After Jon Rubinstein (former CEO of Palm, now SVP and General Manager of the Palm Global Business Unit) left the stage the other night at All Things Digital’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference, he sat down for a more detailed interview with AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski. Although Ruby did not reveal too much more than the little we’ve heard in recent appearances, there were a few tidbits scattered in the interview that were of interest.

First, in response to a question about bandwidth, Ruby all but confirmed that there will be 4G devices coming from Palm:

I am very excited to [be] getting to LTE and HSDPA+ (two faster cellular networks). We have some really interesting visions on where webOS can go as you get more and more bandwidth.

There was also a fair amount of discussion about cloud services, no surprise given webOS’ deep integration with the cloud, but it wasn’t just about webOS devices. Paczkowski asked Rubinstein, "A lot of data is going to be on laptops and desktops. Do you need to build a cloud device to have webOS talk to them?" Rubinstein’s cryptic (but intriguing) response? "Stay tuned," his usual answer for products and services that are coming but may not be ready for announcements.

Ruby gave a nice shoutout to the new generation of webOS developers (like these fine young men):

We have a lot of really interesting ways to develop for webOS. It’s very easy to develop for and people like developing for it. We are getting a whole new generation of developers.

We had this developer conference in New York. If you look at the audience, a lot of them were under 17 and they were making enough money selling applications to come from wherever they were–they weren’t from New York–to bring one of their parents or both of their parents to come to the developer conference.

He also directly addressed questions and concerns about Palm’s staffing in the wake of the HP acquisition:

Since we closed the deal we have hired over 70 people. Two hundred-plus people from HP have joined us and other divisions at HP are busy working on helping us make webOS successful. So while yes, we lost a few people along the way, we gained a lot of people.

There’s more from Ruby via the source link below. Here’s hoping we don’t have to "stay tuned" a whole lot longer for some real information.

Source: AllThingsD’s Mobilized Blog

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We’re listening in on Verizon’s presentation at CTIA and they just announced their plans for their LTE roll-out. Unlike Sprint and Clearwire, who have been flipping on their 4G WiMax network one city at a time, Verizon plans to flip the switch to bring their 4G LTE network online in thirty-eight metro markets by the end of 2010 (the black dots above – red is 3G coverage). Verizon also plans to have sixty-two airports blanketed in LTE by the same time. Verizon’s network is designed to handle 5-7Mbps downlink speeds, with an impressive 2-5Mbps uploads. Of course, it remains to be seen whether or not those speeds will be possible in real world use.

Verizon isn’t announcing any devices right now, they’re saving that for CES at the start of January 2011. Apparently both smartphones and tablets will figure into their announcements then, and you can bet that we’ll be listening in with serious intent then. Verizon’s press release on the matter, with a full list of 2010’s LTE cities and airports, is after the break.

Source: Verizon

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The all-you-can eat data buffet will soon become one of those stories you tell your kids about the good old days. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said recently that the company would soon do away with unlimited data plans, opting instead for tiered pricing. This follows the same move by AT&T earlier this year and a recent admission from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse that his company may need to make the same change. Seidenberg said Verizon’s data plans would differ from the way AT&T has structured their plans, but did not elaborate on how.

"We’re not sure we agree yet with how they valued the data," he said at a recent investor conference. The new plans are expected to roll out in the next four to six months. The company would not comment on what the pricing would be for the new plans.

The new era of high-speed data and mobile devices that more resemble computers than phones have pushed the wireless providers’ networks to the limits of their capacity. The telecom giants have had to spend billions of dollars on their networks to cope with demand, which is Verizon claims to be growing faster than the network capacity can be expanded (demand has yet to outstrip capacity, it’s just catching up quickly). Executives in those companies have been forecasting the end of unlimited data for quite some time now.

Seidenberg also took the time to call on device manufacturers to start producing LTE hardware. "At some point, [they] will get with the program," he said, addressing the growing popularity of LTE among cellular network operators. Of course, with no large-scale LTE deployments on which to sell said phones, manufacturers are going to continue to be reluctant about producing compatible hardware. Chicken and the egg, as they say.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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Sprint’s quasi-subsidiary former-underling Clearwire is moving against the WiMax or the highway attitude with the recent announcement that they intend to start LTE trials this year. Clearwire, who offers Clear 4G WiMax service in cities around the nation and shares their network with Sprint (and visa versa), hasn’t been quiet about their awkward courtship with LTE despite the rocky marriage with WiMax. In fact, it was just about a year ago that Clearwire started making noise about LTE.

So what does this mean for Palm and Sprint? For one, it means that Clearwire doesn’t have an exclusive relationship with Sprint, and if it sees more potential in LTE (let’s be honest here, who doesn’t?) it could shut down or switch over those single-network WiMax towers to LTE to be used by Verizon and AT&T and everybody else on the planet. For Palm it could spell trouble if they’re working on a WiMax device for Sprint.

