Verizon Claims It Will Sell the Pre in Six Months

As if yesterday’s news that AT&T plans to sell the Palm Pre weren’t enough to keep the Internet buzzing, Verizon’s Chief Operating Officer, Lowell McAdam just announced that his company plans to sell the Palm Pre as soon as six months from now. In addition to their plans to sell the Palm Pre, Verizon also announced that they plan to begin selling the new Blackberry Storm around the same time. That, of course, comes as no big surprise, as they were already the exclusive carrier since last year.

While AT&T and Verizon will most likely benefit from the shared sales of the promising-to-be-popular Pre, it is Palm that is will reap the greatest harvest. Allowing other companies to share in the selling (and having such a short-lived exclusive contract with Sprint) was a smart move on Palms’ part, which is already glowing in the 11 percent uptick of their shares. The increase in their shares came about after yesterday’s announcement that AT&T would also be selling. (By contrast, Sprint’s shares dropped by 3 percent.)
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With the economy in the pits, frugality is quickly becoming fashionable. Not only is the thrifty giving up their landlines; they’re opting out of their cell phone plans as well! As a penny-pinching alternative, they are purchasing prepaid phones—an alternative that was once deemed as financially savvy as taking out a payday loan.

When cell phone rates dropped to under $50 a month, pagers became obsolete. And, although cell phone plans may not become obsolete, they are certainly facing stiff challenge from the prepaid market. In recent months, the prepaid market grew three times faster than the contractual plan market. Affordable prepaid rates along with the flexibility they offer are giving wireless services a run for their money. T-Mobile recently gained a huge book of business from the prepaid crowd. For the first time ever, they had more prepaid customers than plan customers.
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The gaming industry is not winning at its own game, as the recession took its toll over the month of April. After months of weathering the storm, the video game industry saw a sharp dip during the month of April—to the tune of 17%.

The balancing news is that the 17% slide may be a mere hiccup, since it is a decline only when compared to the April 2008 revenue when the market rose a whopping 50% from April 2007 quotes. From an alternate statistical perspective, sale records for all gaming units have gone down by only 5%. The scary 17% drop reflects a general slump in sales for the month.

The good news for Nintendo is that the popular DSi broke the trend by selling 1-million+ units over April. These sales outstripped the Wii, Xbox, Playstaion, and other gaming consoles by incredible margins. In fact, DSi sales were up by 84.7 percent, while every single other gaming unit was in a slump for the month.
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Anti-piracy technology is important—even if it can be annoying. For Microsoft, it has always been known as Windows Genuine Advantage—WGA. Its bad rap in the past is not due to the fact that it foils piracy. We would all agree piracy-busting is a good thing.

The bad thing is that it has often foiled honest users, too. In fact, 500,000 Windows users in early 2007 were understandably enraged when the oh-so-protective WGA software mistakenly identified their copies as pirated. Later in 2007, the over-eager WGA coughed again, once more enraging legitimate users who were consigned to use a humbler version of their Windows software for the duration of the glitch.

Microsoft is trying to dismiss all of that as a bad dream.
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The Apple rumor mill is churning out fresh rumors at an alarming pace. The latest round, as reported by Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman, centers on MacBooks and the supposedly coming soon Apple tablet.

According to a report a “favorite” source of the Web site 9to5Mac, Apple is working on netbook or tablet with a 10″ screen. This would seem to verify other speculation that’s been making the rounds lately, but the project is apparently being kept “under lock and key” (probably literally, in this case) so no other details are included.

Also according to 9to5Mac, speed bumps are coming to the entire MacBook line, including internal 3G wireless networking hardware and non-removable batteries on the 13″ MacBook and 15″ MacBook Pro to match the ones already installed on the 17″ MacBook Pro. According to the rumors, Apple will release these new MacBooks along with their tablet at WWDC in June.

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AT&T is angling to keep its exclusive iPhone deal until 2011. The arrangement is set to expire this year, but the telecom giant would like to keep the blockbuster device tied to its network — and away from other wireless rivals.

According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson wants Apple to stick with Ma Bell for an additional few years as the company continues to expand and strengthen its wireless network. Stephenson plans to embrace wireless service as customers’ primary telephone service — he wants customers to be able to use a cell phone in a service bundle instead of a landline, for example. Because iPhone users tend to be extensive users of AT&T’s data service, AT&T likes keeping the device around to help “future proof” their infrastructure.
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Apple followers and Windows devotees alike are abuzz over the rumors, spawned from the Wall Street Journal report, that Steve Jobs is cooking up “a portable device that is smaller than its current laptop computers but bigger than the iPhone or iPod Touch.” - (WSJ). In other words, “he’s working on a cool new computer that is about… yea big.”

So… what is it? Let the speculation begin.

And so, speculation takes off on its careening course-sure to start arguments, inspire hateful comments, and keep bloggers busy. But it sure is fun.

So, here’s a bit of speculation. Assuming we have in the not-so-distant future a tablet-like device or a netbook being produced by Apple, what is it going to be like? Here are some general prognostications. Sorry, no pictures yet.
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This Chinavision emulator handheld is like an iPod for retro console games. It plays Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance, and Neo-Geo games and has 4GB of onboard memory — probably enough to hold the entire library of one of those systems. If that’s not enough you can also stick a mini-SD card in a slot on the bottom for more space.

It looks like it came from an alternate reality, Steve Jobs decided to hell with copyright law and created an iPod for playing retro video game ROMs. In our universe, Jobs plays nice with copyright, so it’s up to a Chinese gadget manufacturer to create the device and sell it to the public for the low price of $87.31 — three for $83.82 each!
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As of last Thursday you can now purchase an iPhone without signing a contract. You can ether get a contract free iPhone at an AT&T store or directly through the Apple store. You can pay the full price of $599 for the 8GB model or $699 for the 16GB version.

If you are a existing customer of AT&T you can purchase only one for the full price. But you can buy as many as you want from Apple and you don’t need to have been an existing contract holder with AT&T. You can activate your new iPhone through iTunes from the comfort of your home.
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Shuttle has just released information on their new all-in-one touchscreen nettop the Shuttle X50. It reminds me of a big kids fantasy lunchbox. Included in the compact shell is a 15.6-inch screen with a 16×9 touchscreen. The X50 is powered by a dual core Atom 330 processor running Windows XP. Also includes a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, 4-in-1 memory card reader, Wi-Fi, 1.3-megapixel camera, and five USB ports.

On the back of the X50 is a 180-degree rotating stand so you can position the screen at any angle. If you remove the stand you will reveal four VESA mounting holes for easy wall mounting. You can also take it on the go with its integrated handle for easy handling.
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