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Posted
May 21 2008, 10:33 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Sprint Nextel has a problem keeping customers happy, according to the latest numbers from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Sprint's numbers are so bad, in fact, that the index's founder wonders how the company can even stay afloat. "Business is unsustainable in a competitive marketplace when customer satisfaction scores are as low as Sprint Nextel's," said the founder, Claes Fornell. Sprint's satisfaction level dropped 8% from last year to 56 on the 100-point index. Verizon scored the best in the industry, at 72. Commenters on this blog regularly slam AT&T for its service, but the company's cell phone division gained 4% to score a 71. You can see the full customer satisfaction index here.
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Posted
Sep 22 2009, 10:26 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 My sister wanted to get Apple's iPhone, but the service was so bad in Tucson, Ariz., that she decided against it. And Cnet's Elinor Mills writes that iPhone calls from her San
Francisco apartment are dropping or are garbled.
While the iPhone itself draws raves from adoring fans, AT&T's (T) wireless service leaves much to be desired for some. Mills says her iPhone service is so bad it's often easier to have a Web video conference than make a simple voice call. She called AT&T to ask why, and was told that maybe the thickness of her walls or the network demand were to blame. AT&T insisted the issue was not newsworthy. And presto: That's the fastest way to make sure a reporter treats something as newsworthy. Bing: How people deal with iPhone dropped calls
Mills' story seems to be touching a nerve,
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Posted
Dec 11 2007, 04:12 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 I ditched my landline telephone in June and don't miss it one bit. A federal study out yesterday shows that 14% of households in the U.S. are like mine -- with cell phones but no landline phones. (Read the study here.)
Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins estimates that wireless-only households will rise to 27% by 2010, and cable VoIP penetration will reach 25% by then. So is there a future in telco stock? Rollins thinks the industry is safe, because consumer telephony provides only 22% of telco revenue.
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Posted
Jul 11 2008, 09:36 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Uh-oh. Apple's rollout of its highly-anticipated 3G iPhone is hitting some snags this morning. Looks like the "unknown error" message came out of its slumber in the seventh circle of hell and decided to wreak havoc on iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Here's the wording that they see when trying to sync the device in iTunes: "We could not complete your iTunes store request. An unknown error occurred (-9838)." I hate those number codes in error messages, because I know they mean something but have no idea what it is. Apple shares are down 2% to $172.66 this morning.
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Posted
Jan 09 2008, 12:57 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A fairly obvious consequence of a troubled economy: People can't pay their bills. And AT&T shares are suffering as a result. The company said Tuesday it had to disconnect more broadband and landline phone customers for not paying their bills. AT&T stock got punished in the market, dropping 9.5% on the news. Shares were down slightly today to $38.96.
In an interesting sign of the times, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said the wireless side of the business was still OK. When the economy goes soft, people dump their landline phones first and hold on to their cell phones as long as possible, he said. In the old days, as News.com points out, people would never think about disconnecting their landline phone.
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Posted
Feb 11 2008, 01:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
AT&T gets another win today. Starbucks is ditching T-Mobile and going with AT&T for its customer Wi-Fi service at 7,000 locations.
People who have a Starbucks prepaid gift card can get two hours of free Wi-Fi per day at Starbucks. Glenn Fleishman confirms that you can buy and activate a card, and then get free Wi-Fi from that day forward. Most of AT&T's broadband and U-verse customers will also have free access, but AT&T wireless customers (including iPhone users) won't get the same deal. Surprisingly, the per-hour Wi-Fi fees will drop under AT&T to $4 for two hours or $20 per month for unlimited access. (T-Mobile used to charge $6 an hour).
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Posted
Mar 11 2008, 01:26 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
What a horrible day for Sprint shares. The stock hit a 20-year-low today. That's right, shares dipped to $5.55, the lowest level since July 1988. The stock price rebounded and closed at $6.17, down 8% from yesterday.
I can't find much reason for the tankage today, other than an analyst note from the Stanford Group lowering 2008 estimates to 23 cents per share from 43 cents. The analyst reviewed Sprint's last 10-K and thinks that Sprint's costs are going to go up. Last week, a Goldman Sachs analyst warned investors to "stay away from the stock." Looks like people are taking his advice. There's some piling on here in the analyst crowd, and I can't say it's unwarranted. But Wall Street's wildly varying expectations suggest a general cluelessness about where Sprint is headed. Analysts on average peg Sprint's 2008 profit at 21 cents a share. But the range of predictions goes from a 20 cent per-share loss to a profit of 87 cents.
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Posted
Mar 26 2008, 10:16 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Motorola announced this morning that it would break itself into two companies. By sometime next year the handset division will be pulled away from the mobility and enterprise divisions.
The problems is that, even broken into pieces, Motorola isn't worth more than its current market cap. The handset business is simply sinking too fast. (Update: After languishing most of day, the stock rallied to end regular trading up 2.6%.)
In the fourth quarter, Motorola's handset division revenue fell 38% to $4.8 billion. The operation lost $388 million compared to an operating profit of $341 million in the same period a year earlier. The company sold 40.9 million handsets in Q4.
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Posted
Mar 13 2008, 11:02 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Jonathan Goldberg seems like a glass-half-empty kinda guy. The Deutsche Bank analyst has been checking in with retailers for weeks about consumer electronics sales, and many companies told him they "have yet to see an impact" in earnings from any economic slowdown. Sounds great, right? Nope, Goldberg interprets that to mean the worst is yet to come. "The increase in gas prices and difficulties in home financing will have to reduce consumer spending, and as this becomes apparent to companies we will face a round of missed quarters and lowered guidance," he wrote in a note to investors. Goldberg cut price targets today on four companies: GPS device maker Garmin, wireless chipmaker Atheros, wireless networking hardware maker Netgear and mobile content maker Glu Mobile. Shares of all four companies are down today, and Glu Mobile seeing the worst drop of nearly 9%.
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Posted
Mar 06 2008, 12:11 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A friend of mine was thrilled to get an Apple iPhone for Christmas from his wife. But he returned it a few weeks later. Why? Because he couldn't access his work e-mail on the device. The iPhone, for all its cool features, lacked one essential tool: the ability to sync easily with corporate e-mail on the Microsoft Exchange server.
How many times has this story been repeated? That's why today's news from Apple is huge. The company said it will work with Microsoft to license the ActiveSync synchronization program, which lets iPhone users get e-mail, contacts and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange servers. It sounds like this could happen sometime in the summer.
The move means Apple is going after Research in Motion's ubiquitous BlackBerry in the corporate market. But this isn't a death knell for Research in Motion, which has a huge lock on enterprise customers. RIM had a 73% market share for smartphones in February, according to ChangeWave Research. Palm's market share has declined over the past year to 18%, and Apple's iPhone is around 5%.
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