Palm, taking $142.5 million in restructuring and asset impairment charges, swung to $172.3 million 3rd-quarter loss from $2.9 million profit year earlier as revenue fell to $209 million from $292.7 million. At same time, Palm postponed planned spin- off of PalmSource operating system subsidiary to midyear from spring, citing need to complete required filings. Delay comes despite Palm’s making what CEO Eric Benhamou termed “substantial progress” toward goal of making PalmSource free-standing company. Largest portion of Palm’s charges was $100 million write-down on value of 39-acre parcel of land in San Jose that it purchased for $160 million in 2001, but now is worth $60 million, CFO Judy Bruner said. It also took charges of $7.1 million to cover severance for 18% cut in work force and $22.4 million write-down of equipment and building in Cambridge, Mass. Palm sold 1 million handhelds in quarter, led by low-priced Zire ($99), down from 1.2 million year ago and 1.4 million in 2nd quarter. Average selling price rose to $169 from $160 year ago, but down from $183 in 2nd quarter, company said. Top performer was Zire, which has sold 850,000 units since shipping worldwide last Oct., company said. Palm’s newer models, including Zire, Tungsten T and Tungsten W, accounted for 49% of units shipped in quarter and 45% of revenue, Benhamou said. Palm Solutions, which is responsible for hardware, reported sales plunged 33% from year ago to $197.9 million, but those of PalmSource rose to $26.2 million from $20.4 million. PalmSource, which has 15 licensees including 8 that are marketing Palm OS-based product, reported $2.2 million operating profit, reversing $3 million operating loss year ago. Sales to Palm Solutions represented 59% of PalmSource revenue, with other licensees including Sony, accounting for rest. Late in quarter, Palm shipped “several thousand” units of its Tungsten W combo handheld PC/GSM-GPRS cellphone that’s being sold in U.S. for AT&T Wireless and other services. Downturn in revenue in quarter was attributed in part to lower-than-expected sales of Tungsten product. However, sales of Bluetooth-enabled Tungsten T spiked in Feb. after Palm lowered retail price month earlier by $100 to $399, Benhamou said.
The FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs (CGA) Bureau has made significant progress in resolving slamming complaints, Bureau Chief Dane Snowden told reporters at a briefing Thurs. He said the Bureau released 507 slamming orders in 2002, resolving 782 consumer complaints, a 750% increase over the previous year. He said 36 states now had enforced slamming rules, “a great example” of how states deal with slamming. However, Snowden said complaint activity within the top categories as a group rose in the 3rd quarter, spurred by sharp increases in Wireless and Wireline complaints. He said the Bureau released a “Report of Informal Consumer Inquiries and Complaints” for the 3rd quarter showing that wireless complaints increased 52.5%, and wireline complaints 28.2%. Snowden stressed that complaints didn’t necessarily indicate wrongdoing by a company as the FCC received many informal complaints that didn’t involve violations of the Communications Act or Commission rules. He said the rise in complaints could be partly explained by the increased number of subscribers. The report said billing and rate complaints accounted for more than half of the rises in the Wireless and Wireline categories, and subcategories were expanded to enhance coverage of evolving trends. The Bureau said increases in contract issues, such as early termination and service quality complaints, also contributed to the rise in wireless complaints, while the increase in slamming and TCPA (Telecom Consumer Protection Act) complaints pushed wireline complaints higher. The Bureau said composite inquiry activity was marginally higher due mainly to rises in wireless, radio and broadcast inquiries, which increased 301.8% and 9.7%, respectively. It said 4 new categories -- electrical interference, amateur license, land mobile license and general mobile radio service license -- made the top wireless categories for the first time and accounted for the huge increase in wireless problems. Composite wireline inquiries were virtually unchanged from last quarter despite a 15.7% drop in inquiries related to TCPA. Complaints within the cable and radio and TV broadcasting categories remained “relatively modest” in the 3rd quarter, the FCC said. However, there was a twenty-fold increase in radio and broadcast disability complaints, which the agency attributed to an organized campaign to protest an alleged lack of closed-captioning during a flooding emergency in San Antonio in late July 2002. The FCC said that caused radio and broadcast complaints to more than double, despite a decline in indecency and obscenity complaints. Cable complaints rose 61%, “but on very light volume,” the FCC said. Also in the broadcasting category, the Commission received a number of inquiries on a rumor that the self-proclaimed atheist Madalyn O'Hair had proposed the FCC consider limiting or banning religious programming. The FCC said that was only a rumor. O'Hair and her son were murdered some years ago. For the quarter, there were a total of 369 complaints on radio and TV, 245 of them on disability issues and 93 on indecency and obscenity. For cable, there were a total 56 complaints, 25 of them on disability issues.
