Considering Sprint's financial position and the overall credit market, we're not exactly sure where the carrier managed to pick up $831 million, which it promptly used to acquire affiliate iPCS and take on $405 million of net debt. If you'll recall, the aforesaid youngin' was worrying papa way back in May of 2008, and it seems that Sprint has finally had enough of this whole "litigation" thing. The acquisition puts all of the court battling to rest (or at least it's expected to), enabling the operator to stop divesting its iDEN network in select iPCS markets. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure buys a good muzzle.

[Via Reuters]

Aside from pushing out around one phone per year (at best), Iridium Satellite really hasn't had a major impact on the market over the past ten years. 'Course, that's probably because it's hard to have much impact after seeking bankruptcy protection in 1999, but we digress. Starting tomorrow, new life will be breathed into Iridium thanks to a merger with publicly traded GHL Acquisition. If all goes to plan, the merger will add over $200 million to the company's bank account, enabling it to pay down debt and develop a next-generation network of satellites to be launched in 2014. Furthermore, $160 million will be raised by issuing another 16 million shares at $10 a pop, and a new label (Iridium Communications) will be thrown on for good measure. Only time will tell if the world really is ready to adopt satellite phones en masse, but if TerraStar's latest deal is any indication, we'd say chances are good halfway decent.

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg isn't too upbeat on the future of landlines, telling the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference today that the company is just not interested in telephones connected with wires. The chief exec of one of the nation's biggest telecommunications firms continued with his gospel, saying his "thinking has matured" and that trying to predict when the dwindling landline business will plateau is akin to "the dog chasing the bus." He says the new way of thinking is "liberating," but of course, endeavors like the Hub technically don't count as landlines to the company since it'sVoIP, and the coupled with its continued success as the largest cellular provider in terms of subscriber base, yeah, we're sure it's not too tough a pill to swallow. So how abut ramping up FiOS installations just a wee bit faster, eh Ivan?

HTC's been on somewhat of a hot streak here lately, but word on the street has it that the aforesaid outfit may not be able to ship all of its forthcoming handsets on time. A new Wall Street Journal report on falling revenue in the HTC camp notes that an undisclosed amount of delays, a larger-than-anticipated drop in contract orders and lower-than-expected sales in China could lead to drooping income in the short term, and some analysts are pointing out that the company's average selling price per phone is sliding due to looming Android competition from the likes of Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Aside from the Touch Pro2 that'll probably never, ever land on Sprint, HTC has about a gazillion other rumored handsets on the horizon, but it's hard to know for sure which "product launches" are expected to be stalled. So, is HTC secretly retooling a smattering of its handsets in order to stay one step ahead of SE and Moto? Or are old fashioned supply chain inefficiencies to blame?

See that image there on the right? Yeah, it's a pretty drastic departure from the Sad Moto™ face that had become all too common when talking about the company's financials. Just a quarter after posting a dreadful $291 million loss, the outfit responsible for creating the RAZR and then doing nothing for half a decade is finally showing a profit once more. The Q2 numbers show an "unexpected" $26 million profit on sales of $5.5 billion, $1.8 billion of which came from the handset division. Of course, that very division managed to lose $253 million and see its global market share slip to 5.5 percent, but with a big bang from Android reportedly just months away, CEO Sanjay Jha ain't taking time to frown.

Just hours after the Verizon-branded Sholes smartphone surfaced, Mr. Jha was quoted as saying that two Android devices would be "in stores for the holiday season," with launches occurring on "two major carriers in North America and multiple carriers outside the US." He also noted that plans were in place to ship "several additional Android-based devices in the first quarter of 2010," but details beyond that were vague. So, is this the beginning of a new, happier Moto? Our aged copy of Photoshop certainly hopes so.

Read - Motorola's Q2 results
Read - Jha on future Android devices

We've yet to see Palm or Sprint confirm these numbers, but a quote from JPMorgan found in a Wall Street Journal roundup this morning asserts that "sales [of the Pre] in the first two days probably exceeded 50,000." The report continues by mentioning that said figure was "aligned with expectations, but probably fell short of the 146,000 reported first-gen iPhone sales" during its opening weekend due to "capacity constraints in manufacturing." By and large, most analysts are deeming the Pre launch a success, though it's hard to say whether the suits at Palm and Sprint agree or disagree. No matter how you slice it, 50,000 units in a single weekend ain't nothing to scoff at, but we'd say next weekend's sales could be even more telling. You know, if anything goes down today at 1:00PM ET.

[Via ZDNet]

Update: A new WSJ report now says analyst ranges are between 50,000 and 100,000. Heck, maybe Palm sold eleventy billion.

See folks, this is the kind of mess you end up with after you gleefully do a deal with the devil. According to a roundup of reports over at Unwired View, three of Russia's major mobile operators could be looking at massive (we're talking hundreds of millions of bucks) fines if they can't sell through their iPhone allotments, and unless a significant market shift happens within the next few months, that situation seems remarkably unlikely. We're told that Vimpelcom pledged to sell 1.5 million iPhones within two years, while Megafon committed to 1 million and MTS the same. Today, just 900,000 iPhones have been imported to Russia, with over half entering the country via grey market channels; we'll let you figure out the math there, but it ain't pretty for Russia's carriers. Of course, we're not shocked in the least -- after getting burnt by a bootable-but-not-usable iPhone over there, are you seriously going to give Apple another chance to win you over?

