By Wireless Week Staff
The week began with a new addition to the AT&T handset portfolio in the way of the Nokia Surge, a slide-out qwerty device with some smartphone-like characteristics. Meanwhile on Monday, Facebook found itself in the headlights of a lawsuit filed by Power.com, a social networking aggregator. Power lets users simultaneously access several social networks, including MySpace and Twitter. But Facebook isn't among them because the site has blocked Power. Other newsworthy players this week include Sony Ericsson, AT&T, Microsoft, Google, Boost Mobile and Nokia.
Microsoft and Google continued their tit-for-tat as the two companies stake their shares of the cloud. Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it will offer a
free Web-based version of its popular suite of Office products, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
Boost Mobile on Tuesday announced that all of its existing and new customers on the CDMA network who are paying more than $50 per month will be rewarded with a price drop of up to $20 per month or see greater value added to their plan with a bundled combination of nationwide talk, text and Web for $50 per month plus applicable taxes and fees.
Also on Tuesday, Microsoft
announced that Windows Marketplace for Mobile will begin accepting mobile application submissions for all 29 supported countries on July 27, in advance of its launch with Windows Mobile 6.5 in the fall.
Most notably on Wednesday,
Nokia announced its second-quarter earnings. Profits for the Finnish OEM fell 66 percent in its second quarter as the weak global economy continued to hit sales. The company said profits fell to €380 million, or 10 European cents per share, from €1.10 billion, or 29 cents per share, last year. Sales also took a beating, sliding to €9.91 billion from €13.15 a year earlier.
Monday wasn’t the end of AT&T’s handset
launches. On Wednesday, Sony Ericsson launched two new phones with AT&T: the Sony Ericsson C905a Cyber-shot and the W518a Walkman. The c905a Cyber-shot is a cameraphone, and the W518a Walkman focuses on music and social connectivity.
Sony Ericsson said Thursday it booked another
loss in the second quarter as the global economic crisis continued to weigh on mobile phone sales. The Ericsson and Sony joint venture said the loss of euro213 million ($299 million) compared with a profit of euro6 million a year ago. The result was the fourth consecutive quarterly loss for the company.
GetJar, an independent app store, announced Thursday that it had surpassed
1.5 billion downloads. The company said the milestone is significant because it proves that consumer demand for apps is becoming a truly global phenomenon. GetJar currently hosts nearly 50,000 mobile applications available in more than 200 different countries.
And finally, on Thursday, Apple said it has shut down one of the most compelling
features on Palm’s rival Pre smartphone, crippling the Pre's ability to act like an iPod. Users of the recently released Pre had been able to put music on it by using Apple's free iTunes software — a unique twist for a device not made by Apple. But Apple updated iTunes on Wednesday to block this feature.