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- BlackBerry reports strong orders in Great White North debut
It was fitting that the Canadian-based BlackBerry debuted its Z10 smartphone in its home country on Tuesday with carriers there reporting solid demand for the handsets. In a speech, CEO Thorsten Heins vowed to return BlackBerry to its former glory, saying the new BlackBerry 10 platform will enable the company to reclaim its role as a major mobile power. Also, a BlackBerry blog post revealed the company and developer Unity are writing an add-on aimed at making it simpler to write gaming applications for the platform. And BlackBerry reportedly confirmed that it will update the operating system's Android runtime layer to include Android 4.1, known as "Jelly Bean." The Wall Street Journal
(2/5), Reuters
(2/5), CIO.com/IDG News Service
(2/5), Engadget
(2/5)      
- Isis sees positive results from Salt Lake City trial
The carriers' Isis mobile-wallet trial in Salt Lake City has elicited an average of five transactions a week per user, Chief Sales Officer Jim Stapleton told reporters on Tuesday, calling the results a promising start. He also said the typical customer keeps tabs on five different retailers when using coupons and affinity card features. Loyalty card holders are twice as likely to visit a merchant than non-cardholders, he added. GigaOm
(2/5)
| Mobile In Industry | | |
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- How much did it rain? Check the cellphone signals
Dutch researchers said they have figured out a way to detect rainfall volume by measuring how microwave signals from cellphone towers reflect off the raindrops. The team used the method to build a rainfall map for the country, a potentially valuable tool for the low-lying, flood-prone nation, which is rich in cellphones but lacking in meteorologic gear. New Scientist
(2/5)
| Technology | | |
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- Skype cuts carriers in on mobile VoIP service
Skype has begun a program in Russia that it plans to extend to the U.S. and Canada under which wireless carriers will bill subscribers for their VoIP service and receive a cut from each transaction. The VoIP provider will bring the service to North America this month, according to Mach, Skype's mobile-billing gateway vendor. Mach said it has an arrangement in the U.S. with Payvia, which has relationships with domestic carriers. GigaOm
(2/5), Engadget
(2/5)
| Trends & Research | | |
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- Katzenberg: Hollywood will charge less for small-screen content
Content providers will charge consumers for content based on the size of their devices, especially in emerging markets, said Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of the DreamWorks Animation SKG. He said the product is worth less to people watching on a mobile device than in a theater. "People will pay by the square inch. If a cellphone version is 75 cents, you’ll get 350 million people in India to pay that," he told a digital media conference on Tuesday. Katzenberg said such a scheme would drive consumer adoption of mobile video services overseas. Bloomberg
(2/5)
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