Comcast-Time Warner Cable: Would it really be anti-competitive?

As you probably know, Comcast and Time Warner Cable have agreed to merge. Many consumer groups and some of the companies' content providers and competitors are opposing the merger, while it's hard to find proponents that aren't either getting funding from one of the two companies or are "Astroturf" organizations created to support the merger. However, is the Comcast-TWC merger really anticompetitive? A big part of the answer depends on whether you're looking at the multichannel video services market today, or a few years from now.

If you look at the situation today, whether or not the merger is anticompetitive depends on who you are. If you're another cable company, it's not anticompetitive at all. The reason is that cable operators all have local franchises to be the exclusive cable supplier in the areas they serve. So, Comcast doesn't compete with TWC, which doesn't compete with Cox, which doesn't compete with Charter, etc. The reason for exclusivity is that it was so expensive for a cable operator to lay the wires, put in the plant and equipment, and service customers, that it was uneconomical to do so unless they could serve all the customers in an area without competition.

If you look at Comcast's and TWC's non-cable competitors, the merger is likely to have a modest impact at most. Existing Comcast and TWC customers will still be customers of the merged company, and can switch to a competitor if they want to. It's likely that Comcast will improve TWC's plant and equipment, and improve its cable and Internet services, which would make the combined company a stronger competitor in TWC markets. If you're an existing Comcast or TWC customer, your competitive situation isn't likely to change much, either. The new company will still supply your cable service, most likely your wireline Internet service, and possibly your phone service as well. The same competitors you could switch to will still be there.

However, if you're a program supplier to Comcast and TWC, your situation is likely to change substantially. The reason is that the merged company will have around 30 million subscribers and will be by far the biggest cable and Internet provider in the U.S. (If the AT&T acquisition of DirecTV is approved, that company will have at least as many video subscribers as Comcast-TWC, but DirecTV, which has the lion's share of subscribers, doesn't provide its own Internet service--it resells services from local Internet Service Providers.) The merged company will be the only way for program suppliers (television and cable networks, and movie distributors offering titles for Video on Demand (VOD)) to reach about 1/3rd of all U.S. households. That will give the new company enormous power to negotiate preferential licensing and retransmission fees, and will also give it additional power to negotiate non-fee terms and conditions, such as limitations on content providers' ability to license their content to other service providers. In addition, given that Comcast owns NBC Universal, it can give preferential treatment to NBCs broadcast and cable networks and Universal's movies and television shows similar treatment in its VOD systems, which would put other content providers at a competitive disadvantage.

If you're an Internet content provider, such as Netflix, the merged company will be by far the biggest single provider of ISP services to your customers in the U.S. There's strong evidence that Comcast was throttling the bandwidth available to Netflix subscribers until Netflix agreed to pay for a peering agreement with Comcast. The combined company would have even more power to extract payments from Internet companies.

That's today's situation, but what about tomorrow? Netflix is a nationwide (now also international) service; it can reach everyone in the U.S. who has either wired or wireless high-speed Internet access. Roku, Apple, Sony and others sell set-top boxes and devices that offer similar access to video over the Internet. Verizon, which has long operated its FiOS IPTV service which offers a cable-like video service and high-speed Internet, recently acquired Intel's OnCue Over-The-Top (OTT) Internet video platform. Verizon is expected to use OnCue as the basis of a nationwide video service that will operate over its wireless network, and possibly over the Internet as well. That would give Verizon a nationwide footprint, and would enable it to offer video services in almost every U.S. market. Sony and Dish are also rumored to be in the planning stages for a similar Internet service. Intel's attempt to launch OnCue was stymied by pressure from the cable industry to prevent its program suppliers from licensing their content to Intel, and the same pressure is suspected as the reason why Apple has not yet launched its long-rumored HDTV and video service.

What happens if OTT service and program suppliers find a way to launch viable services that can compete with cable? The video services market could change radically. Instead of today's three or four competitors (the incumbent cable operator, DirecTV, Dish, and depending on where you live, either Verizon or AT&T,) there could be many more:

• T-Mobile and Sprint could use their networks to deliver video to households.
• I've written that there's evidence that Netflix is planning to offer live programming in addition to its VOD offerings; they could expand into a full cable competitor.
• Sony and Apple could offer their own services.
• The existing cable operators could directly compete with each other for subscribers using OTT.

