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Best Buy Mobile’s Holiday Playbook got scooped recently and there’s not only some nice tidbits about what to expect in the coming holiday season, but also what a few clues as to how Best Buy will be working to broaden its bottom line, which means some customers are going to be slightly more pampered than others. For starters, Best Buy has found out;

1. The average store sees over 64,000 customers during October and November
2. Out of those customers, only 1% receive an upgrade eligibility check on their accounts
3. Of the 1% who get upgrade checks, around 30% are actually eligible for upgrades
4. If stores increase the amount of customers checked to 2% from 1%, Best Buy Mobile would see an increase in revenue of around $20,000 for those two months, just off upgrading individuals
5. After customers upgrade their handsets at Best Buy Mobile, around 16% of them come back and make other purchases later

Interesting. So this means all you existing customers can expect some extra Best Buy love. As for new releases for the holiday season, you can expect;

1. Nokia Booklet netbook — October 25th launch, and can be activated on AT&T
2. Sprint HTC Hero — launching October 11th with a presale going on now
3. Sprint Palm Pixi — launch date to be decided (TBD)
4. Verizon Storm II — launch date TBD
5. Verizon Android device — launch date TBD
6. T-Mobile CLIQ — launch date TBD (but you know that it will be shipping after October 19th up until general release November 2nd)
7. “New BlackBerry devices across multiple carriers” — launch date TBD
8. There will be a “host of devices launch in late October and November for all carriers.” Multiple Android launches across multiple carriers and “new technology which doesn’t exist today.”

So there you have it, an early gist of the coming holiday spirit from Best Buy mobile.

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Holding your breath for the Motorola CLIQ are you? Well, you can ease up as T-Mobile has announced pre-order details and pricing for Moto’s first Android handset. Existing customers can place pre-sale orders from October 19th through November 1st. The device will debut in stores the day following the end of pre-sales, which would be November 2nd. There had been some pretty strong rumors that T-Mobile would offer the first ever Android handset for free, and as much as we love rumors (they give us reason to hope after all), sometimes they turn out to be…rumors. If you want a CLIQ, you’ll have to break you piggy bank and count out exactly $199 worth of dimes and quarters boys and girls. That’s the price of a new two-year contract and a $24.99 data plan. The CLIQ features a 5 megapixel camera and snappy UI with memory expansion support for up to 32GB. Not a bad offering.

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Globalive Wireless Management Corp., the company that scored high at last year’s Canadian AWS auction (not to mention gives very nasty lip service to Bell, Rogers and TELUS) has announced that it will be offering its HSPA services in the Canadian marketplace as WIND. WIND is already a hit in Europe, particularly in Italy (motherland) and Greece. The Canadian brand owners are now hoping “not only leverage WIND’s challenger status, but also its operational intelligence and experience.”Expect to see WIND launch in key markets later this year with general availability (excluding Québec) in 2010. Looking to the furture, WIND will be making the transition from HSPA to LTE, although a time line for the move hasn’t been made public as yet.

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Rogers is steadily sending out its equalitarian message; I’m not prejudiced, I hate everybody. A few months ago when Rogers increased its HUP (hardware upgrade programme) policy for smartphones from 12 months to 24 months, smartphone users with the carrier were understandably disgruntled. Now the gesture is being extended to dumphone owners too. As of August, the minimum length of an HUP must be 24 months no matter handset you have. Rogers told its employees in an internal memo that the reasons for the decision are two;

1. Network upgrades are expensive (seems like subscribers will be paying for upcoming 21Mbps HSPA+ deployment and that eventual transition to LTE), and
2. The high quality handsets that Rogers is brining on board will make annual upgrades meaningless. (yeah right!)

Here’s the internal memo that caused all the trouble;

**IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT**

Policy change to Hardware Upgrade Program eligibility

(applies to non BPR/MSD customers)

The Hardware Upgrade Program will now provide a consistent minimum eligibility rule for all customers and eliminate the 3-5 day wait time between a data to data HUP cancellation and the processing of the new HUP.

Effective August 21, 2009, a minimum tenure of 24 months since initial activation or last upgrade will be required before a customer is eligible to participate in the hardware upgrade program.  This change aligns all upgrades (voice, voice to data and data to data) with the current data to data HUP policy.

This change also reinforces the importance of explaining to customers that HUP eligibility and quoted hardware/plan pricing are subject to change without notice and cannot be guaranteed beyond the time of quotation.

Update to HUP eligibility:

The updated HUP eligibility rule of 24 months minimum tenure since a customer’s last upgrade or activation date will be system enforced and no exceptions will be allowed. All other standard HUP eligibility rules still apply.

Reasons for the update to the HUP:

• Rogers Wireless heavily invests in providing the latest data devices at affordable prices to our data customers. This update to the Hardware Upgrade Program is designed to offer a consistent upgrade eligibility to an outstanding selection of the most advanced devices for the best value.
• In addition to the outstanding selection of available devices, there has also been improved level of quality and technology that has gone into the line-up over the past years allowing a longer hardware lifespan.

Customer impacts:

• Please always check the customer’s account in Vision21 for HUP eligibility to ensure the customer is provided with correct eligibility information.
• Customers may have been eligible and now eligibility may have changed as a result of this update.
• Customers may have been aware of their eligibility prior to the update, but did not take advantage of the program at the time and are currently not eligible as a result of the update.

