T-Mobile may be in fourth place when it comes to cell-phone carriers in the United States, but it is making a big move on April 12th in an attempt to change its position.

That's when T-Mobile will finally become an iPhone distributor, and it is asking current iPhone owners to come turn theirs in and upgrade to the new phone. The incentive to switch phone companies? For those who trade in their iPhone 4S or iPhone 4, they can get a iPhone 5 for $0 down plus monthly payments, according to a press release. If the phone is in decent shape, the consumer will get a $120 credit to apply to the payments, buy accessories with or pay off a T-Mobile bill.

Couple that with T-Mobile’s recent acquisition of MetroPCS and its announcement that it wouldn’t hold consumers to annual contracts and the company is clearly doing all it can [update: including new ads, below] to pull itself up into the ranks of Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.Continue reading...

It’s here, and it’s not just a phone. Facebook's highly anticipated event today confirmed swirling rumors that the social network would release a product closely tied to a mobile device, and that product is Facebook Home.

"We asked ourselves if sharing and connecting are what matter most, what would your phone be like if it put your friends first?" Facebook stated. "Our answer is Home. Home isn't a phone or operating system, and it's also more than just an app. Home is a completely new experience that lets you see the world through people, not apps."Continue reading...

Mobile companies are in a tough battle for market share and survival, and brands including Blackberry and T-Mobile are anxious to increase their piece of the pie.  

BlackBerry, the one-time darling of smartphone users has struggled to re-discover its place in the market next to stiff competitors like Apple and Samsung. The brand pinned its hopes on the Z10 that it introduced in January, and so far, results look good as it helped the company to its second consecutive quarter of profit. 

The phone has only been on the market for about a month and hasn’t set the world aflame but while it continues to roll out, the company formerly known as Research In Motion has announced that it will soon produce a few more mixed-price phones, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"I don't think anyone expects BlackBerry to dominate like they once did," said Al Hilwa, an analyst at industry consultancy IDC, to the Journal. "But the company can survive and even prosper with a microbrew of a platform, with 5 percent to 10 percent market share, if it can execute well and at the right scale."Continue reading...

In the past week, two second-tier mobile companies have made their move to get to the top. Blackberry (the mobile company formerly known as Research In Motion) just released its Z10 smartphone in the U.S, which didn’t cause too much fanfare out on the open market. That isn’t good news for the company, whose stocks tumbled after the debut flopped. 

T-Mobile on the other hand, is hoping for a much better return on its latest brand efforts. Long the resident of fourth place in the U.S. mobile market, the German company not only announced this week that it will offer bargain plans with no contracts but also started to roll out is 4G LTE service and announced that it will start offering the iPhone 5 to consumers on April 12.Continue reading...

We may live in an increasingly virtual world, but often it's what happens at live tech trade shows that sets the tone for what is to come. Such was the case with the flurry of major product announcements at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. 

This week's Mobile World Congress (MWC13) in Barcelona, Spain has been just as interesting, albeit for different reasons. One couldn't help but notice, for example, Samsung everywhere and Apple nowhere. Coming off its recent glitzy Super Bowl campaign with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen and Oscars ad campaign starring Tim Burton, Samsung had a dominant presence at MWC13, debuting the Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet as a competitor to the iPad Mini, touting its Android-powered Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II smartphones and proclaiming that it would double tablet sales from a year ago.

Samsung also aligned itself with the show introduction of Intel's Tizen, a new mobile operating system expected to challenge Google's Android. This could potentially put Samsung, which will launch Tizen-based phones this summer, on a collision course with Google, since Samsung currently makes more Android-based devices than any other manufacturer.

Of course, collision courses are nothing new for Samsung, the Korean behemoth that leads the world in cellphones.Continue reading...

Across the globe, people everywhere are pulling out their cell phones and tablets and e-readers—in buses and trains, in hallways and doorways, on beaches and ski lifts, in bedrooms and in bathrooms. Everywhere, the world is turning to look at mobile devices. Those devices may be getting all the attention out in the world, but the mobile world is much deeper than that, of course, and will have many ramifications for how the world lives.