With the exception of Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and (if it doesn't acquire DirecTV,) AT&T, all of the other new competitors will have to go through telco ISPs or cable operators in order to get to consumers' homes. If cable operators set prices and/or terms & conditions that make servicing their customers with OTT video unprofitable or too complex, these new competitors could be killed in the womb. That's why I suggest that regulators set and enforce two conditions on both the Comcast-TWC and AT&T-DirecTV deals:

1. Both combined companies must offer all OTT services access to their Internet networks and subscribers under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.
2. Both combined companies must remove all clauses in their contracts with program suppliers that prohibit them from licensing their content to competitors, or that place significant restrictions on such licenses. In addition, they're prohibited from signing contracts with any such clauses in the future, and from using their influence and market power to informally persuade program suppliers not to deal with competitors.

Both conditions would last for five years from the day that each combined company finalizes its merger and begins operating as a single company. That would give competitors enough time to build their market presence and establish viable businesses, and also give the telecom industry five years to develop new ways for the OTT services to reach consumers without having to go through the incumbent cable operators.

Why the AT&T/T-Mobile deal may mean less than it seems

Earlier today, AT&T announced an agreement with Deutsche Telekom to acquire its U.S. T-Mobile operation for $39 billion in cash and stock. The timing of the announcement was very interesting: AT&T and T-Mobile chose to announce the deal on a Sunday, while Western forces are attacking Libya, the Japanese disaster continues and the U.S. college basketball championships are underway--in other words, when very few people are likely to pay attention to it.

Part of the companies' caution is due to the fact that the deal will undergo intensive investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice. There's an excellent chance that the deal will be challenged in court; it will add T-Mobile's 33.7 million subscribers to AT&T's 95.5 million, making the merged company the largest mobile operator in the U.S.

On the other hand, there's also a good chance that the deal will go through, at least in some form. T-Mobile is the Number 4 mobile operator in the U.S., the smallest of the four nationwide operators. It's struggling to come up with the capital to upgrade its network to the worldwide LTE standard, and despite its ads portraying its existing network as 4G, most consumers realize that it's not true. Both AT&T and T-Mobile use the same GSM transmission system (albeit at different frequencies), so integration of the two companies' networks will be much easier than if the rumored Sprint/T-Mobile merger had occurred.

AT&T is likely to argue that it's the most natural partner for T-Mobile, and that T-Mobile is unlikely to survive as a national operator in the long term if it stays independent, is acquired by a company with an incompatible infrastructure, or is acquired by a private equity investor that doesn't have extensive telecom experience.

The obvious concern is that an AT&T/T-Mobile merger will result in higher prices and poorer service for consumers, and given AT&T's prior track record with acquisitions, that's likely to be the case. Regulators may require the two brands to maintain separate identities, even if the infrastructure of the two companies is merged. My belief is that AT&T will continue to use T-Mobile as a "value" brand to compete with prepaid and lower-priced postpaid services from operators such as MetroPCS and Leap Wireless, but will migrate T-Mobile's most profitable customers to AT&T.

T-Mobile may not have much of a future in the U.S., whether or not the AT&T acquisition goes through. It's up to AT&T can convince regulators that the most likely outcome for an independent T-Mobile is, at best, to become a regional carrier without the scale to compete with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

AT&T will sell the Galaxy Tab for $650?

According to Engadget, AT&T has finally announced its pricing and availability for Samsung's Galaxy Tab Android tablet. AT&T carefully evaluated the prices announced by Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and in an effort to be competitive, priced its version of the Galaxy Tab at $650, $50 more than anyone else. AT&T stores will make it available on November 21st. To be fair, AT&T customers can use the same no-contract 250MB/$15/month and 2GB/$25/month data plans that the company offers for the iPad. However, given that the reviews for the Galaxy Tab have been far from positive (even David Pogue, who perhaps gave it the most glowing major publication review, said that it's too expensive at $599), AT&T's price might not matter all that much.

U.S. Cellular, a regional wireless carrier based in the Chicago area, also announced pricing and availability: $399 for a two-year contract and $599 without contract. Data rates are 200MB/$14.99/month and 5GB/$54.99/month. U.S. Cellular stores will have the Galaxy Tab available for sale on November 19th.

