Subscriber Archive

  • Amazon Wants To Give A Free Kindle To All Amazon Prime Subscribers

    Amazon Wants To Give A Free Kindle To All Amazon Prime Subscribers

    Posted on February 12, 2010 | No Comments
    In January Amazon offered select customers a free Kindle of sorts – they had to pay for it, but if they didn’t like it they could get a full refund and keep the device. It turns out that was just a test run for a much more ambitious program. A reliable source tells us Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber.

    Just as soon as they can work out how to do it without losing money.

    Amazon Prime is a subscription product that gives customers free two day shipping on everything they buy from Amazon. The current fee is $79/year.

    Full Story

  • Sprint cutting up to 2,500 more employees from the payroll

    Sprint cutting up to 2,500 more employees from the payroll

    Posted on November 10, 2009 | No Comments

    Filed under:

    It's been a helluva couple years for Sprint -- new networks, new platforms, and new acquisitions have all been intermixed with a drawn-out recovery effort that's undoubtedly weighed heavy on the hearts and minds of staff at the company's dual headquarters in Kansas and Virginia. With more (albeit slower) subscriber losses in its most recent earning's report, it's still all but impossible to say whether they'll be able to survive in the long term as an independent operation, and we're not quite sure what to make of this latest move, either: a promise of 2,000 to 2,500 job cuts to be announced through the fourth quarter, many of which will be completed before the year's up. It gets a little weird here because Sprint's applying some hardcore spin in its press release, touting the fact that reduced calls to customer service -- ostensibly due to an improved experience -- have lessened the need for call center staff, but we're not really buying it; the business continues to shrink, and staff continue to be cut. The good news is that they're being cut at a much slower rate than before, so it's still entirely reasonable to believe that black ink is in sight -- particularly if they've got a killer 2010 lineup in store.

    Sprint cutting up to 2,500 more employees from the payroll originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • Verizon confirms DROID tethering cost, will ask subscribers to double-down on their data plan

    Verizon confirms DROID tethering cost, will ask subscribers to double-down on their data plan

    Posted on November 6, 2009 | No Comments

    Filed under: , ,

    Verizon confirms DROID tethering cost, will ask subscribers to double-down on their data plan
    Just a few days ago Verizon made the less-than-shocking confirmation that DROID tethering was coming, but wouldn't say how much it would cost. Now that the hardest of hardcore fans are already waiting in line, disconnected from the world at large, the company is unleashing the bad news: it'll be $30. That doubles the cost of the required data plan that sits atop a subscriber's voice plan, meaning a total of $60 per month for "unlimited" data access on handset or laptop. Mind you, "unlimited" really means 5GB of data per, a total of 10 split between the two $30 plans. Glass ceilings: we hate them.

    Verizon confirms DROID tethering cost, will ask subscribers to double-down on their data plan originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • Sprint slows (but doesn’t stop) subscriber loss in third quarter

    Sprint slows (but doesn’t stop) subscriber loss in third quarter

    Posted on October 30, 2009 | No Comments

    Filed under:

    Sprint's sort of the Motorola of the carrier world right now -- a once-great force in the industry that may or may not have recognized its shortcomings too late, and the drama is still unfolding before our very eyes. Its results for the third quarter of the year are a mixed bag, because on the one hand, it's nothing but red ink and fleeing subscribers -- but on the flipside, analysts seem to be pleased that the numbers are better than feared. Some 801,000 postpaid customers sought greener pastures in the quarter -- less brutal than the nearly 1 million lost the quarter prior -- and $478 million went flying out of the coffers; chief executive Dan Hesse says he expects customer retention to be a prettier (albeit still net negative) picture in the fourth quarter, so at least these guys are headed in the right direction and we imagine the Pixi will only help with that overall. The big question remains, though: will they turn it around in time to avoid a takeover?

    Sprint slows (but doesn't stop) subscriber loss in third quarter originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • Nokia starts offering VERTU mobile phone services in Japan

    Nokia starts offering VERTU mobile phone services in Japan

    Posted on September 7, 2009 | No Comments
    nokia_japan Japan is a tough market to crack for many non-Japanese cell phone makers, and even the world's leading cell phone maker, Nokia, had to give up its Japan operations after having failed to gain a foothold in this country (in November last year). But they're trying again, this time with their luxury brand Vertu.

    Full Story

  • Pay for your Xbox Live addiction with Paypal

    Pay for your Xbox Live addiction with Paypal

    Posted on August 6, 2009 | No Comments
    Good evening, readers- If you’re an Xbox Live subscriber in the US then Major Nelson has some news for you. Microsoft has rolled out Paypal as a method of payment for MS points, Xbox Live accounts and such, but it’s not what you think. You can’t actually do anything from your console and all transactions take [...]

    Full Story

  • Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

    Full Story

  • Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-headed audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

    Full Story

  • Sirius XM iPhone app released: No Howard Stern, MLB or NFL; Opie and Anthony make the cut

    Sirius XM iPhone app released: No Howard Stern, MLB or NFL; Opie and Anthony make the cut

    Posted on June 18, 2009 | No Comments
    Big news today, Sirius XM fans. The Sirius XM iPhone app has been released, and is available to download right now. The app itself is free, but you'll need to be a Sirius XM subscriber to use it. Obviously.

    Full Story