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Get ready for the weekend my friends, but before you do let’s catch up on all the events unfolding late last night at early this morning with your Morning Mobile Minute. Starting things off are our friends from Cupertino, CA. Apple has officially removed the handcuffs from developers by enabling purchases from within free apps in their App Store. Prior to today Apple had only allowed in-app sales of content, subscriptions and digital services for apps costing at least 99 cents.
The white BlackBerry Bold isn’t the only change coming to At&t’s BlackBerry lineup this month. According to At&t’s twitter account, a camera-less version of the Bold 9000 will be available today, Friday, October 16th. I guess this is good news if your company is paying for the Bold and you haven’t had a chance to own the device due to camera restrictions.
At&t struck out again at Google over their Google Voice service, arguing the offering blocks calls to Benedictine nuns and small businesses. AT&T, in sharp language, asserted Google is openly trying to mislead the FCC about the nature of the service. It looks like the bickering and whining will continue for quite some time between the two giants.
In WiMAX news, Time Warner has announced that they will begin selling their own branded 4G service using Clearwire’s WiMax network. At the moment both Sprint and Comcast resell mobile WiMax, but the deal with Time Warner would be limited to 3 cities in North Carolina on Dec 1st. The company also plans to launch services in Dallas and Hawaii in 2010.
Walmart has entered a partnership with Tracfone to begin offering a contract free cell service of its own called Straight Talk. For $30/month you will get a plan that offers 1,000 minutes, 1,000 text messages and 30MB of data for surfing the web. The plan is active for 30 days and also comes with unlimited 411 calls. If you want a fully unlimited plan it will run your $45/month.Walmart will offer a handful of phones that take advantage of its Straight Talk plans, including the LG 220 ($39.98), the LG Slider 290 ($79.98), and the Samsung 451 ($99.88) which has a full QWERTY keyboard. Customers can purchase devices and sign up for plans in stores or online by visiting Walmart.com, or StraightTalk.com
HTC has begun to change their U.S. branding on their website with a new catch phrase, “quietly brilliant”. The new site design and motto are part of an overall strategy that the manufacturer hopes will boost sales and help maintain their dominating market share.
And last this morning is Windows Mobile news from Verizon Wireless. First, a new Windows Phone commercial for the Verizon Wireless HTC Imagio has been released. The second bit of news is that the HTC Touch Pro2 is now back in stock on VerizonWireless.com after being out of stock for quite some time. Hopefully Big Red ordered enough Touch Pro2 units this time and we won’t see customers put in the same situation.