My recommendation is to wait until Google formally releases the Gingerbread version of Android (which will officially support tablets), and Samsung (and others) start shipping tablets with Gingerbread installed early next year.

The first Feldman File videoblog is live!

I've posted the first episode of the Feldman File videoblog to YouTube! Let's put it this way: It can only get better from here. I should have taken that scholarship to the Columbia School of Broadcasting when it was offered to me.

This week's episode covers the following news:

• Barnes & Noble's NOOKcolor eBook reader (and Android tablet wannabe)
• Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon have all set prices and availability dates for their versions of Samsung's Galaxy Tab Android tablet
• News from Adobe's MAX Developers' Conference
• Sencha Animator, a timeline tool for animation using HTML and CSS3, goes into beta
• Roku licenses the hardware and software behind its Internet set-top boxes to consumer electronics companies
• IDC reports that Apple has become the world's fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer, passing Research in Motion

T-Mobile to sell Samsung's Galaxy Tab for $399

T-Mobile announced today that it will match Sprint's price and sell its version of Samsung's Galaxy Tab Android tablet starting November 10th for $399 with a two-year contract and data plan. Its 200MB plan will cost $29.99/month, while the 5GB plan will cost $49.99/month, with discounts for existing T-Mobile customers. Prepaid mobile broadband plans are also available, but they're not cost-effective, and T-Mobile hasn't said that it will sell an unbundled version of the Galaxy Tab.

According to eWeek, Sprint's data plan options for its version of the Galaxy Tab are $29.99 for 2GB/month or $59.99 for 5GB/month. Verizon will only sell an unsubsidized version of the Galaxy Tab for $599.99, with a month-to-month 1GB data plan for $20/month. It's confusing, and probably deliberately so, but it looks like the best deal for people who want continuous data coverage but won't use a lot of bandwidth is the Sprint 2GB/month plan. Customers who will use a lot of bandwidth (primarily for video) should go with the T-Mobile 5GB/month plan. Verizon's price is appealing only for those customers that have to have a Galaxy Tab and will primarily use it on WiFi networks. For those customers, a WiFi-only iPad would be a better option.

Sprint offers Samsung Galaxy Tab for $399.99

According to Engadget, Sprint just because the second U.S. broadband service provider to price the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" Android tablet. Sprint will sell it for $399.99 starting November 14th for customers that commit to a two-year data plan, or $599.99 for customers that opt for month-to-month data coverage ($29.99 for 2GB/month or $59.99 for 5GB/month.) From the Sprint website, it appears that the monthly prices for the 2-year and month-to-month plans are the same.

The option to buy the Galaxy Tab at a subsidized price is likely to drive many more sales than Verizon's unsubsidized $599.99 pricing. However, AT&T and T-Mobile will also be carrying the Galaxy Tab, and they might offer even more aggressive offers when they announce their pricing.

PR Lesson 101 for Samsung: How to frustrate your audience

Samsung just concluded its U.S. announcement of the Galaxy Tab. The company had hyped the event online, and there was some live-blogging activity. Keep in mind that the Galaxy Tab was announced and demonstrated in detail more than a week ago at IFA in Berlin, and that announcement was widely covered. What the press, bloggers and early adopters were expecting to get from Samsung today were answers to three simple questions:

• Which carriers will sell the Galaxy Tab,
• What price(s) will they sell it at, and
• When will it be available?

Samsung only answered the first question. All four major U.S. carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) will carry it. The prices will be set by the carriers, and Samsung completely refused to answer any questions about specifics. Not a single carrier spoke at the event. As for availability, all they were willing to say was "before the holidays."

There were only two hardware announcements of note: First, Samsung will sell a (presumably unsubsidized) WiFi-only model in addition to the 3G/WiFi models that the carriers will sell, and second, the Galaxy Tab will not have voice calling capabilities. That's it.

This is PR 101: If you can't answer the questions that your audience is most expecting answers to, don't bother staging the event. When the event dragged on and on without any mention of availability or price, I was afraid that Samsung would do exactly what it ended up doing. It's shifted the burden on answering the key questions to its carriers, who are no doubt thrilled about it.

Samsung should have sent out a press release launching its website and posted videos and specifications of the product, including the video produced by Adobe, instead of having this event. The next time around, when the product is actually ready, far fewer people are going to pay attention to the announcement(s).