The mobile world will be taking a close look at itself when the annual Mobile World Congress opens in Barcelona on Feb. 25th. To kick things off, the mobile world’s major association, the GSMA, will showcase how it expects mobile will change in the future by building a “Connected City” that expands on last year's connected house exhibit by featuring everything from a town hall, department store, and apartment to an electrical store, hotel, cafe and lounge, and a car showroom, among other things. With each location, different brands and innovations will be featured.

At MWC's fully connected city street, AT&T will showcase how people can manage their energy consumption and home security. Deutsche Telekom and IBM will show off how their using mobile help create better public transportation as well as  energy, security and water management. Aston Martin will show off a bike that features embedded sensors that communicate with an on-board computer to help athletes get a slew of data on how they are performing.Continue reading...

Since the rise of the iPhone and Samsung’s cooler-than-thou pursuit of Apple’s marketshare, BlackBerry has been the butt of plenty of jokes. Once the industry leader, BlackBerry suddenly had users who weren’t excited about showing off their mobile to their pals.

Lately though, things are looking up for BlackBerry Nation. A celebrity endorsement, the change in the company’s name from Research in Motion to BlackBerry and the unveiling of the BlackBerry 10 version of the phone last month has many of those who own BlackBerrys looking to upgrade.

The latest YouGov BrandIndex report finds 43 percent of BlackBerry owners surveyed planning to purchase a new phone in the next six months, up from 18 percent last year, and plan to stick with the brand. “This is the most popular the company and its products have been in the US since September 2011,” Agence France Presse notes.

BlackBerry execs can crow about such loyalty metrics with excitement a little, but only briefly. “A year ago, it looked like their customers were going to flee, but now [loyalty] has more than doubled,” Ted Marzilli, SVP and managing director of BrandIndex, tells Marketing Daily. “But what this [data] doesn’t say is if BlackBerry is attracting people from other brands.” The big question, Marzilli points out, is if this number can sustain itself or if it’s just a brief uptick.

Apple is still kicking BlackBerry’s butt with 85 percent of its smartphone buyers looking to upgrade within the brand in the next six months, YouGov notes. Slightly more than half of Samsung smartphone owners plan the same move.

Another metric that YouGov measures is brand perception and marketing buzz, asking survey participants if they’ve heard anything about the brand in the previous two weeks. Through its own scoring system, YouGov has had BlackBerry at near zero since December, but it has now gone up to seven. Samsung is at 16 and Apple is only one point higher. The latter has actually been falling on the list since its high of 38 in October when the iPhone 5 hit store shelves.

So, BlackBerry is pulling itself back up and getting back into the fight, right? It’s preparing to play the part of Rocky and take on the seemingly unstoppable machine of Ivan Drago (ad played by the iPhone). Well, it’s got a lot of work to do.Continue reading...

Any doubt that the BlackBerry 10 is central to the survival of Research In Motion was likely erased on Wednesday as the company not only unveiled its new operating system and phones, but changed its corporate name to "BlackBerry," too. "We have a fantastic brand, BlackBerry, and we are known as such all over the world, except in North America," CMO Frank Boulben commented in a video interview at the launch. "We wanted to take full advantage of that global, iconic brand."

"We have redefined ourselves inside and out," said CEO Thorsten Heins, speaking from New York to launch events held across the globe, including one held at the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, in its $650-a-night Armani Hotel. "RIM becomes BlackBerry. It is one brand, it is one promise." He declined to specify the company's marketing spend for the corporate rebrand and a global launch of BlackBerry 10 that includes Sunday's Super Bowl ad buy, but characterized it as in the "hundreds of million dollars."

That was partially evident at the New York launch with the introduction of Grammy Award winning singer Alicia Keys as the company's "global creative director." It's a trend that follows Lady Gaga's arrangement with Polaroid, will.i.am with Intel, Victoria Beckham with Range Rover, and Keys' husband Swizz Beatz with Reebok — and no doubt annoys creative directors.Continue reading...