PMP Today

According to Sprint, Instinct have sold out after only its first week in sales, confirming rumors that the phone was making sales history. Pali Research also discovered that Sprint stores have sold out while Instinct has been so scarce, 54% of stores have less than 15 Instincts left. Sprint does not have the numbers yet, but the consumer response is nothing short of phenomenal especially with iPhone 3G this close to being launched. We did say that Instinct is an iPhone Killer andwith the price, form factor and great features, it’s definitely taking a decent stab at the Apple Phone.

Also, check this out: Sprint encourages site visitors to participate in the greatest product placement movie ever by leveraging their own content to “Sell Out” using their home videos. The first 1,000 videos to be accepted and posted to YouTube get $20.  One video will win $10,000! To learn more, and for a place to direct your visitors, check out the contest here: http://www.instinctthephone.com/ 

Sprint may have found their messiah with the Instinct. No, it won’t kill iPhone 3G but it certainly will keep Sprint on a competitive direction. The troubled wireless provider have been rumored to be doing better these days after releasing the Sprint Instinct. TheStreet reports that AT&T and Verizon have less customers signing up from Sprint. This is one of the reasons while Dow Jones dropped to its lowest in 2008, Sprint has been enjoying significant growth in stock price. The Instinct has been selling quite well for Sprint and was even rumored to have broken previous Sprint records.

It’s too early to tell, says Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett: “Sprint hasn’t had a big EVDO phone to compare this to,” says Moffett. “They’ve sold out of the handset in lots of stores, which is clearly good news, but it’s far from being definitive. It remains to be seen if sales are sustainable with both AT&T and Verizon reloading with the iPhone and Blackberry Bold. Selling handsets, though, is only half the fight. Sprint will have to offer more than just a bestselling handset to keep customers. Verizon reports that though they are seeing a decline in customer switching from Sprint, it remains the biggest source of “port-ins.”

[via thestreet]

Mobile gaming is huge, says a new report. Not as huge as music, or even adult, but with $4.5 billion in expected revenues this year from $3.9 billion last year, it’s definitely on its way up. The report comes from Gartner, Inc and will be of no surprise to industry watchers. The best news is that mobile gaming is not particularly popular yet for general consumers. Consumers from developing countries is key:

“The fact that mobile gaming provides good value for the money is one reason for the healthy growth rate,” said Tuong Huy Nguyen, principal analyst at Gartner. “For a relatively small sum, consumers can enjoy a game over and over again, which is particularly relevant in emerging economies where penetration of consoles and PCs is lower. Video games in their original versions (on PCs or consoles) represent a form of entertainment recognized across a wide population, while portable consoles have also taken the market a step towards gaming on a mobile device. Finally, game publishers and mobile operators are getting better at working together and becoming more active in the mobile gaming space.”

A growth rate of 10.2% is expected until 2011. Madhusudan Gupta, senior analyst at Gartner adds: “Emerging market operators should make the most of the demand for mobile games and the low PC penetration in these regions and push game sales as a viable, albeit imperfect, lower-cost substitute to PC and console games.” Hm, I wonder how high-end portable gaming technology like the NVIDIA Tegra fits in.

[via slashphone]

Virgin’s $79.99 Totally Unlimited no-credit-card-no-contract-no-roaming-charges calling plan may be a genuine iPhone killer without requiring fancy hardware or operating system. The $79.99 is pay-as-you-go, which means there is no way you could not at least test what Virgin Mobile has to offer for a month. If you’re on a trip to Europe, $79.99 spending eighty bucks on cellphone calls is highway robbery but this time it’s the consumers that will be doing it. And I wonder if AT&T competitors in the U.S. adopted such a plan iPhone 3G’s record-setting release may not be put into jeopardy. Sure Virgin Mobile’s Totally Unlimited offering does not cover texting and data, so it’s strictly Totally Unlimited Voice, but, still, it’s time a cellphone become a cellphone once again. Virgin Mobile Totatally Unlimited launches July 1.