Kin's dead, Sidekick's dead, and what does Microsoft have to show for them?

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it killed its Kin mobile phone line, just two months after it was launched. The Kin won't be rolled out to Europe, and production has been halted on the two models sold in the U.S. Verizon will continue to sell existing inventory until it runs out. Today, T-Mobile announced that it's discontinuing sales of the Sidekick LX and Sidekick 2008, both of which were designed by Microsoft's Danger subsidiary and were precursors to the Kin. T-Mobile is apparently reserving the Sidekick trademark to use for future models, but they won't be compatible with the older models and won't use Microsoft's technology.

Microsoft's decision to kill the Kin was a smart one--the phones were out of sync with the current market. The two Kin models looked like smartphones but weren't--users couldn't add applications. Their original prices were close to smartphones, but without the functionality. To make matters worse, Verizon made buyers sign up for two years of a $30/month data service, the same price that they would have paid for a smartphone. The result was that sales were far below expectations.

Microsoft had originally planned to base the Kin phones on the Danger operating system, then spent 18 months moving them to a Windows CE-based platform. During the 18 months that it took for Microsoft to move from Danger to Windows CE, the smartphone market exploded, thanks to the iPhone and Android. Customer expectations were completely reshaped, and what was acceptable in late 2008 was no longer acceptable in 2010.

Similarly, T-Mobile's decision to kill the Danger-based Sidekick phones makes sense. It was clear that Microsoft was discontinuing any further effort to develop the Danger platform, and the current Sidekicks were getting very old, so it was time for them to abandon Danger and move to another platform.

The question is: Why did Microsoft take the Kin phones to market at all? The company had already announced its Windows Phone 7 platform, and when the Kin phones were launched, Microsoft made it clear that they couldn't be upgraded to Windows Phone 7. I'm sure that Microsoft had to make major financial commitments to Sharp, the manufacturer of the phones, both in NRE costs and in committing to volumes of product for inventory. Microsoft undoubtedly knew what Verizon's service pricing plan was, and should have known how unattractive it would be. It knew the market trends favoring smartphones. As good a decision as killing Kin was, it would have been a far better decision not to launch it in the first place.

And what about Danger? Microsoft spent $500 million purchasing the company in 2008, and now has abandoned both its software and hardware platforms. Microsoft says that some of the social networking concepts from the Kin will be implemented in Windows Phone 7, but it seems like very little return on a big investment.

Microsoft is gearing up for its launch of Windows Phone 7 this Fall, but its mobile operation appears to be in disarray. With Apple and Google piling success on top of success and RIM holding its own, there's virtually no room for Microsoft to make a mistake. They have to do everything right with Windows Phone 7 that they did wrong with Kin to have any chance of success.

Nexus One: First round, not the ballgame

After all the speculation and hype surrounding the launch of Google's first smartphone, the Nexus One, has come the reality: According to Flurry, which measures usage of smartphone applications, only about 20,000 Nexus Ones were sold in the first week. In my opinion, this is because customers have to purchase the phone directly from Google, even if they buy the subsidized T-Mobile version; it's not available in stores. Google's "the buck stops somewhere else" customer support plan is drawing criticism: For hardware problems, customers have to contact HTC, for software problems, Google, and for network problems, T-Mobile. Mobile subscribers are used to getting all their support from the carrier, and they expect Google to fill that role, but they're coming away frustrated and disappointed.

One one level, it appears that Google didn't think out the launch of the Nexus One very well. However, I believe that Google wants to become a mobile carrier, not just a supplier of software, services and advertising. The question is: What kind of a carrier does Google want to be?

They're probably not going to want to buy an existing carrier; that would be too expensive and carry too much baggage. Nor would they want to become a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator); at least in the U.S., no one has been successful reselling one of the major wireless carrier's services. Their best choice, and I think the one they're pursuing, is a combination of broadcast television bandwidth and the "white space" between television channels.

The FCC, which earlier was saying that it was likely to force broadcasters to give up bandwidth for broadband services, has now backed down and asked for voluntary participation. If broadcasters can see a financial upside to ceding bandwidth, they're much less likely to continue to fight proposals to use the white space between channels as well, for which they would have gotten nothing. By assembling bandwidth from existing television stations while using white space for other markets, Google and other companies could build broadband data services to rival the major mobile operators.

