Cellular Vendors Shorten The Handset Lifecycle

By Joseph Palenchar On Jan 10 2012 - 6:01am

LAS VEGAS – Shorter product lifecycles driven by faster technology changes are helping drive up sales of cellphones, and here at International CES, handset suppliers will do their best to keep the life cycle short.

“What was once was a long cycle [handset shelf life] has been narrowed to 90 days,” said Kevin Sinclair, CEO of franchise chain Wireless Zone. “If you buy a phone today, within 90 days there will be a better like-same model.”

 

Magellan Tapping New Niches

By Joseph Palenchar On Jan 10 2012 - 6:01am

LAS VEGAS — Magellan plans to expand its customer base with its first GPS-based fitness products, a lower opening price in its outdoors-oriented eXplorist handheld GPS line, its second portable navigation device (PND) for RV users, and its first PND for trucks.

Behind closed doors, the company is meeting with retailers to preview other PNDs that will ship in March.

Suppliers Pushing Down Tablet Prices

By Doug Olenick and Joseph Palenchar On Aug 22 2011 - 4:01am

NEW YORK – Pricing and products dominated recent developments in the tablet market.

More tablets turned up at prices of $299 and less, with Vizio shipping its previously announced 8-inch Wi-Fi Android tablet at a suggested $329 and an everyday $299.

For its part, digital-photoframe and e-reader supplier Pandigital launched three new Android tablets at suggested retails ranging from $159 to $189.

Cellular's Competitive Heat Turns Up

By Joseph Palenchar On Aug 22 2011 - 4:01am

NEW YORK – The competitive heat in the wireless industry turned up in tandem with August temperatures.

Research In Motion was out to get its mojo back in the face of declining smartphone share by expanding its selection of touchscreen smartphones with faster processors and other enhancements in what it called its largest-ever worldwide product launch.

For its part, Sprint said it would drive 4G smartphones into more hands with its plans for a $99 4G phone from Samsung.

Garmin Upgrades Navigation Engines, Traffic Features

By Doug Olenick On Sep 8 2011 - 4:01am

NEW YORK — Garmin has added an updated navigation engine and upgraded traffic features to many of the models in its 2012 portable navigation device (PND) line.

This year’s rollout marks the first time the company has introduced all its products in one fell swoop, a company spokesman said. The usual practice was to push out a new model every few months, but the company determined the approach confused customers who could not tell which model in a store was the most recent.

New Tablets Drop Into The Market

By Joseph Palenchar On Nov 7 2011 - 6:01am

NEW YORK – New tablets from Samsung, Kobo and E Fun are entering the tablet fray in time for the holiday season to join the previously announced $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, which is due Nov. 15, and the new Barnes & Noble model, which will be announced Nov. 7.

A new BlackBerry Playbook, however, will wait until next February, when Research In Motion (RIM) expects to offer the next generation of its PlayBook tablet OS.

Here’s what’s coming or has just arrived in new fourth-quarter products:

New Tablets Add Fizz To Market

By Joseph Palenchar On Nov 21 2011 - 6:01am

NEW YORK – Amazon and Barnes & Noble, powerful newcomers to the tablet market, are mixing it up with a smorgasbord of new Wi-Fi and cellularequipped tablets during the holiday season to potentially erode Apple’s market share.

The new products, all Android-based, include:

• Amazon’s $199 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet, which went on sale Nov. 14 with dual-core 1GHz microprocessor, 8GB of embedded memory, and no memory expansion slot through Amazon and 16,000 U.S. stores;

Cellular Industry Aims To Resume Q4 Growth

By Joseph Palenchar On Nov 21 2011 - 6:01am

NEW YORK – Cellphone carriers and vendors hope to fire up fourth-quarter handset sales with a variety of new smartphones and their superphone variants following a third-quarter drop in U.S. unit shipments of cellphones.

New smartphones available this month include Verizon’s HTC-made $299 4G Rezound, an Android phone that is HTC’s first smartphone equipped with Beats by Dr. Dre audio technology.

Verizon is debuting the $299 Droid Razr by Motorola, a 4G Android phone that is the industry’s thinnest smartphone at 7.1mm in depth.

Consumer Cellular Accelerates Retail Rollout

By Joseph Palenchar On Nov 21 2011 - 6:01am

PORTLAND, ORE. – MVNO Consumer Cellular, which targets the 50-plus age group with an unusual no-contract postpaid service, is making some big changes in distribution and product selection.

In handsets, the company launched its first smartphone, the $165 Motorola Bravo, which is also its first 3G phone. In 2012, the company will make the switch to an all-3G lineup and expand its smartphone selection, CEO John Marick told TWICE. The company is targeting three to four smartphones next year out of about six to eight total handsets.

One Option : Outsourcing Inventory

By Joseph Palenchar On May 2 2011 - 4:01am

NEW YORK — For retailers interested in maximizing cellular profit, “the best case is running it yourself,” said Brightstar’s Sally Lange, but do-ityourself retailers assume the cash-flow risks and the risk of “managing so many moving parts.”