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San Antonio — The Progressive Retailers Organization was at the Westin La Cantera Hill Coun
Las Vegas — Relations between wireless carriers, retailers and handset vendors have been adversarial for a long time, but that’s changing.
That was one of the themes emerging from a panel discussion at the CTIA convention on the challenges and opportunities facing wireless retailing and the consumer buying experience.
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CTIA 2013 Las Vegas — No-contract MVNO TracFone Wireless, whose subscriber base rose to 23.2 million at the end of the first quarter, plans to further expand its subscriber base by establishing retail stores that exclusively sell its prepaid brands.
The Miami-based company is working with master agents to set up retail locations owned and operated by independent parties. The stores go by the name Simple Mobile Solutions.
CTIA 2013 Las Vegas — Handset vendor ZTE USA is in a strong position to benefit from continued growth in the no-contract cellphone market, having already established a strong foothold in the segment through major no-contract carriers and MVNOs, said Waiman Lam, senior director of wireless.
With industry forecasts calling for continued strong growth in the no-contract market, and with ZTE stepping up its no-contract focus, ZTE handset sales are positioned for continued strong growth, Lam contended.
CTIA 2013 Las Vegas — Startup audio supplier RockDoc, which began selling RockDoc by Pitbull portable digital-media speakers in late 2012, came to the CTIA convention to expand its distribution to carrier stores.
Rapper, songwriter, and record producer Pitbull is an equity owner in the Kennesaw, Ga., company.
CTIA 2013 Las Vegas – Sprint came to the CTIA show to announce its first three mobile data devices that will tap into three Sprint LTE bands to provide improved performance and stronger in-building coverage as the carrier deploys LTE service.
The three data devices will be available sometime in the summer. The carrier also expects tri-band LTE smartphones from Samsung and LG to be available to Sprint subscribers before the end of the year.
CTIA 2013 Las Vegas — Executives in the wireless industry and other industries debated issues of privacy, smartphone data security, distracted driving and the changing employer-employee relationships resulting from the growth of wireless data, during a CTIA keynote panel, here, Tuesday.
Las Vegas — Kyocera expanded its Hydro series of dust-proof, waterproof Android smartphones with the launch of two models that join a current model.
The company plans “soon” to further expand the series, a spokesperson told TWICE.
The phones tap into a consumer need for waterproof phones, said the spokesperson. Most insurance plans don’t cover damage from water, he noted.
Bellevue, Wash. — Clearwire postponed today’s shareholder vote on Sprint’s acquisition bid after Sprint raised its bid to quell opposition by some Clearwire shareholder groups.
In a last-minute attempt to ensure the deal goes through, Sprint raised its bid to acquire the approximately 50 percent of Clearwire that it doesn’t own to $3.40 per share, up 14 percent from Sprint’s December 2012 offer of $2.97 per share, or about $2.2 billion.
Dish had previously bid $3.30 per share to acquire all Clearwire stock.
CTIA 2013 Las Vegas — Alcatel One Touch has an in-depth plan to build its U.S. smartphone share over the next 12 months.
The strategy will include providing affordable smartphones with high-end industrial design, practical high-technology features, and wholesale prices that will enable carriers to reduce their handset subsidies, said Steve Cistulli, the brand’s senior VP for the North American market.
San Francisco — Google announced plans to offer its own version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and launched its first music-streaming service.
The company’s version of the S4 will run Android 4.2 and feature a Google-designed user experience, the company said here at its developers’ conference. Through its Google Play store, the company will offer the unlocked S4 beginning June 26 at $649. The LTE-equipped phone will operate on the AT&T and T-Mobile networks.
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