The embattled phone manufacturer has made another round of lay-offs in its latest attempt to curb the company’s hemorrhaging finances. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is cutting 4,000 jobs in an efforts to shave $600 million in operating costs for 2008 – following on previous measures to save $400 million by letting go of 3,500 employees.

Motorola Chief Financial Officer, Tom Meredith, explained the cost-cutting move by saying that, “Long-term, sustainable profitability is — and always has been — Motorola’s top priority,” adding that, “Today’s actions are an update to the commitment we made during our first-quarter earnings conference call — to drive out additional costs — and a continuation of the plan we announced in January. We are confident that the steps we are announcing … together with the actions that we have outlined previously, will further improve the company’s financial and operational performance and create value for our stockholders.”

We should mention that the handset manufacturing giant will be offsetting the $1 billion in savings with $300 million in restructuring costs. It looks like Motorola is taking a couple steps forward and one step back. Good one Moto! Maybe Icahn would have been a good idea after all?

via: yahoo

Japan, that little island nation dotting the Pacific “Rim of Fire” and constantly rocked by shaking earth, has mobilized “a system to notify customers of an imminent earthquake.” Japanese wireless operators DoCoMo and KDDI are joining forces to develop this type of early-warning system, as is Softbank (OTCPK: SFTBF), to give the Japanese population a few precious seconds of lead-time. The mobile phone networks will integrate with the Japanese Meteorological Society, which has developed a way to detect a quake several seconds ahead of its arrival. An earthquake warning system would be extremely useful in a nation that can claim 20% of shakers globally.

The mobile warning system will likely use an integrated mobile application that would sound an alarm or give visual warning of the incoming earthquake – giving the Japanese people time to brace for the impact or escape to safer environs. The time it takes to check email or text messages might be longer than the advance warning, making them unlikely mediums for the warning system.

via: yahoo

AT&T will be the first wireless carrier in North America to offer the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Curve in wireless retail and business channels beginning today, as the carrier along with RIM announced the introduction of the “smallest and lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry handset.”

As we’ve already wrote several times about the Curve, I’ll just quote Kent Mathy, president of AT&T (NYSE: T)’s Business Markets Group: “The BlackBerry Curve has all of the qualities of a winner that will resonate with a broad segment of AT&T customers. Business professionals and consumers alike will gravitate to its iconic look, industry-leading coverage both here in the U.S. and abroad, robust e-mail and Web browsing capabilities, and powerful entertainment offerings.”

GPS-enabled software developer Augmentra announced the latest version of ViewRanger off-road mapping, navigation and information software for Symbian S60 based smartphones, that also supports Nokia N95’s built-in GPS receiver.

Unlike “regular” navigation apps out there, ViewRanger is specifically designed for the off-road users — such as hill-walkers, mountain bikers, geo-cachers, birdwatchers, or rural tourists — providing them with additional services like sports performance analysis, content sharing, and buddy tracking. The new version of ViewRanger also packs Ordnance Survey-licensed high quality multi-scale maps of the UK (still no base-maps for other countries), 3D Panoramic Viewpoint display, GPS trail navigation, and tracklog recording… More information is available on ViewRanger’s site.

You’ve read this correctly — iPhone WILL support 3rd party apps. But don’t expect the full openness as Symbian, Windows Mobile or Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS have — all apps will rather pass through some Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s approval process.

In an interview with Walt Mossberg, Steve Jobs said: “This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. …we’ll find a way to let 3rd parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can’t compromise the security of the phone. …I’ve used 3rd party apps… the more you add, the more your phone crashes. No one’s perfect, and we’d sure like our phone not to crash once a day. If you can just be a little more patient with us I think everyone can get what they want.” (via: engadget)

When you look either at Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 6300 or LG Shine folder, you realize that both of them are uber-stylish devices and are competing to reach the same audience. And by audience I mean people who are not that much into features, but are looking for a decent, reliable yet good-lookin’ device. As always, at the end – it’s the matter of personal preferences. For instance, I find LG’s RAZR-like keyboard more appealing, while it’s hard to replicate how Nokia’s device feels in my hand. The Nokia 6300 also has a better screen, while LG’s camera has a flash light. Anyway, see for yourself how these two handsets compare from the following photos.

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Is that a Silverlight I see in the horizon?

Nope, I just hit google (NSDQ: GOOG).com at 03:00 and my retinas pupils shrunk to the size of a single atom.

Here’s something for potential fashion-aware phone buyers on a budget – Domino concept phone. The idea of the Stockholm-based Syntes Studio was to make a simple and easy to use device that would sport only the basic phone functions, plus a camera. The way I see it, the wrong thing about it is that in order to have a “domino effect” you’ll need more than a single device. I guess this could be a device for the groups, where more guys and gals could play with their phones like with dominos. Any thoughts? (via: uberphones)

Big four mobile game publishers – namely EA Mobile, Glu Mobile, Gameloft and I-play – have come together to usher a new era of cooperation in the mobile games sector. Or that’s at least the mobile games sector in Britain.

The idea behind the ELSPA “mobile project” is to do the similar thing games publishers already do in the real world, where console games debut across all retailers at the same time. Read the full article »

Ever since Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) introduced the iPhone, we are noticing the increasing trend of companies trying to improve their UIs and the overall devices’ usability. Don’t get me wrong – that’s a good thing, but one should know when enough is just enough…

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