But in all reality, if Clearwire were to decide to make the switch to LTE, it’d probably go something like the switchover to GSM currently being executed by Telus and Bell up in Canada – they turned on the HSPA+ network back in November 2009 and their CDMA network is still running concurrently with a few million customers on board. It’ll be years before they can shut it down without angering hundreds of thousands of customers. If it weren’t for the customers these standards switches could happen overnight, but for now we can dream of Clearwire offering service to both WiMax and LTE customers in a happy land of compatibility.

Via: Engadget; Source: Clearwire

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In an interview with The Financial Times, Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel’s CEO, discussed the company’s potential adoption of the LTE (for Long Term Evolution) 4G wireless technology for mobile phones. This technology has already been selected by T-Mobile USA (as well as Verizon Wireless and AT&T), although Sprint’s current 4G technology is based on the competing WiMAX standard.

The move toward LTE by Sprint led the Financial Times to ask Hesse about possible merger opportunities for the third (Sprint) and fourth (T-Mobile) largest US carriers. According to the Financial Times piece, "Mr Hesse accepted there was a ‘logic’ to a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile USA if they were both using the same 4G technology, but declined to comment about deal activity." The FT also notes that while Sprint has enough radio spectrum to roll out both 4G technologies, T-Mobile USA may not, further encouraging the merger. (This is quite a different situation from that which we reported last September, when T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telecom was considering purchasing Sprint.)

Given that there aren’t any (current) webOS devices using either 4G standard, the implications of this potential technology adoption and merger for the Palm community aren’t clear. Should Sprint switch to LTE, though, it would make the likely 4G hardware path for Palm much clearer, with all four (or three, if the Sprint/T-Mobile merger happens) major US carriers on a single standard, and could even help get webOS devices onto T-Mobile, where they currently don’t yet work officially.

Source: Financial Times; via Engadget and webOSroundup

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Palm announced today that hedge fund Harbinger Capital has purchased a 9.48% “passive stake” in the company. The purchase of 16 million shares, completed on April 12, equates to an investment of approximately $83 million at Monday’s stock price. The passive stake is one with no voting powers, otherwise this large of a share would have given Harbinger significant influence over the executive board of Palm. It is worth noting that this stock purchase is of common stock (the kind traded on the New York Stock Exchange) and does not represent an additional cash infusion for Palm.

Harbinger Capital Partners specializes in what they call “event/disaster strategies.” Their investment strategy revolves around putting money into companies they view as perched to experience significant growth and in companies that have fallen on hard financial times. Either (and both) could be used to describe their investment in Palm. Harbinger is headed by Philip Falcone, a billionaire who made his fortune from hedge fund management. The firm has made significant investments in the technology sector, and is actively engaged in the purchase and development of 4G wireless technologies. Last month Harbinger purchased satellite communications firm SkyTerra for nearly $262 million, and plans to spend as much as $4 billion building LTE network infrastructure to lease to American cellular carriers. As such, the 16 million share purchase of Palm stock is a drop in the bucket compared to how much Harbinger throws around on a daily basis.

What this means for Palm is nearly as complicated as what Elevation Partners’ investments in the company meant (Elevation Partners currently owns 30% of Palm). While Harbinger does not hold a voting stake in Palm, they can still exert significant influence on how the company is operated. It is worth noting that there are two other areas in which Harbinger invests: corporate shorts and value investments, both of which are passive investments, and have polar opposite opinions of the investment. Corporate shorting revolves around the borrowing and sale of shares that are believe to be overvalued, followed by the purchase and return to the lender of the shares at lower cost. Value investment is the more positive of the two, “where Harbinger believes a positive catalyst for value realization is already present” and the stock is poised to ride higher.

Given recent developments, we see the last option as the most likely. Even if it’s just Harbinger riding Palm shares into the takeover sunset and reaping a healthy profit, they see the stock value on the rise and want to take advantage of it. As speculated by StreetInsider.com, Harbinger also has the option to convert their passive stake into a vocal one should they not like what they see, and with the billions of dollars they have to play with, Harbinger could even make a bid for Palm themselves and take the company private.

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According to Forbes, Sprint’s first WiMax handset – the first 4G handset from any US carrier – is expected to be available in the first half of 2010. While most logically expect that the phone will be the Android-powered HTC Supersonic (fitting name for a 4G phone), we have to wonder – could it be the C40?

Well, maybe. Frankly, we have no clue. In fact, the lack of info about the C40 has been driving us batty. But a summer launch would coincide with the Pre having been out for a year on Sprint – just in time for a full refresh. At the very least our no-evidence-except-for-intuition expectation is that Palm will release something that will amount to the Pre 2 on Sprint in the summer (or at least that what those of us on Sprint are hoping for), and there’s no reason that the C40 couldn’t be this device.

