with its deal to acquire Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless unit despite regulatory opposition, and it has the financial resources to close the acquisition quickly, a top executive said on Wednesday.

“We continue to move forward with our efforts to complete the T-Mobile transaction…and we will continue to pursue the sale,” AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said at the UBS media conference in New York.

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at&t iPhone 4S Has Fastest Speeds

A study measuring the performance of the iPhone 4S on the three major U.S. wireless carriers found AT&T to be the best in Web browsing and data downloads and uploads when compared to Apple’s latest smartphone on either the Verizon Wireless or Sprint networks.

iPhone newcomer Sprint was found to be superior with its iPhone 4S for network voice quality on the uplink (when the user is speaking), but Sprint was also about five times slower in Web browsing and data downloads than AT&T, according to the study released Friday by Metrico Wireless, a mobile performance measurement company. Verizon finished in the middle on those data tests, but trailed the other two carriers in voice quality.

Metrico measured five performance factors shortly after the iPhone 4S was launched on all three carriers in October: whether calls could be connected and held; voice quality; data performance; Web browsing by page load speeds and video performance.

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Judge Oks Sprint’s Lawsuit Against AT&T

A judge in the U.S. on Wednesday gave the go ahead to parts of C Spire Wireless and Sprint Nextel’s lawsuits against AT&T’s proposed US$39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

AT&T and T-Mobile had moved for dismissal of the lawsuits arguing that the complaints by Sprint and C Spire, formerly Cellular South, failed to adequately substantiate that the merger would cause them “antitrust injury”.

The decision by District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia could complicate AT&T’s defense of the deal which has been already opposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in August to block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile, saying that the deal would significantly reduce competition, increase prices and stifle innovation. Seven state attorneys general have joined the lawsuit. That case goes on trial in February before Judge Huvelle.

Where private plaintiffs have successfully pleaded antitrust injury, the fact that they are defendants’ competitors is no bar, Judge Huvelle said before allowing Sprint and C Spire to proceed with their claim that the merger would make it difficult for them to acquire wireless devices. The companies had claimed that after the merger AT&T and Verizon would be in a better position to get exclusive handset deals, while foreclosing their access to the most innovative handsets and raise their costs.

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Most Tegra 2 Tablets Will Get ICS

Sources have confirmed that most Tegra 2 tablets you know will get Ice Cream Sandwich. We are still sniffing around to find out if the ICS is going to end up as Android 4.0 but it will bring phones and tablets much closer and should ship in October or November.

Many Asus, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and any other Android 3.x compatible tablets on market will have a chance to get the new one. The upgrade will come as manufacturers get it ready and customized for its tablets but most tablets will ship with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, probably early next year at the latest.

This is good news for many who were brave to buy the first generation of tablets not based on Apple’s architecture and it will help Google to gather even more momentum for 2012. 2012 looks like a year when Google will be ready for real war against Apple, but at the same time, Android supporters fear that Windows 8 will get a lot of attention when it ships in late 2012.

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Sprint Sues To Stop AT&T-T-Mobile merger

Sprint on Tuesday announced it has initiated a lawsuit against AT&T and Deutsche Telekom to block the two companies from merging “as a violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act.” Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act bars any person from acquiring “the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital” that would “substantially … lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” In its suit, Sprint argues that the proposed merger would violate this act because it would lead to AT&T and Verizon’s controlling 75% of the wireless market while taking in 90% of the profits.

Sprint’s antitrust suit comes less than a week after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the merger with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In its suit, the DOJ similarly argued that the proposed merger would significantly damage competition in the wireless industry, especially since T-Mobile has historically offered low-cost wireless voice and data services for customers. The DOJ also contended that any efficiencies gained by combining AT&T and T-Mobile spectrum would not be enough to offset the damage done to U.S. consumers by further consolidation of the wireless industry.

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Sprint To Debut Cloud Services

Sprint will introduce cloud services to all sizes of businesses in the fourth quarter, a Sprint executive said on Wednesday.

A Sprint spokeswoman said more details would be announced at a later date, but confirmed the executive’s comments in an interview published Wednesday.

Paget Alves, head of Sprint business markets, said in the interview that Sprint’s offerings to businesses will include selling its network infrastructure as a service available on-demand.

Sprint will also offer software, security apps and Internet hosting.

Verizon and AT&T offer similar services, and Alves was said that the carriers are “in a unique position because our business is centered around the cloud.”

Sprint plans to offer services that rely on the company’s own data center, unlike Verizon, which is using capacity from Terremark, which Verizon purchased for $1.4 billion in January.

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Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?

Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.

Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.

The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.

Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.

“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”

Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.

But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.

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nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones

It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.

Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.

Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.

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