[Thanks, Staska]

Take it from Garmin-Asus -- making a smartphone ain't exactly easy sauce. Regardless of the facts, ViewSonic has decided it prudent to jump head first into the tumultuous waters known only as "the smartphone industry," announcing today plans to create its very own offering that'll undoubtedly compete with the likes of HTC, Samsung, LG, Apple and the rest of the gang. The portfolio addition brings it a major step closer to realizing a "3- to 300-inch product line," but outside of a launch pattern, no details whatsoever were dished out. We're told that China will get the phone first, with Europe and the Americas following suit. We'll go ahead and start the vaporware watch now, just so we aren't caught off guard when there's nary a mention of this at CES 2010.

Truthfully, we wouldn't put too much stock in that headline considering that Samsung Mobile Display, a company that makes its ends off of selling active-matrix OLEDs, is the source. But on the other hand, we can definitely see it coming to fruition. According to a new report, said outfit has stated that OLED screens of some sort will be on over half of all mobile phones (not just smartphones, mind you) within the next five years, and that these same power-sipping displays will be on 20 percent of digital cameras and 30 percent of portable game players (PSP2, anyone?) within the same window of time. While it may seem a bit far-fetched now, we actually have good reason to believe that OLED adoption will indeed skyrocket on the small scale; it's those big screen TVs that we're worried only our grandchildren will truly enjoy.

[Via OLED-Info]

So, there's good news and bad news here, and we're opting to go against tradition by dishing out the positive first. Nokia just pushed out its Q1 2009 results, and while many firms have been struggling to stay afloat, at least it managed to turn a profit of €122 million ($160 million). That said, it's still looking at a staggering 90 percent drop in profits compared to its first quarter of 2008, where it raked in a mind-boggling €1.222 billion ($1.6 billion). Not surprisingly, sales were also down 27 percent to €9.28 billion ($12.2 billion) from €12.7 billion ($16.7 billion). Of course, Nokia's far from being alone in having to showcase less-than-beautiful Q1 numbers, but in reality, the damage could've been much worse; in fact, shares of the company's stock inched up by 8 percent following the reveal, as many had feared an even more significant decline. All in all, Nokia's still holding strong to a 37 percent market share worldwide, and if CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has anything to do with it (hint: he does), things should be on the up and up here soon.

[Via BBC]

We'd already heard that right about now was a great time to be in the prepaid cell business, and that's being proven quite definitively by MetroPCS' Q1 subscriber results. We're told that the firm saw a net addition of 684,000 customers in the first three months of 2009, representing an astounding 51 percent increase year-over-year. While celebrating mightily, the company also saw fit to introduce a "one-call communication solution targeted at families and friends who are trying to save money in today's economy by 'cutting the cord' and replacing their landline telephones with wireless phones." Said "landline replacer" is called GroupLINE, which enables up to five MetroPCS Family Plan subscribers to receive calls on a shared GroupLINE number while still maintaining their individual mobile numbers -- all for just $5 per month. So, anyone looking to tighten the belt by going prepaid? Your options are getting good.

[Via GigaOM]

Read - MetroPCS results
Read - GroupLINE launch

So, what's a flagging cellular operator to do once it has succumbed to the grim realization that no one wants to sign up for your service and you've already collected the dough from selling off nearly all of your towers? Go wholesale, of course! Unbeknownst to most, all of the Kindle downloads on Amazon's white-hot e-reader go through Sprint's network, and given just how successful that little venture has been, the carrier is hoping to expand its revenues from wholesaling bandwidth (which currently sits at just 3 percent of its total) by inking similar deals with connected gadget makers. From internet-connected vehicles to GPS systems to cameras, the options are darn near limitless, and with so much free capacity on Sprint's network, it might as well find companies to use it. 'Course, it's not like Sprint's the only one out there trying to carve these kinds of deals into stone, but it's definitely the one that needs to do it most immediately.

Quite honestly, we can't imagine now as being an awesome, jovial time to be heading up any division of Sony Ericsson. Thus, we're not too awfully shocked to hear that Najmi Jarwala, President of Sony Ericsson USA and Head of Region North America (comprising the US and Canada markets), has decided to leave his corner office at the end of March in order to "pursue other career opportunities." The announcement comes just a weekend after SE proclaimed that its Q1 sales were down some 50 percent, and with the outfit's somewhat lackluster showing at MWC (Idou notwithstanding), we can't imagine things magically turning around in the near future. At any rate, Anders Runevad (pictured), Executive VP and Head of Global Sales & Marketing will be taking over until a successor is named, and that's assuming anyone is willing to walk into such a severely precarious situation.

[Via MobileBurn]

Great job, thief. Just days after Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo had his HTC handset stolen at Mobile World Congress, the guy has decided that enough is enough. All kidding aside, Sol Trujillo has indeed announced his intentions to vacate his seat and return home to the United States. During his four years as head honcho, the Australian operator has managed to do quite well for itself, and as they say, there's no better time to leave than while on top. He has vowed to keep pressing on until June 30th, after which he'll hop a (presumably first class) flight back to the US of A and watch Telstra attempt to fill his shoes -- probably from a sweet shack in Key West, if we had to guess.