**As published in Mobile Marketing Magazine**

NEW ORLEANS — At CTIA, the heads of America’s four largest carriers paid lip service to their respective pet projects and, in some cases, their favorite the-sky-is-falling scenarios of the day. Following extended commercial-like keynotes from each executive (complete with those obligatory sizzle reels), they all joined together on stage to field questions from one of the country’s most bombastic and outlandish TV personalities, Jim Cramer of CNBC, who came on stage calling mobile the “fastest-changing industry in the world.”

It could and should have been fireworks, but alas, nary a fuse was lit. Other than the occasional spat over which network is faster, better, greater — ad nauseum — disagreements were few and far between. And that’s unfortunate for the hundreds of millions of customers who send their money to AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless every month. Read more

Apple revealed a slightly thicker iPad yesterday, featuring a 9.7-inch Retina display spanning 2048 x 1536 panels. The device runs on Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and sports a 5-megapixel iSight camera featuring a 5-element lens. Pre-orders began shortly after Apple’s event in San Francisco, with deliveries and in-store availability beginning March 16.

Apple is also introducing its first LTE-equipped device with the iPad. Versions will be available for AT&T and Verizon’s unique LTE bands. Pricing for the new iPad remains identical to the previous generation device, which is now available at a $100 price cut. Wi-Fi only iPads began at $499 and cellular-equipped iPads start at $629.

A series of on-stage demos highlighted the new display and faster processor. With 3.1 million pixels, or 256 pixels per inch of display, the new iPad features 1 million more pixels than an HDTV, a feat that only Apple could (or would) exclaim as “resolutionary.” Phil Schiller, EVP of Worldwide Marketing, said the iPad has the “highest resolution display ever on a mobile device.” Read more

BARCELONA — What a difference a year makes. Maybe.

Nokia was in dire straights this time last year. Having just announced a nearly universal reset of its business and betting its future on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, the company’s future was bleak but at least it had a new plan and operating system that could turn back the tide.

Today, Nokia continues to talk about its strategy and deep partnership with Microsoft, but only one of the two devices introduced here at Mobile World Congress are running on Microsoft’s OS. The other device is the 808 PureView, which features a hard-to-fathom 41-megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia’s pixel over-sampling technology. The 808 PureView runs on the latest version of Symbian, a software with a future so narrow that Nokia dumped it (and 3,000 related employees) on Accenture last April. Read more

BARCELONA — Android is growing at “break-neck speed” with 850,000 new devices activated every day, Google’s mobile head Andy Rubin announced in a blog post today. The mobile operating system’s year-over-year growth is now at 250 percent, he added, surpassing 300 million total devices to date.

Today, more than a billion apps are downloaded every month, Rubin continued. And in the 54 weeks that have passed since last year’s Mobile World Congress, the number of apps in the Android Market have tripled to more than 450,000.

The first Android-powered device was released in late October 2008. Since then, more than 800 devices have been launched on the platform. Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will no doubt elaborate on this tremendous growth trajectory when he returns to the MWC stage tomorrow evening.

BARCELONA — To get a sense of how massive Ericsson’s presence is in the mobile industry, consider that half of all smartphone traffic flows through their equipment and services.

The Swedish juggernaut also has a significant jump on its competition with LTE technology, which is growing rapidly in North America and South Korea. Out of more than 325 million LTE subscribers worldwide, Ericsson covers 250 million of those customers. And over the course of 2011, the company’s market share in network infrastructure grew from 32 percent to 38 percent. Read more

BARCELONA — HTC unveiled a trio of new smartphones tonight, marking a new flagship series and the first quad-core device for the Taiwanese company. The One series — X, S and V — is expected to ship in early April, sporting Android 4.0 and the fourth generation of HTC’s Sense user interface.

The HTC One X features Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core chipset, a 4.7-inch display, an 8-megapixel camera and Beats Audio. The HTC One S packs a 4.3-inch display, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and an 8-megapixel camera in a 7.6mm thin form factor. Finally, the HTC One V features a 3.7-inch display, a 1GHz processor and a 5-megapixel camera.

BARCELONA — Just 11 days after gaining complete control of its smartphone unit through a $1.49 billion deal with Ericsson, the new Sony Mobile Communications rounded out its NXT series portfolio of devices with mid- and lower-tier units, the Xperia P and Xperia U.

“Tonight we are kicking off an inspiring new chapter for our company,” Bert Nordberg, CEO and president of Sony Mobile Communications said here tonight at the onset of a press event.

Extending the design aesthetic of the Xperia S, which was introduced earlier this year and goes on sale this week in Barcelona, the Android-based Xperia P and Xperia U will both launch in the middle of the second quarter, targeting more budget-conscious shoppers. The dual-core 1 GHz processor phones can capture photos in 2D and 3D and both come equipped with Near Field Communications technology. Read more

After a decade together, one of the mobile industry’s largest remaining joint ventures has come undone. Sony agreed to pay Ericsson $1.49 billion to acquire its 50% share of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

With the long-expected deal finally behind it, Ericsson exits the mobile handset business and can focus on its core infrastructure business. And now as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony, the mobile division can make better use of the Sony brand, which has always been stronger in consumer circles.

Sony has some semblance of a renewed opportunity to better integrate its mobile offering with its wide range of consumer electronics. It also gains an IP-cross licensing agreement and ownership of five patent families related to wireless device technology. Read more

Verizon Wireless turned in another strong quarter with total revenues up 9.1% to $17.7 billion. The carrier ended the quarter with 107.7 million total connections, marking a 6.5% year-over-year increase. It also banked $7.2 billion in net income, increasing 7.5% from the year-ago period.

Verizon Wireless added 1.3 million total connections in the third quarter, including 882,000 retail postpaid customers, and 367,000 wholesale and other connections. By contrast, AT&T added 2.1 million wireless subscribers during the same period, lead heavily by M2M and other connected devices. Read more

AT&T’s iPhone sales declined in the third quarter, but that should come as no surprise following Apple’s earnings earlier this week.

AT&T benefited greatly, and exclusively, from the new iPhones previously released by Apple in the third quarters of 2009 and 2010. That didn’t happen this year, and AT&T’s year-over-year wireless revenue growth slowed as a result. The company reported $3.6 billion in profit, declining more than 70% from the year-ago period. Revenues were down 0.3% to $31.5 billion. Read more