The Federal Trade Commission has given antitrust permission to the proposed merger between Sprint Nextel and Virgin Mobile USA, according to Reuters. Sprint in July initially announced its plans to take over the smaller carrier for $483 million, building upon its current 13.1 percent stake. The deal will merge Virgin's prepaid service with Boost Mobile.
Sprint on Wednesday revealed spring quarter results that show the Palm Pre having relatively little impact on its health. The company's losses widened to $384 million compared to $341 million a year ago and it reported losing about 257,000 total customers, shrinking to 48.8 million users. While it gained 938,000 prepaid customers on Boost Mobile, this and other gains were offset by losses across the board, including 393,000 of its core CDMA phone network users.
Wireless provider Sprint on Monday announced it will offer the Motorola Clutch i465 later this summer. First offered by Sprint subsidiary Boost Mobile, the Clutch is a rugged device that meets the US military's 810F specifcations and is rated to withstand temperature and altitude extremes, as well as exposure to dust, shock, vibration and solar radiation. The device is also the first device with a full QWERTY keyboard to run on Sprint's iDEN push-to-talk network.
Boost Mobile is now offering the Motorola Clutch i465 handset, which is the hardware maker's first device on the push-to-talk iDEN network with a QWERTY keyboard. It is rated for military-grade specifications for resistance to dust, shock, vibration, dust and solar radiation, while more pedestrian features include its 1.8-inch screen with a 128x160 resolution, a GPS sensor and a VGA camera that can record videos.
Sprint today reported a first quarter that showed the company's losses at once expanding and stabilizing. The company's net losses grew from $505 million a year ago to $594 million in early 2009, a steep 18 percent drop. It also reported continued, but softened, subscriber losses from quarter to quarter as it dropped 182,000 total users, falling to 49.1 million customers. The number was helped by a large influx of customers drawn to Sprint's $50 unlimited plan on Boost Mobile but masks a sharp drop in users in its core business, where 531,000 CDMA users and 719,000 iDEN push-to-talk users left the service.
Motorola has recently revealed specs of its first push-to-talk handset that has a full QWERTY keyboard, the Clutch i465. Originally spotted at the end of February and expected to reach Sprint or its subsidiary Boost Mobile, the phone is said to meet military-grade specifications for resistance to shock, vibration, dust and solar radiation.
The latest handset for Motorola's iDEN network, the i856 slider equipped with the signature push-to-talk feature, has been spotted on Wednesday thanks to Engadget. The first slider device compatible to feature push-to-talk functionality from Motorola, the handset's 2.2-inch display is average, as is the rest of the handset's feature-set. It sports a 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0 and a microSD expansion card slot, all features common or slightly above that of the handset maker's first QWERTY iDEN handset, the i465.
A leaked image that seems to have a list of future handsets coming to Brightpoint and Sprint has been leaked on Thursday. The validity of the image is helped by its listing the same ship date of the Palm Treo Pro as the recent official announcement, although Brightpoint itself will get the handset a few days earlier, on March 11th. The image also reveals a $550 unsubsidized price providers. It also shows a variant of the BlackBerry Curve 8350i without a camera that will come to Sprint's iDEN network at an unspecified date, but will cost $480 without a contract.
Competitive pressure from rival carriers may force AT&T to create more affordable iPhone plans, suggests Kaufman analyst Shaw Wu. While an iPhone plan typically costs a minimum of $70 a month, Wu notes that it can cost as much as $130 to gain both unlimited voice and data. These plans are now woefully out of date next to options from Sprint and T-Mobile, says Wu, and may be the cause of slowing iPhone sales, given a terrible economy.
Motorola has made an early start to its Mobile World Congress unveilings by launching the Stature i9 for both Sprint and its sub-brand Boost Mobile. The clamshell is said the thinnest to use iDEN push-to-talk networks at 0.59 inches thick and is also the most advanced media phone of the kind. A 3.1-megaxpixel camera is the sharpest available on Sprint's PTT network, while a ring of touch-sensitive buttons around the external display provide access both to music but also to GPS, video capture and other functions that normally need an open phone; they dynamically illuminate to indicate contextual choices.
The Sprint sub-brand, Boost Mobile, announced on Thursday a $50 Monthly Unlimited plan for its iDEN-based offerings that includes unlimited monthly calling minutes, text messaging, wireless Web access and push-to-talk services. The pre-paid plan will offered starting on January 22nd, and Boost is expecting it will attract many customers currently on subscription plans, with the majority expected to switch over from T-Mobile's own subscription services.
