Saturday, June 7, 2008

Buzz of the week - 2-Jun-08

1. Verizon to acquire Alltel

It has now been confirmed that Verizon Wireless would buy-out Alltel Corp in an all cash deal worth about $28.1M. This will make Verizon Wireless the No. 1 wireless operator in the U.S. with nearly 80 million subscribers. Verizon currently has more than 65.7 million customers while Alltel has about 13.2 million subscribers in 34 states. AT&T will move to the No. 2 position with about 71.4 million customers.

The deal makes sense in many ways. Alltel has been a long-time roaming partner for Verizon and it currently operates in 57 markets that Verizon does not serve. And there are more similarities: Like Verizon, Alltel is a CDMA carrier using the Qualcomm's BREW platform for content delivery. Alltel also has recently announced plans to migrate to the LTE technology for its 4G path, a move that Verizon has also said it will make.

Industry experts feel that LG perhaps is the big winner at the expense of Kyocera. Read the full story here.

2. Will Apple announce 3G iPhone?

Anticipation is mounting in advance of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday in San Francisco, where the 3G iPhone is expected to make its debut. Analysts and others are speculating on what special features the phone will have and how much it will cost the consumer.

No one really knows for sure what the 3G iPhone will cost or what special functions it will enable. Fierce has compiled a slideshow roundup of some of the 3G iPhone rumors and releases. Click here to check it out.


3. Gartner's top 10 disruptive technologies

Gartner cites social networking technologies, web mashups, multicore and hybrid processors and cloud computing are among the ten most disruptive technologies between now and 2012. More here.

4. Nokia adds advertising to MOSH

Nokia announced it will integrate its fledgling MOSH multi-platform user-generated content service into the Nokia Media Network, promising advertisers an opportunity to reach consumers via original mobile content. More here.

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