BRUSSELS (AP) — No more asking around the office for the right sort of charger. At least that's what European Union and cell phone makers are hoping.
The world's leading mobile phone makers announced Monday that they will ensure that their data-enabled phones and chargers will all work together, as of next year.
EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said a standardized charger will cut costs for manufacturers and reduce the number of chargers thrown away when consumers buy new phones.
Though the agreement applies to the EU, it's likely that the standardization will apply to phones and chargers sold outside the member countries.
Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., Sony Ericsson, Apple Inc., Motorola Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and NEC Corp. committed to developing a standard for phone charging based on the Micro-USB interface. Together, they account for more than 80 percent of the world market for cell phones.
Several of those companies already make phones that charge through Micro-USB ports, but they don't guarantee that they will work with chargers made by other companies.
"What we are doing here is we are agreeing that any external power supply will be able to charge other manufacturers' phones," said Tony Graziano, technical director for DigitalEurope, which represents digital technology associations and companies that do business in Europe.
This doesn't mean that all new data-enabled phones will come with Micro-USB ports. Graziano said manufacturers can satisfy the terms of the agreement by producing an adapter. Apple, for instance, has consistently used a proprietary connector for its iPhone and could produce an adapter that plugs into the phone to accept a Micro-USB charger.
Bridget Cosgrove, director general of DigitalEurope, said the group is "optimistic" other countries and regions across the world will adopt the same universal charger soon.
Consumer rights groups called for more ambitious plans.
"You could have extended this to different small appliances, such as MP3 players, small digital cameras and PDAs," said Gabriele Fleischer from the Consumers' Council in Berlin.
Texas Instruments Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., two U.S. companies that make components for cell phones, also signed the agreement.
by the associated press
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Showing posts with label Cell Phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cell Phones. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Cell phone's and your taxes
WASHINGTON — Remember the last time you used a company cell phone for a quick personal call — or text or e-mail? Did you record the value of that call and pay taxes on it as income?
A widely ignored law from 1989 says you should have. But don’t worry, the IRS thinks it’s a stupid law, too.
The Obama administration asked Congress on Tuesday to repeal the tax on the personal use of company cell phones after sparking an outcry last week when it sought ideas for enforcing the law.
The law says that personal use of a company cell phone should be taxed like other fringe benefits, such as a company car. The cell phone tax, however, can be a pain for workers who increasingly use mobile devices for texting, e-mailing and browsing the Internet — sometimes for work, sometimes for personal use.
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman called the tax burdensome, confusing and "poorly understood by taxpayers.” He acknowledged it was difficult to enforce consistently.
"The passage of time, advances in technology and the nature of communication in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete,” Shulman said in a statement.
Shulman said he and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were asking Congress to repeal the tax, which has been widely criticized as outdated by the mobile industry and lawmakers.
"We just think that this law was put into effect in a bygone era,” said John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group.
"In 1989, cell phones were considered a luxury item that were actually referred to as car phones,” Walls said. "Now, we have unlimited calling on our cell phones. We have free nights and weekends. The company is not even paying for that. Why should I get taxed for that?”
The House passed a bill to repeal the tax last year, but it stalled in the Senate. This year, bipartisan bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate.
by the associated press
A widely ignored law from 1989 says you should have. But don’t worry, the IRS thinks it’s a stupid law, too.
The Obama administration asked Congress on Tuesday to repeal the tax on the personal use of company cell phones after sparking an outcry last week when it sought ideas for enforcing the law.
The law says that personal use of a company cell phone should be taxed like other fringe benefits, such as a company car. The cell phone tax, however, can be a pain for workers who increasingly use mobile devices for texting, e-mailing and browsing the Internet — sometimes for work, sometimes for personal use.
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman called the tax burdensome, confusing and "poorly understood by taxpayers.” He acknowledged it was difficult to enforce consistently.
"The passage of time, advances in technology and the nature of communication in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete,” Shulman said in a statement.
Shulman said he and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were asking Congress to repeal the tax, which has been widely criticized as outdated by the mobile industry and lawmakers.
"We just think that this law was put into effect in a bygone era,” said John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group.
"In 1989, cell phones were considered a luxury item that were actually referred to as car phones,” Walls said. "Now, we have unlimited calling on our cell phones. We have free nights and weekends. The company is not even paying for that. Why should I get taxed for that?”
The House passed a bill to repeal the tax last year, but it stalled in the Senate. This year, bipartisan bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate.
by the associated press
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Sprint " The Pre" Palm new smart phone
NEW YORK — Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to start selling Palm Inc.’s much anticipated new smart phone, the Pre, on June 6 for $200.
The device could give Palm a needed boost in sales and help Sprint stop the defection of subscribers to other wireless carriers. The price — which requires a new two-year service plan and a $100 mail-in rebate — and the launch date are both close to what industry watchers were expecting.
