Gadgets, Mobile | featured news

Samsung's new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, will be launched by all of the Big 4 national U.S. wireless carriers this month, starting at $199, the phone maker said Monday.

Samsung design VP Chang Dong-hoon has refuted accusations that the Galaxy S III was designed "by lawyers." Responding to the reports that stated the new handset was tweaked to circumvent deliberate trade dress claims made by Cupertino in its lawsuit, he said that the redesign is part of the company's five-year plan rather than a sudden change. He went on to say that the flagship went through hundreds of iterations before the team alighted upon the model that will shortly make its way into sweaty palms all over the world.

U.S. consumers have had their fill of expensive, contract-based phone plans. Figures from T-Mobile USA on Thursday, added to earlier reports from other companies, indicate that the U.S. wireless industry lost subscribers from contract-based plans for the first time in the first quarter. Contract-based plans are the most lucrative ones for phone companies. The industry default over the past several decades, they account for the vast majority of revenue at the big phone companies.

This is a guest post by Caribou Honig, a partner with QED Investors in Alexandria, Va. In a prior post on the topic of mobile payments, I made the case that the mobile wallet will become the foundation of a new, disruptive "payment Operating System."

CTIA Wireless, the U.S. cellphone phone industry's annual trade show that starts Tuesday, is drawing heavy participation not just from the cellphone industry, but from MasterCard, Visa, and other companies in the business of moving money around.

The Samsung Galaxy S III's plastic build may not be to everyone's liking, but the quad-core processor and improved voice control feature show that Samsung's flagship Android line has staying power.

Nokia's outgoing Chairman Jorma Ollila promised a range of new products ahead of a meeting on Thursday with shareholders who are increasingly losing patience with the company's recovery efforts.

Wounded cellphone maker Nokia has turned on one of its former allies in the patent protection battlefield by filing lawsuits against rival smartphone maker HTC as it steps up its efforts to raise funds.

Soaring sales of smartphones lifted Samsung Electronics's profit to a record and apparently pushed the South Korean company past Nokia as the world's biggest cellphone seller—and perhaps past Apple as No. 1 in smartphones.

The evidence continues to mount that the mobile phone business is evolving into a two-horse race. It’s Apple, Samsung, and a host of desperate hangers on. In the first quarter, according to Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, Apple accounted for about 80% of all profits in the mobile phone business, with Samsung accounting for the rest. The two companies combined, he figures, had 74% of mobile handset industry revenues.