Nokia is showing signs of life, proving it can rush product to market, innovate and maybe even get something commercial out of its research and development. It’s early, but there are signs of life here. Perhaps Nokia won’t be road kill for Android and Apple’s iOS. Let’s connect a few positive data points for Nokia. …

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse made his case for bringing the Apple iPhone to the carrier and argued that a short-term financial hit in the years ahead is worth the long-term gain. Sure, the iPhone has a pricey contract, but the device will bring customers to Sprint and help the company become profitable faster. Hesse likened the iPhone to an expensive …

Research In Motion’s rolling global outages could be a major body blow for a company looking to get off the mat. In fact, the timing of these outages is simply brutal. RIM tweets about BlackBerry outages. Twitter; screenshot by Larry Dignan/ZDNet Here are the moving parts: RIM is trying to convince folks to buy its BlackBerry 7 devices and has …

Research In Motion’s co-CEO structure is under fire, and the vultures are starting to circle. After BlackBerry product miscues and a vacuum of new devices, RIM’s fate is increasingly looking murky. RIM’s shareholder meeting is worth a listen just to gauge the line between the realities of co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. In many respects, the shareholder meeting yesterday …

Research In Motion reports its fiscal first quarter results on Thursday, and analysts are decidedly gloomy about the company’s prospects. The big questions: did RIM’s PlayBook tablet launch deliver sales momentum and did that device suck too much wind out of development for other products? RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9900 T-Mobile Reading through the research notes on RIM is a bit …

Nokia likely extracted a one-time $608 million payment from Apple as the companies settled their patent litigation, but the long-term health of the company depends on products not royalties. Following news that Nokia settled its patent litigation with Apple, which is now licensing patents from its rival, analysts quickly moved to figure out the revenue impact. Nokia said that Apple’s …

Apple may be plotting a low-cost iPhone–most likely the 3GS–in a move to tackle emerging markets, prepaid plans, and midmarket customers. If this working-class iPhone hits the market it will be disruptive to Android as well as Research In Motion, which is living off its low-cost Curve. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek works through the math and concludes that Apple can …

Cisco Systems delivered better-than-expected third quarter earnings today, and CEO John Chambers said the company has “a clear game plan” to “transition to the next phase.” As noted previously, it was a busy quarter for Cisco, which exited its Flip camera business and reorganized to improve focus. Cisco reported fiscal third-quarter earnings of $1.8 billion, or 33 cents a share, …

Facebook and Google are reportedly pondering either an acquisition of Skype or a joint venture and strategically the two buyers couldn’t be more different. Reuters reports that Facebook and Google are pondering some sort of deal with Skype, which delayed an IPO. Talks are very early so it’s unclear what will happen if anything. But let’s zoom out a bit. …

Sprint Nextel’s fourth quarter highlighted a company that has rebounded nicely, with almost 1.1 million net subscriber additions, including prepaid and postpaid customers. However, Sprint could have to pony up some cash to support Clearwire, the partner that runs the carrier’s WiMax network. First, the highlights. Sprint added 58,000 postpaid subscribers, 519,000 net subscribers to its brand and prepaid subscribers …