Google wouldn't even have to build out the network itself; it could invest in a company that plans to do it and reserve a portion of that company's bandwidth for itself. Once the network goes live, Google could sell its own wireless data service, probably at a fraction of the price of the major carriers, and offer voice as a VoIP service (which makes sense, given Google's acquisition of Gizmo5, a VoIP provider, last year.) Merging Google Voice and Gizmo5 would enable Google to offer a robust voice service without the massive infrastructure of the big mobile operators.

Once Google gets all of this in place, its own phones will work primarily on its network. It might offer dual-network versions that work on GSM or CDMA networks in the areas where Google doesn't have its own service, just as Sprint sells adapters and routers that connect to Clearwire's WiMax network where it's available and Sprint's own 3G network where it isn't.

The best way to look at the Nexus One is as the first step in a much longer-term strategy, and its customer service problems as "teething pains" on the way to becoming a mobile carrier.

The "Google Phone" (HTC Nexus One) Begins to Make Sense

A short time ago, Engadget posted part of the FCC certification for the HTC Nexus One, the phone that Google mass-distributed to its employees last weekend. There's been a lot of speculation that the GSM-compatible would be sold unlocked by Google (meaning that in the U.S., it would work with AT&T and T-Mobile.) Frankly, a lot of the story didn't make sense--why would Google start competing with its biggest distributors just as Android started getting market traction?

The FCC certification shows that the Nexus One will work on a variety of international GSM networks, but it will only work in the U.S. in G3 on T-Mobile--AT&T customers can use it as a phone, but data speeds will be limited to EDGE. And, now the story begins to make sense. T-Mobile has been Google's primary partner in the U.S. since the launch of the first Android phone, the G1.

So, here's my speculation: Google is going to sell the phone, and technically, it will work on either T-Mobile or AT&T, but there will be a special T-Mobile account just for the Google Phone. It will be based on T-Mobile's Pay-as-you-go pricing models, and it can be considerably less expensive than T-Mobile's prepaid plans because T-Mobile isn't subsidizing the price of the phone.

Google will, in my opinion, subsidize the price of the phone, because the user will be locked into a suite of advertising-supported Google functions that work anywhere, even on WiFi, and even if the Nexus One doesn't have any GSM SIM card at all. (Yes. that means that Google Phone users will be able to take advantage of Google Voice wherever there's an open WiFi hotspot.)

T-Mobile won't be threatened by the Google Phone, because they'll be the preferred broadband voice and data service. Verizon won't be threatened, because the T-Mobile 3G network is even less well built out than AT&T's. Sprint has a foot in just about every camp, and they're becoming less of a market factor every day. AT&T is hostile to Android, so there's no reason for Google to play nice with them. Perhaps most importantly, Google has a chance to dramatically increase market penetration of Android phones and the appeal of the Android platform to developers, and they'll move a lot more mobile advertising inventory.

T-Mobile customer service goes kablooey?

Last year, I bought a Samsung mobile phone and prepaid service from T-Mobile exclusively for travel. I haven't left town for several months, but I have to take a trip next week, so I decided to add some money to my account. I did that part online, and it worked fine...but the phone didn't. It said "No Service", even though I was getting a strong signal. So, I called T-Mobile, and got transferred...and transferred...and transferred. I was transferred to seven different people, finally ending up with someone in India on a connection so bad that I could barely hear her.

Ultimately, I found out that the account had expired, the phone number had been given to someone else (possibly not even a T-Mobile customer), and the company keeps no record of which numbers have been given to which customers once an account expires. I ended up having to visit a local T-Mobile store, which sold me a new SIM card and assigned me a new phone number. This number is only good for three months, unless I use up the current balance and add more time, which will buy me three more months. The customer service experience in the store was great; the experience on the phone was horrible.

Here comes the G1

Yesterday, T-Mobile and Google launched the G1, previously known as the HTC Dream, the first Android-compatible mobile phone. Comparisons with the 3G iPhone were immediate and obvious; the G1 is about the same height and width as the iPhone, but it's about twice as thick. It will sell for a little less, $179 vs. $199 for the 3G iPhone, and like the iPhone is available only on a two-year plan. The G1 has several more buttons than the iPhone, the most important of which are part of a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which, of course, the iPhone doesn't have.

