Ericsson

Earlier this week, Sprint Nextel made good on its promise to introduce a device featuring dual-mode 3G/4G capability on Clearwire's fledgling WiMAX (4G) network, which is up and running in Baltimore and slated to go on line in Portland, Ore., early next year.

"We promised the market that we would have a dual-mode device by the end of this year, and that's what we delivered," said Sprint spokesperson John Polivka.

The growing support for Google's Open Handset Alliance includes more research and development dollars from major names in the technology industry.

Earlier this week, the alliance, a group of technology and mobile companies working on the Android mobile operating system, announced 14 new members. They are AKM Semiconductor, ARM, ASUSTek Computer, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International, Huawei Technologies, Omron Software, Softbank Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba and Vodafone.

"The ecosystem is growing larger. The critical names on this announcement are

The Khronos Group on Monday announced that its OpenCL 1.0 specification has been ratified and publicly released. Apple proposed the spec six months ago.

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.

At this week's Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan, Intel conducted its first public demonstration of Moorestown -- a new Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform that company executives say will "increase battery life an order of magnitude" in a variety of portable devices.

With the launch of Moorestown, Intel is on track to reduce "idle power by more than 10 times compared to the first-generation MIDs based on the Intel Atom processor," said Intel Senior Vice President Anand Chandrasekher, who is also general manager of the company's ultra mobility group.

Mobile Internet

If you ride around in the car on weekends trying to find open houses while balancing a map on your lap, it might be time to use your mobile phone instead. A display of properties for sale -- and even open houses -- could be as close as the screen on your wireless device.

Despite the housing market slowdown, many Americans are still house hunting, and they helped send sales of smart phones and wireless devices to nearly 21 million units in North America last year, according to research firm Canalys.

When Finnish handset maker Nokia came in with better than expected quarterly results on July 17, the telecom sector was encouraged. Sales and shipments of Nokia's handsets were up. Just as important, a big part of the Finnish company's growth in the quarter came from Nokia Siemens Networks, its joint venture in telecom equipment with Siemens. Sales for the network business surged 18 percent in the quarter, to more than $6.34 billion.

The ugly duckling
Team Russia skipper Andreas Hanakamp talks us through his novel Humphreys-designed VO70
One of the novel features of this year’s Volvo Ocean Race is that thanks to Juan Kouyoumdjian signing exclusively with Ericsson, and subsequently Farr with Telefonica, so a lot more design houses have become involved. And so it is that Rob Humphreys and his team, now including able son Tom, at Humphreys Yacht Design in Lymington have penned their first Volvo boat since Dolphin & Youth back in 1993-4.

The joint WiMAX effort of Clearwire and Sprint Nextel that floundered last year has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, thanks to a $3.2 billion cash infusion from Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks.

In an industry buffeted by slowdown, Alcatel-Lucent may be taking more than its share of lumps.

The world's largest maker of telecom gear on Apr. 30 reported a larger decline in sales than analysts were expecting and forecast a full-year drop in revenue. The Paris-based company blamed weakness in the U.S. dollar, which erodes the value of sales in the U.S. Excluding currency swings, sales would have risen 6.3 percent, Alcatel said.

Mobile network equipment maker LM Ericsson told investors that its sales rose 5 percent to $7.4 billion in the first quarter, but its profit for the period fell 55 percent to $60 million. Still, the results were far better than many industry analysts had expected.