latest
While T-Mobile and Sprint have already worked out how the merger of their two companies will work, they're still waiting on approval from various government entities — including the United States Justice Department and FCC. Now the companies are extending the deadline for their merger, as deliberations continue with federal officials.
Read update
T-Mobile has been using every possible opportunity to talk up its plans to acquire Sprint, hoping to amass enough support to push the deal through. It's not a matter of public sentiment, though. The fate of the deal rests with government regulators, and the US Department of Justice has reportedly told the carriers it is unlikely to approve the $26B deal.
Read update
AT&T's landmark deal to acquire Time Warner might not be sailing through the courts after all. After getting approval for the deal in June, the US Justice Department has filed documents to appeal the decision, threatening to up-end AT&T's next big expansion.
Flickr announced yesterday that it's entered into an agreement to be acquired from Oath Inc. by photo-sharing and image hosting platform SmugMug. Flickr currently has no plans to change its service following the acquisition.
MoviePass has acquired Moviefone in a deal between the two services' parent companies, according to a press release. Moviefone got its start in the pre-internet days of 1989, providing information about movies and their showtimes via a toll-free phone number. The dial-in service was shuttered in 2014, but Moviefone has continued to provide showtime and ticket services via its mobile app and website.
Chipmaker Broadcom has been vying to acquire Qualcomm—which makes the processors in a whole lot of Android phones—since November. Several offers have been made, and all of them have been rejected by Qualcomm’s Board of Directors. To get around this, Broadcom is trying to replace Qualcomm’s current board members. Qualcomm issued a statement Thursday urging shareholders to vote against the new board nominees.
After the "will they or won't they" mess of negotiations between Deutsche Telekom, the reluctant owner of T-Mobile US, and SoftBank Corp., the owner of Sprint fell apart once again, SoftBank has announced their intent to increase their ownership stake in Sprint. This change would increase SoftBank's control of the US's 4th largest mobile network operator from 80% to 85%.
A few years ago, T-Mobile's parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT) was anxious to unload its 65% share in the US carrier, and one of the primary suitors was Sprint's parent company Softbank. Things are different now. Sources claim SoftBank is floating the idea of selling its 83% stake in Sprint to DT and letting the carriers merge that way.
The mobile market represents the biggest chunk of video game sales on the planet. It's also the most diverse and contentious, with no clear formula for achieving success or return on investment. When something like Flappy Bird can bring in a million times its operating cost while presumably sure-fire licensed games flop, there's no reliable way to know if your developer's next game will break even. Kabam, a publisher focused on licensed titles from Marvel, Warner Bros., and Universal, is no exception. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company will be selling most of its assets early next year.
Rich Communications Services, more frequently abbreviated to RCS, is something of a hot-button topic in the mobile tech world right now. It's essentially a replacement for SMS that incorporates a lot of the functions of popular new messaging systems like WhatsApp, supplanting the antiquated text messaging standard with something more capable and flexible. The problem is that "RCS" is something of a generic term, and every gigantic international megacorp and their gigantic international mother wants their own standard. After today, you can add Samsung to the list.
Fossil makes things you can wear, Misfit wears things you can wear. Fossil wants to make smart wearables, Misfit makes smart wearables. Fossil does fashion, Misfit does fashionable gadgets. If it sounds like a match made in heaven, then you know what the two companies were thinking when they brokered a deal to make Misfit part of Fossil's corporate portfolio.
Oh, Opera. You've been around for a long time (considerably longer than Android or Google, in fact) but aside from a great showing back in the J2ME days, you've never managed to break into those competitive browser markets. The latest financial figures and projections, as reported by Reuters, don't look particularly good for the Norwegian software company. Though Opera Software's revenues grew in the second quarter, they didn't meet analyst expectations, and adjusted earnings missed the target by a factor of $1.6 million. The projection for total 2015 revenue has been cut from $630-650 million down to $600-618 million.
In what is apparently part of a bold push to take over the Mexican market, AT&T has announced their second carrier acquisition in Mexico in the past week. Just days ago, AT&T bought Iusacell, the third-largest cell provider in the country. Today, they are announcing the purchase of Nextel Mexico for $1.875 billion USD. Nextel is Mexico's fifth-largest carrier.