[via cellphones]

In a bold move unheard of even in the mobile world, Nokia has bought the remaining shares of Symbian and set up an open-source foundation for developers. Nokia is already the principal owner of Symbian and it dished out $410 million for the remaining shares effectively reducing ten-year-old Symbian to a memory. Symbian will have passed 200 million sales this year and leads all other mobile OS by a wide margin taking 60 per cent of the pie. Other mobile entities will be contributing. Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics, , STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AT&T and Vodafone will all be contributing. They are scheduled to release their first phone in 2010. There will be three benefits of making Symbian open source: 1. Nokia will not have to pay licensing fees, 2. it will drive innovation and 3. platform consolidation could speed up product line. All for profit’s sake, I suppose. A super-sleek operation on the platform side is also the best defense against Google’s upcoming Android. But where does Linux Mobile fit in after Symbian becomes fully open source?

[via moconews]

A survey conducted by J.D. Power and Associates seems to have hit a nerve in the mobile world. What they found out was that a quarter of Apple iPhone customers were former customers of Motorola. On everybody’s mind it’s RAZR fans ditching RAZR and switching to iPhone. It’s not exactly switching from Mac to PC but some people like to think about it that way. The exact estimated figure is 1.3 million users and the exact Motorola phone model was the RAZR. Just to remind you folks, RAZR is the phone that iPhone wishes to emulate. Now that’s information.

[source; via cellphones; photo: gizmodo]

Out of nowhere, this dark horse of a phone came and conquered territories in one fell swoop no one expected to be conquered so easily The phone has a 5 MP camera built-in and 7.2Mbps HSDPA connected in lieu of WiFi. It took the iPhone, officially, 74 days to reach a million, so what’s so special about the Soul? Is it the HSDPA? The dynamic homescreen? The sleeks metallic looks. Anyway, the Samsung U900 sold well all over Europe. The phone is set to be released in Korea by SK Telecom and KTF. Yes, that’s right. It’s not even available at home court yet.

[via  telecomskorea]

Reuters U.K. reports of an upcoming meeting of the MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group) for a consideration of Korean-invented (Audizen) MT9, a new music format that is better than the popular MP3. MT9 (hyped as Music 2.0) separates 6 musical sounds in a music file - i.e. guitar, vocals, drums, etc. - and makes it possible for the user to adjust each sound’s volume. It’s a good way to freshen up the entire music industry especially on the retail side. The act of encoding tracks from MP3 to MT9 and asking hardware manufacturers to produce (hey, iPod!) players that support MT9 (a firmware update may not be enough for some players) could take years to accomplish. Come to think of it, with the fast turnovers of new models of music players, all it really takes is a few enthusiastic industry leaders to make this work. So what do you think, are you ready for the MT9 age?

Try Music 2.0 at the Audizen site.

Note: PMPToday likes MT9. We tested the samples Audizen has provided and we have high hopes for the MT9 format. We think it’s a great way to enjoy music and brings more facets to the audio experience, which is why we added the keyword to our list of categories.

[via reuters]

Apple is a far number two in the U.S. and takes a dive to number three in the world smartphone market where Nokia reigns. For an ordinary manufacturer, Apple is making a good show after only a year in the cellphone industry but, then, Apple is no ordinary manufacturer. The Apple iPhone may be the most hyped up electronics product in recent memory and the 5.3% or 1.7 units sold isn’t exactly a Hollywood blockbuster. Nokia sold 14.5 million smartphones snagging 45.2% , while RIM took second place with 4.3 million for 13.45%. Of course, Apple is selling only one model so far, while Nokia have a veritable laundry list of multimedia and enterprise phones under the smartphone category. Meanwhile RIM’s BlackBerry are available in different models with slightly varying functionalities.

[via mobilewhack]

RIM reports that the BlackBerry is still the number one smartphone in the U.S. That’s right, #1. BlackBerry ate up 44.5% of the smartphone market in the first three months of this year. The Apple iPhone was a far second at 19.2%. That’s less than half of BlackBerry’s market. Palm, thanks to the Centro took a respectable third at 13.4%. The iPhone had a better year before this one, taking 26.7% at Q4 2007. Samsung is fourth at 8.6%.

[source via yugatech]