The Pre, which looks like an iPhone but sports a slide-out keyboard in addition to a touch screen, is seen as Palm’s chance of reversing a long slide and taking on newer, smart phones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry.
The device could give Palm a needed boost in sales and help Sprint stop the defection of subscribers to other wireless carriers. The price — which requires a new two-year service plan and a $100 mail-in rebate — and the launch date are both close to what industry watchers were expecting.
The Pre, which looks like an iPhone but sports a slide-out keyboard in addition to a touch screen, is seen as Palm’s chance of reversing a long slide and taking on newer, smart phones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Cell Phone KeyBoards Tapping Into U.S. Consumer's Heart
Goodbye, numeric cell phone keypads. You’re going the way of the rotary dial. Touch screens and QWERTY keyboards will take over from here, thank you.
At North America’s largest cell phone trade show last week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the U.S. market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touch screens were out in force.
These changes are a recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. Industry organization CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2.2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5 percent.
This shift in how people use their mobile devices has overturned cell phone design. According to NPD Group, 31 percent of phones sold in U.S. stores in the fourth quarter of 2008 had full-alphabet keyboards, up from 5 percent two years earlier.
AT&T Inc., the second-largest wireless carrier after Verizon Wireless, introduced six phones this week, all of which had either a touch screen, a typewriter-style keyboard or both. At the booth of Samsung Electronics Co., the largest seller of phones in the U.S., there were no new keypad phones.
Motorola Inc., the largest domestic maker of phones, was showing off one low-end handset with a keypad. It went on sale through AT&T two weeks ago. But Motorola’s big news was a model called the Evoke, which has a touch screen. It’s designed for the U.S. market, though it doesn’t have a distribution agreement.
LG Electronics Inc. displayed a new handset, the GD900, that seemed to both emphasize a numeric keypad and make it vanish. A pad slides out from the GD900’s body, but it’s made of transparent plastic, so you can see right through it. You don’t need to use the keypad at all, since the screen is touch-sensitive. Other new LG phones were also were dominated by touch screens.
Even at the low end of the market, keyboards for text messaging are becoming common and affordable. AT&T expects to sell two of the keyboard-equipped phones it introduced, the Samsung Magnet and LG Neon, for about $20 to $30.
Old-fashioned numeric keypads still will have a prominent place — but largely overseas.
Although touch screens are gaining in popularity all over the world, people in other countries got into text messaging much earlier and "became acclimated to texting with a keypad,” Rubin said. Meanwhile, the U.S. market has been influenced by high-end smart phones such as the Treo and the BlackBerry that pioneered small versions of typewriter-style keyboards.
As a result, numeric keypads were still dominant at the CTIA booth of Nokia Corp., the world’s largest maker of cell phones, which has a relatively minor presence in the U.S.
by the associated press
At North America’s largest cell phone trade show last week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the U.S. market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touch screens were out in force.
These changes are a recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. Industry organization CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2.2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5 percent.
This shift in how people use their mobile devices has overturned cell phone design. According to NPD Group, 31 percent of phones sold in U.S. stores in the fourth quarter of 2008 had full-alphabet keyboards, up from 5 percent two years earlier.
AT&T Inc., the second-largest wireless carrier after Verizon Wireless, introduced six phones this week, all of which had either a touch screen, a typewriter-style keyboard or both. At the booth of Samsung Electronics Co., the largest seller of phones in the U.S., there were no new keypad phones.
Motorola Inc., the largest domestic maker of phones, was showing off one low-end handset with a keypad. It went on sale through AT&T two weeks ago. But Motorola’s big news was a model called the Evoke, which has a touch screen. It’s designed for the U.S. market, though it doesn’t have a distribution agreement.
LG Electronics Inc. displayed a new handset, the GD900, that seemed to both emphasize a numeric keypad and make it vanish. A pad slides out from the GD900’s body, but it’s made of transparent plastic, so you can see right through it. You don’t need to use the keypad at all, since the screen is touch-sensitive. Other new LG phones were also were dominated by touch screens.
Even at the low end of the market, keyboards for text messaging are becoming common and affordable. AT&T expects to sell two of the keyboard-equipped phones it introduced, the Samsung Magnet and LG Neon, for about $20 to $30.
Old-fashioned numeric keypads still will have a prominent place — but largely overseas.
Although touch screens are gaining in popularity all over the world, people in other countries got into text messaging much earlier and "became acclimated to texting with a keypad,” Rubin said. Meanwhile, the U.S. market has been influenced by high-end smart phones such as the Treo and the BlackBerry that pioneered small versions of typewriter-style keyboards.
As a result, numeric keypads were still dominant at the CTIA booth of Nokia Corp., the world’s largest maker of cell phones, which has a relatively minor presence in the U.S.
by the associated press
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