Going down smoother than a bottle of aged whiskey, it’s your morning US Update. Kicking things off this fine morning is official shipments numbers of the Motorola Xoom, a warning issued by RIM that smartphone shipments will not meet forecasts and a 3D navigation update to Samsung’s Galaxy players. This and more on your US Update.
More than 250,000 Xooms have been shipped by the manufacturer during the first quarter of 2011, a respectable number, but shipments and actual device sales are quite different from a retail perspective. Combined with 9.3 million mobile device, 4.1-million representing smartphones, and it’s easy to see why Motorola’s net revenues were up 30 percent compared with the year-ago quarter.
Changes were brewing between Orange and T-mobile during the first quarter as 2G national roaming was extended to 15.1 million customers, resulting in 350 million calls completed using the alternate network over the quarter. Thanks to 160,000 customer additions, the combined networks are now home to 27.7 million.
RIM’s BlackBerry smartphone shipments for fiscal Q1 2012 were forecast in the range of 13.5 to 14.5 million units. RIM now expects the actual number to be closer to the lower end of that range, roughly 13.5 million. Of those 13.5 million devices, the company expects a lower average selling price. As a result, revenue is expected to be slightly below the original forecast of $5.2-5.6 billion.
Short of an updated Motorola Xoom fact sheet, Sprint’s Xoom will be the same WiFi-only version currently on sale across many parts of the world. One could argue the logic behind the madness is that customers hoping to tap into Sprint’s 4G data speeds may do so with their current smartphones and enable the mobile hotspot feature to share the high-speed love.
Samsung is treating all three of its Galaxy Players (YP-GB1, YP-GB70, SHW-M180) to a well-deserved upgrade. By way of a press release this afternoon, Samsung announced its Galaxy players would be updated to Thinkware’s new ‘Navi 3D’ Android UI, navigation and optimization.
That wraps up the latest and greatest in the world of tech news. As always I’m Nick Marshall and I’ll see you again tomorrow.
