From “SuperNews!” An animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV. Too Funny!

(Credit: Gizmodo)

Over the last few months rumors have continued to swirl around a possible Verizon-Apple deal to bring the iPhone to Verizon once Apple’s exclusive pact with AT&T expires in 2010. But Tuesday BusinessWeek added a new twist to the rumor, reporting that Verizon and Apple are in talks to develop two new wireless devices that may hit the market this year.

Allegedly, one device would be a thinner, lighter, and lower-priced version of the iPhone–an iPhone Lite, if you will. While the other device would be something akin to the jumbo iPod Touch that we wrote about previously. BusinessWeek’s anonymous source describes it as a “media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos.”

The source, who claims to have seen the new media pad, says it’s “smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touch-screen is bigger than the Kindle’s.” It would be able to place calls over Wi-Fi and a high-speed wireless data connection from Verizon. Read the rest of this entry »

storm

Amid all the talk about what the iPhone has done for AT&T, Verizon is also delivering — without a killer handset.

Verizon offers a wide choice of handsets, including a BlackBerry lineup.

Verizon narrowly beat AT&T in new customers in the most recent quarter, netting 1.3 million new subscribers vs. the 1.2 million added by AT&T, and it did so without the latter’s advantage of the exclusive, sought-after smartphone from Apple. Verizon now has 86.6 million customers to AT&T’s 78 million.

Verizon’s first-quarter sales rose about 3% to $26.6 billion, and its wireless-service revenue grew 29% from a year ago. The carrier’s net income was $3.2 billion, up from $3 billion a year ago.

The results emboldened Verizon President-Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl to take a swipe at AT&T’s strategy of making the iPhone a centerpiece of its wireless business. Responding to a report during the company’s earnings call that Verizon was negotiating with Apple to sell the iPhone after AT&T’s exclusivity agreement ends next year, Mr. Strigl said Verizon has “not been dependent on any one device. … We have a strong handset lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

app store icons

A Connecticut teenager is the winner of Apple’s Billion App Countdown contest, the company has announced. Connor Mulcahey — a 13-year-old from the town of Weston — is being awarded the grand prize, which includes a MacBook Pro, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and an iTunes gift card worth $10,000. On the afternoon of April 23rd Mulcahey downloaded Bump, a free app which swaps contact information when two users bump fists.

Needham analyst Charlie Wolf notes that the billionth app was downloaded only nine months after the opening of the App Store, which may be symbolic of a growing software advantage for Apple in the smartphone realm. While competitors such as Palm and Research in Motion have announced their own app distribution methods, Wolf suggests that it may be difficult or impossible to overcome Apple’s head start. Increased marketshare for the iPhone is virtually guaranteed, says Wolf. (From ipodNN.)