Positioning:

• HUP eligibility as well as quoted hardware/plan pricing are subject to change without notice and cannot be guaranteed beyond the time of quotation.
• Rogers Wireless sells devices at a significantly lower price than the true value/cost of the device. This update to the Hardware Upgrade Program allows us to continue to offer the best devices at the best value in a fair timeframe for all of our customers.
• Please note that the information in this bulletin applies to the standard HUP program, and does not take into consideration any existing promotions that may require different eligibility. Always remember to consult the Sales Central bulletins to read the latest in HUP offers.

Thank you for your continued support.

Canada, Exclusives, greed, Hardware Upgrade Program, HUP, Rogers, upgrade

Finally some WiMAX news. While Clearwire and Sprint’s 4G services continue to confuse everyone as to each one’s jurisdiction, its good to know that some parts of the United States actually are getting WiMAX. According to the usual run-of-the-mill boring press release, Sprint will be bringing its WiMAX support to Las Vegas, NV; Portland, OR and Atlanta, GA. Th. If Sprint manages to stay on schedule, it may well follow through on its WiMAX roadmap. As for pricing, Sprint’s 4G broadband mobile plan will cost you $69.99 per month for unlimited 4G (includes 5GB of 3G data) and $10 day passes are available.

here, here and here (yes all of them!)

Oh hello Canadians, how’s life treating you? Well no matter how it’s been treating you till now, it’s going to get better. At leaset for the ‘berry crowd. BlackBerry fans will jump in their seats to know that the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has popped up in Bell’s inventory system. The above screen shots are those lovely leaked images of Bell’s inventory that tell us what the carrier is up to. of course, Bell has had handsets in its inventory for a good part of four months or so before it actually let its subscribers get their hands on them…so make sure you have something to fill the time from now till an official release with.

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Back at the CES it was announced that a GSM version of the Palm Pre would also come out and soon. Now with the Pre out on Sprint and Bell for a while, it was a painstaking wait to see if the U.S. 3G bands would be part of the deal or not. And a recent bit of info given out by the Wi-Fi Alliance reveals that indeed U.S. 3G bands are indeed on board the new GSM version of the Palm Pre. Yay! So this means with 850/1900MHz UMTS/HSPA we may hope to see the Pre on AT&T after Sprint\s exclusivity period ends. As for Canada, probably either Rogers or TELUS may get it after Bell’s exclusivity ends. Looking good.

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DigiTimes, the Chinese tech journal got a hold of HTC CEO Peter Chou and in the very brief interview that ensued, they got some tasty tidbits for all of us. The biggest bit of info they were able to pry was that HTC has sold over 1 million Magic units by the start of August. The Magic initially came out this year in April has made the millionth mark in impressible little time. It’s not as big a number as that of the iPhone or the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but it’s impressive nevertheless. Beyond the sales figures, Chou also revealed that HTC was planning on shifting focus towards more mid-range smartphones during the remaining half of 2009. The target price range of these handsets will be around $300. All we can say is, we look forward to it.

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The times of Napoleon and his “divide and conquer” routine are long gone. In fact if you look at Verizon, it’s more like building the Roman Empire with some of its recent policies. There was the recent one which allowed the little people, meaning small carrier of 500,000 or less subscribers to have access to VZ’s exclusive and newly launched handset lineup six months post launch at VZ. VZ has now forwarded a recommendation to several U.S. senators suggesting that the bigger carriers should cut the little guys some slack and some law be implemented to make it mandatory for these big carriers to go into some kind of roaming agreement with the little guys in areas where they don’t have coverage. The agreements should span for two years so that the little guys can build there own networks and nominate VZ for the humanitarian carrier award or something. You know someone once said you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but one guy who is not be fooled is Laurie Itkin, the director of Government affairs who had this to say about VZ and its benevolent propositions:

Verizon itself has relied on roaming agreements for over two decades as it built out its network and acquired competitors, but now has unilaterally decided that its remaining competitors are only entitled to roaming for two or three years.

Now Laurie may be stretching I a bit but he has a stretched point, for all we know the VZ empire is about to strike and consume all the little carriers that stand I its way of global domination and this is just the first step. Pause for evil laugh. But some law is better than no law and this might actually end up putting a little water on VZ who have steadily expanded its network through the little people.

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Both Canadian and U.S. users may soon have a pretty good reason to twitter and widget about. The royal family at the FCC has knighted the Samsung Omnia 2 and this is a pretty good spanking reason for us to believe that it will come to the U.S. and/or Canada soon. Not all documentation is out there but as for so much that is, it can be deducted that the Omnia2 has UMTS 850/1900. An all go for both the AT&T and Rogers’ networks. Whether either of them will carry the handset is not clear but for fans of the Omnia2 and of Samsung here is a refresher of the specs.

• GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 850/1900 MHz, HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA5.76 Mbps
• 3.7-inch WVGA (480×800) AMOLED touchscreen, Advanced R touch (Resistive)
• Memory: 8/16GB storage memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB total)
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, TouchWiz 2.0 UI with 3D effects
• 800 MHz processor
• 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus, dual LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, image stabilization, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and D1 video recording at 15 fps
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, standard microUSB port, standard 3.5mm audio jack, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Accelerometer
• DivX/XviD video support
• FM radio with RDS
• DNSe
• Dimensions: 118 x 59.6 x 11.9 mm
• 1500 mAh battery

Here’s another in a long line of hot WinMo touchScreen handsets. But we still love it.

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