But why would we want a WiMax phone? For one, the interwebs would be ridiculously fast. Like mind-blowing fast for a phone. In theory, it could be faster than most Wi-Fi connections (Wi-Fi download speeds are limited by the slower ISP they’re hooked up to). With all that bandwidth – again, this is just speculation here – there’s no reason that a WiMax phone on Sprint couldn’t do voice and data at the same time – just run the voice over VOIP (technically EVDO already supports this). But a WiMax radio would only further amplify one of the biggest hurdles Palm is trying to overcome with just EVDO and HSDPA: battery life. Unless they’ve got a ridiculously efficient WiMax radio, a Palm phone with a stock 1150 mAh battery would last, oh, an hour. Maybe.

All that said, chances are that you don’t have WiMax service where you live, at least not yet. Sprint currently has WiMax coverage in a handful of cities across the United States, but in partnership with their quasi-subsidiary Clearwire are rapidly expanding coverage. Sprint expects to add New York City and San Francisco to their WiMax roadmap soon, a move that is sure to tempt many a frustrated iPhone user in those AT&T bottleneck metropolises. Additionally, despite the acceptance of LTE by carriers worldwide, global WiMax deployments are accelerating. eWeek notes that by the end of 2010 combined global WiMax coverage in 147 countries is expected to surpass 800 million people, and one billion a year later. Currently WiMax deployments cover around 620 million.

[via: Engadget, Android Central]

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Both Verizon and AT&T have recently dropped the price of their unlimited voice plans from $100 to $70 a month. While we (we being the tech media) generally assumed that the price cuts were an attempt to lure more customers. We tend to forget a few days after their conference calls that the #1 and #2 US cellular networks are having no trouble picking up and retaining new customers, even with their rates considerably higher than #3 Sprint and #4 T-Mobile (T-Mobile is at least still gaining subscribers, unlike Sprint). So why the price cuts?

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As the rest of the world, Verizon included, dedicates itself to LTE, an eye has turned to lone WiMax supporters Sprint and quasi-subsidiary Clearwire (Sprint owns 51% of the company). Unbeknownst to most, however, WiMax and LTE are actually quite similar, so much so that Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow recently told the Wall Street Journal that if they were to switch to LTE, it’d be a matter of a mere software upgrade.

While Clearwire’s Clear service is only available in more than 40 markets in 16 US states, not a single mobile phone has been released to take advantage of the high-speed mobile service (up to 10 Mbps down/5 Mbps up), mostly due to the power draw requirements. Meanwhile, Sprint has been promoting their co-developed 4G network (formerly known as Xohm) at every turn, leading to speculation that the Pre may end up with a 4G radio.

Switching to LTE would pose significant challenges for Clearwire. Firstly, they’d need to have Sprint onboard, and thus far Sprint seems satisfied with their own 4G deployments in a handful of markets. Clearwire’s deal with Sprint allows for infrastructure and spectrum sharing, along with a roaming agreement between the two. Additionally, Clearwire and Sprint would have to deal with the already deployed WiMax devices in the hands of customers, either by running a legacy WiMax network for several years, pushing out a software upgrade for those devices (likely not as easy as upgrading the towers), or by taking the expensive step of replacing all customer-owned WiMax cards with LTE cards. Of all options, running a legacy WiMax network for a few years seems to be the most likely option, giving Sprint and Clearwire the time to let those contracts expire and pull the plug.

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The story here is very ‘inside baseball’ but bear with us just a little bit as we try to work through Sprint’s most recent announcement.  The essence is that Sprint is handing over all network operations to Ericsson – which is to say:

Ericsson assumes responsibility for the day-to-day services, provisioning and maintenance for the Sprint-owned CDMA, iDEN and wireline networks

Sprint keeps ownership of their network assets — but honestly they have less of a stake than you might think there since they sold off a bootload of towers one year ago and leased service back.  6,000 Sprint employees will become Ericsson employees (and we wouldn’t be surprised to hear about layoffs in the near future), but customer service and technical support will remain in-house. Apparently the deal has been in the works for a long time.

For Sprint customers, here are what we think the implications are:

• the potential for better network quality as Ericsson has been doing this sort of thing all over the planet for a very long time
• the possibility that Sprint’s 4G plans will include both WiMAX and LTE.

The first point is exciting but a little scary (Ericsson could botch it up, after all).  The second point is, well, surprising. Verizon and AT&T are both committed to moving to LTE (which is a GSM technology at heart, basically), but many had wondered whether Sprint would try to push out WiMAX handsets.  InformationWeek implies it’s a possibility, as does gigaom. Then again, Sprint CTO Barry West wasn’t too keen on the technology back in April.

If nothing else, it’s something to watch.  Sprint seems to be turning themselves into more and more of a services middleman instead of a traditional cell carrier.  They’re spinning off physical assets faster than a dervish — WiMAX went to Clearwire (with Sprint as a 51% investor), lots of towers went to TowerCo (with Sprint leasing service), and now the maintenance of their core network technology has gone to Ericsson.

It all lowers Sprint’s operating costs, sure, but the relentless march of technology is very good at cutting out the middle man — and Sprint is looking more and more like the Middle Man of wireless service.  We’re not going to call them an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) in all but name, but we’re not going to say you’re wrong if you do.

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