Sprint is losing more than just customers and profits this year. The struggling US wireless carrier has just lost its CDMA network chief with the resignation of John Garcia.

Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel’s CDMA network accounts for the bulk of the company’s bottom line, and it goes without saying that the Sprint side of Sprint Nextel’s operations needs some tender loving care to get out of the red. Garcia’s sudden resignation on Friday leaves Sprint Nextel without captain to guide the wayward ship through rough waters. Sprint says that Keith Cowan, President of strategy and corporate development, will take the helm until a permanent replacement for Garcia can be found.

The resignation of John Garcia might be seen as a positive sign for the ailing Sprint network. The carrier’s current strategy obviously isn’t working, and a new CDMA chief might be just the solution to lead the good-ship Sprint back to profitable waters. Sprint Nextel has undergone some significant leadership changes since CEO Dan Hesse took over control of the company and Garcia’s resignation is just another step in Sprint’s apparent restructuring effort.

No reason was given for Garcia’s Friday resignation.

[Via: CellularNews]

Given all the recent departures of Senior Motorola (NYSE: MOT) staff (here and here, for example), it’s nice to see Moto hiring new bods to (hopefully) bring them back to the dominant force that they were.

In this case, Marketing Week is reporting that Moto has hired former BT Vision Sales Director Simon Collinson, as “Director of Marketing Strategy” for EMEA. This apparently comes amidst the recruitment of up to 15 new roles in to the Marketing function.

There is some suggestion that these new hires are part of a restructure being put in place, in advance of the supposed spin-off of the handset division next year.

Rock on Moto, keep coming back with full force I say!

[Via: Marketing Week]

dotMobi, the mobile domain name consortium, has hoovered up the IP and site, of Mowser, a service that has been publicly EOL’d (End-of-lifed) only recently. General opinion is that the buy-out is a good thing, with both parties (here and here) blogging that they are very happy with the end result.

For those of you that don’t know, Mowser is short for “Mobile Browser”, and the website (here) offers you the ability to use it as a kind of “proxy portal”, which reformats web content to work on a mobile browser. There are lots of these kinds of services about, but this one seems to work pretty well.

dotMobi will integrate Mowser in to it’s newly-announced find.Mobi service - which is a mobile search engine that you can reach by typing http://find.mobi/ (surprisingly enough!)

[Via: TechCrunch]

 Arun Sarin (Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) CEO ) has said any content providers wishing to launch D2C (direct to consumer) services will always have to work with Vodafone.

Apparently, speaking to the Financial Times, Sarin stated that the ‘unique gift’ of billing secures it and other operators against becoming “dumb pipe” for data - for examples from those such as Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL).

He said: “The simple fact that we have the customer and billing relationship is a hugely powerful thing that nobody can take away from us. Whoever comes into the marketplace is going to have to work through us.”

The original FT article also noted that Vodafone holds valuable CRM data about their customers, plus info for location-based services - which is a fair comment.

What do IntoMobile readers make of this? It’s easy to see both sides of the argument for Content/Service providers working with, or “ignoring” the Operators - but which will win out? Will it be context-dependent? Your thoughts are most welcome in our comments section!

[Via: Mobile-Ent.biz]

Virgin Trains is working with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) to add retransmitters for 2G/3G to 52 of the trains on their fleet - boosting signal strengths for customers. The project, which is due to finish in November, has apparently seen a 60% increase in successfully completed calls.

At the same time the carrier is also urging business users to be careful in using the train as a simple extension of their office and discussing confidential matters - apparently 70% of those in 2000 person survey said they had discussed business in public carriages, 20% said they had talked about business-critical subjects, and 15% said they had mentioned confidential information.

However the most worrying stat of all was that 26% of people admitted to following up on business leads overheard in other people’s conversations!!

[Via: SlashPhone]

I.C.G., a leader in wireless digital signage solutions, have announced the industry’s first end-to-end wireless digital signage solution. Sidelining the high cost of hard wires and cumbersome implementation of traditional digital signage, I.C.G. combines their innovative wireless MobileMedia SystemTM and ViFi AdapterTM (video over WiFi) to bring a new standard to the industry.

According to industry research, by the year 2009 there will be over one million digital signs in North America (who’d have thought, eh?). Wired connections are needed for the various parts of the signage solution, such as network connectivity, media player and memory storage device, to function correctly. With the North American market on goal to install about 135 million locations over the next 10 years, I.C.G.’s wireless solution redefines the industry standard by eliminating the costs associated with hard-lines.

I.C.G.’s self-contained turnkey MobileMedia System eliminates the need for two, three or more unique and disparate components by bundling a 3G/4G wireless network module, a WiFi router, an integrated media player and hard drive. The MobileMedia System also enables cached content to be streamed over wireless links. The second element in the solution is the ViFi Adapter which receives the audio and video content over WiFi from the MobileMedia System and connects via a variety of video outputs to virtually any type of display. Supporting all media and content formats, as well as any Windows or Linux-based content management software, I.C.G.’s solution allows digital information to be multicast to numerous displays simultaneously.

Sounds impressive doesn’t it? One of those M2M applications that you don’t so often hear about, but kind of an obvious one when you think about it. If you want to read more, you can click here.

Samsung and Sharp are two of several companies supplying displays for the Finnish giant. I wonder if they’re going to use those new ultra thin AMOLED displays.

2.2 inches, QVGA, .52 mm thick.

Mmmm, anorexia.

Ever called someone and instead of hearing the typical "ring ring ring" you are greeted with a song you detest more than that feeling of being stuck in traffic on a Friday afternoon?

Nokia Siemens Networks now supports this feature!

Yahoo News:

"The (U.S.) consumer … hasn’t had a lot of choice to go out and purchase these kind of higher-end, feature-rich multimedia devices. If that can help that market grow, I think that gives us an opportunity," Nokia (NYSE: NOK) CFO Rick Simonson said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.

I said the exact same thing during the S60 Summit round table podcast and I’m glad to see someone repeating it. Americans are used to free or less than $100 phones, anything more costly is typically a QWERTY device which is seen as business only. This whole concept of "multimedia computer" is a new one in this market and I’m not going to make any predictions  regarding its success since over here we care more about looks than spec sheets.

When innovation can’t be created in house, it is usually purchased. I have no problem with this attitude, but the question has to be asked:

If you had the mergers and acquisitions checkbook for Nokia (NYSE: NOK), what would you buy?

Let that thought sit inside your head for a moment, I will most certainly expand on this topic later today.