As you'd expect, the G1 is very Google-centric; you have to have a Gmail account in order to use the phone, and all the other Google services are front-and-center. It has a lot of location-centric, GPS-based features--even more than the iPhone, and unlike the iPhone, turn-by-turn navigation applications will be possible. And, developers can add applications to the G1 without review or approval by Google or T-Mobile, so it's a far more open platform than the iPhone.

There is a "but", however, and as this video from Engadget shows, in this case the "but" is that the iPhone is just much better integrated, and operates much more smoothly, than the G1. However, that's to be expected, since Google's Android is designed to operate on a wide variety of devices, some of which Google will have very little control over, while the iPhone and the version of OS X that the iPhone runs are engineered together. Android is a "generalist" system, while the iPhone is very tightly integrated.

I'll withhold my final verdict until I can play with the G1 myself, but from everything I've seen, it's not as refined as either the iPhone or the most recent BlackBerry models, but nevertheless, it's a very good first effort.

Something's coming from Adobe and Google

I'll be following two big announcements tomorrow. First, Adobe will launch Creative Suite 4 at events around the world. In this column, I normally write about Flash Video, but the applications in Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Acrobat, are Adobe's true bread and butter. I've been using betas of Dreamweaver and Fireworks CS4 for some time; both products, which came from Macromedia in the Adobe-Macromedia merger, now look and feel more like Adobe applications. Whether that's better or worse depends on whether you prefer the old or new user interfaces. To my eye, the functionality of the CS4 applications has been modestly upgraded, at best. We'll know more tomorrow.

(Update 10:14 p.m. Pacific Time, September 22, 2008) Adobe has posted details of the new CS4 bundles on its website, prior to the announcement events tomorrow. As with CS3, there are seven bundles: Standard and Premium versions of the Web, Design and (Video) Production bundles, plus a Master Collection that includes everything. There are no bargains, either: Unless you were one of the few people who purchased 3.3 versions of the bundles, upgrades start at $499 for the Standard bundle versions, $599 for the Premium versions, and $899 for the Master Collection. If you're starting from scratch, the Standard bundles are $1,399, the Premium bundles are $1,699, and the Master Collection is $2,499. (All prices are in US dollars).

Image via CrunchBase
The bigger announcement, at least in terms of press interest, will be the T-Mobile/Google annoumcement of the first Android phone, the HTC Dream, and of the imminent completion of T-Mobile's 3G mobile service rollout throughout the U.S. Android phones will compete with iPhones and Windows Mobile-based smartphones at the top of the mobile phone food chain, and the Dream is rumored to sell for the same $199 price (on a two-year plan) as the base 3G iPhone. The Dream will have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which promises to make it easier to use for power emailers than the iPhone (yet most likely still at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the BlackBerry.) All of the applications in Google's Android store will be free, at least initially, and anyone can post applications (the countdown to the first Android malware has already begun.)

I've been playing with the Android development system on my PC for some time, but I'm reserving judgment on how the Dream performs until I get a chance to try it. I used to be a T-Mobile customer, and if the Dream lives up to the hype, I may well switch back. Again, more tomorrow.

I'm now following cameraphones...

Mobile World Congress,GSM,Nokia,Samsung,Sony Ericsson,Microsoft,Danger,Android,Google,T-Mobile,Sharp,Motorola,Apple,iPhone

Given the content of my previous post, I've decided to start following developments in camera phones. (Yes, I know, it's about time.) This is a good time to start, as the Mobile World Congress, covering everything to do with GSM, started today in Barcelona. So far, the state-of-the-art seems to be 5 Megapixel phones, new versions of which were announced by Nokia (the N96 and 6220 Classic), Samsung (the G810) and Sony Ericsson (the G900 and C902.) (Note that I'm not including launches of phones with 3MP cameras; if I did, the list would include three new models from LG.)

You may have also heard that Microsoft purchased Danger, the company that created the Sidekick phone for T-Mobile and other operators. (Danger's co-founder now works for Google and manages the Android mobile phone operating system project.) Danger farms out manufacturing to companies such as Sharp and Motorola, but this acquisition firmly puts Microsoft in the handset, not just the operating system, business. However, Danger has a miniscule share of the overall smartphone market, so it remains to be seen if Microsoft will actually market its own phones (and go head-to-head with Apple's iPhone) or use Danger to create reference designs that it will then license to other companies.