mobility

Correction, 4:03 p.m. PST: This story misstated the day the company announced subscriber figures. It was Thursday.

Competition is heating up in the wireless market and it looks like T-Mobile USA is getting singed.

Deutsche Telekom, which owns the wireless company T-Mobile International and T-Mobile USA, reported earnings on Thursday citing slower subscriber growth for its U.S. wireless entity.

During the fourth quarter, T-Mobile USA, which is the fourth largest wireless operator in the U.S., added 621,000 new customers. This was down from the previous quarter when the company added 670,000 new subscribers. And … Read more

It appears that the much-awaited sequel to the Helio Ocean has finally surfaced...or at least its photos have, anyway.

MobileCrunch posted some pics of the Ocean 2's unboxing, and Engadget Mobile mentioned that Virgin has released a press release stating that the Ocean 2 will be making an appearance in Britney's big comeback tour.

Looks like a sleek little device. We'll definitely have more information about the Ocean 2 for you soon.

Mobile advertising start-up AdMob announced on its blog on Thursday that it has added $12.5 million to the Series C funding round that it began amassing last fall.

The money comes from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund and Northgate Capital, adding to the round's existing lead investor Sequoia Capital and repeat investor Accel Partners. The funding brings its Series C total to $28.2 million.

AdMob recently launched a business unit specifically to handle advertisements on Google's Android platform. The reason for the Series C round, the company said, is to keep up growth, even as … Read more

Following its recent news of unlimited monthly plans, Boost Mobile confirmed Wednesday that it is aiming to push all of its subscribers to iDEN over time.

According to this PhoneScoop report, a Boost Mobile spokesperson said that the Sprint Nextel subsidiary will still support its CDMA products but will no longer promote them. The hope is that its new focus on iDEN-based services and devices will help strengthen the company.

Ever since Palm introduced the Pre at CES a few weeks ago, rumors have been swirling over the possibility of Palm butting heads with Apple in a courtroom over the Pre's functionality.

Critics say the Pre's use of swiping the screen to move between windows, and multitouch gestures to zoom, make it a logical legal target for Apple, which has engaged in some posturing over the past few weeks.

In Apple's quarterly earnings call last week, COO Tim Cook said that his company "will not stand for having our IP ripped off," but he wouldn't "talk about any specific company."

It's no secret which company Cook is talking about and in an interview with All Things Digital, a Palm rep said that if the company is "faced with legal action," it's confident that it has "the tools necessary" to defend itself against any Apple lawsuits.

Whether or not Palm has a case is in doubt. Apple was recently awarded a patent that covers many of the iPhone's multitouch functionality, including the zoom functions and swiping currently found in Palm's Pre.

Will Apple use this new patent to its advantage? The company has yet to make a statement. But if takes Palm to court over the Pre, I'll be rooting for Palm. … Read more

It's a busy day for T-Mobile. In addition to announcing the availability of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and the new T-Mobile Shadow, the carrier also started shipping another CES phone, the Nokia 7510.

Though T-Mobile isn't using the "Supernova" label as part of the 7510's name, the phone offers everything we saw in Las Vegas. Its most prominent design features are the replaceable front covers in brown, red, and espresso and the hidden external display that flashes nifty animation intermittently.

Features include a 2-megapixel camera, a music and video player, support for T-Mobile myFaves, … Read more

Less than a year after buying up smartphone maker E-Ten, Acer will debut its first handheld, a company representative confirmed Wednesday.

The Taiwanese PC maker has just begun distributing invitations to a press event that will be held next month during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Both President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci and Aymar de Lencquesaing, the head of the Smart Handheld business unit, will be on hand for the event. The invitation specifically says "smartphones" launch, so it doesn't sound like it's going to be an event focused on a single model or … Read more

For all the talk there's been about Microsoft's big Vista problem, much less has been made of its smaller operating system, Windows Mobile, which has some major problems of its own. Truth be told, I'm a longtime Windows Mobile user and I have to say it's been a frustrating ride. There are things I really like about the OS--and things I find really irritating. However, the frustration stems from the fact that every time I think it's really going to turn a corner, Windows Mobile continues to disappoint. And I'm seriously considering giving up … Read more

Correction: Telstra says it will not be introducing new 21Mbps-capable handsets at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. The interview has been changed to reflect this.

If you're looking for a super fast wireless network, you might want to head to Australia, where Telstra, the largest wireless operator Down Under, has just launched an upgrade to its 3G wireless network that will offer peak data rates of 21 Megabits per second.

Of course, the 21Mbps downlink speed is a theoretical speed at peak performance. True download speeds will likely top out at between 4Mbps and 6.6Mbps. But … Read more