Eight telecom bills met defeat in Conn. when they failed to pass out of committee by a procedural “move or die” deadline. Four failed bills would have changed municipal jurisdiction over wireless telecom tower siting. They were HB-5124 and HB-6031, which would have given local land-use authorities the right to regulate tower siting; HB-5124, which would have restricted tower placements near residential or agricultural property, and HB-6022, which would have required municipalities to file reports with the state on where wireless towers were located within their boundaries and would have compelled wireless carriers to notify local govts. and neighbors before constructing any new tower at any location in a municipality. Conn. also saw 3 telemarketing- related bills defeated in committee: SB-481, which would have allowed state regulators to revoke the certificate of a telephone carrier that persistently violated the state’s no- call telemarketing law; SB-141, which would have allowed ISPs and consumers to sue spam senders who failed to desist upon request, and HB-5090, which would have allowed fax numbers on the state no-call list. Also failing was SB-1001 that would have required state regulators to conduct an annual review of the assessment that supported the state’s enhanced 911 systems.
Kevin McGrath retires as chmn., DirecTV Latin America; Larry Chapman, Hughes, named pres.-COO… Sal Maniaci, ex- TNN, appointed vp-development & production, TV Land and Nick at Nite… Stephen Carter, ex-Cingular Wireless, joins TruePosition board… Lisa Pickelsimer promoted to dir.-video product development, Cox… Michael Haislip, ex-Armstrong Cable, named senior vp-operations, Charter’s Great Lakes Div.
Videogames would be “a natural extension” for Netflix, given that 70% of subscribers are 35 and older, many of whom have children, CFO Barry McCarthy told Roth Capital Partners investor conference Mon. Moreover, if videogame publishers would agree to revenue sharing model, he said, “we would consider migrating into the game space.”
BOULDER, Colo. -- Despite the shaky economy, poor stock prices and tight capital markets, 3 of the 4 biggest cable operators are pushing ahead briskly with several advanced video and data services. Speaking at a CableLabs media briefing here Tues., executives of Comcast, Cox and Time Warner spelled out plans to roll out those new services more aggressively over the next year to year and a half. They all said the new services were gaining steam even as their core basic cable businesses were stagnating.
We were awaiting comment from Amazon.com at our Wed. deadline on report in Seattle Times that e-tailer’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, avoided serious injury last week when helicopter he was in crashed on mountain range in southwest Tex. Report said none of helicopter’s passengers were seriously injured and spokesman for e-tailer declined comment. Information in report was attributed to Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, who told Seattle Times that accident occurred around 9 a.m. March 6 16 miles south of small college town of Alpine. Pilot, Charles Bella of El Paso, had flown Bezos and 2 other passengers to densely wooded area in Cathedral Mountains to look at property, report said. After helicopter took off, gust of wind forced it into cedar tree and it flipped over and landed on right side in 2-foot-deep stream, report said. Bezos and another passenger were taken to local hospital and treated for minor head injuries, report said.
Despite shaky economy, poor stock prices and tight capital markets, 3 of 4 biggest cable operators are pushing ahead briskly with several advanced video and data services. Speaking at CableLabs media briefing in Boulder, Colo., Tues., executives of Comcast, Cox and Time Warner spelled out plans to roll out those new services more aggressively over next year to year and a half. They all said new services were gaining steam even as their core basic cable businesses were stagnating.
We were awaiting comment from Amazon.com at our Wed. deadline on report in Seattle Times that e-tailer’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, avoided serious injury last week when helicopter he was in crashed on mountain range in southwest Tex. Report said none of helicopter’s passengers were seriously injured and spokesman for e-tailer declined comment. Information in report was attributed to Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, who told Seattle Times that accident occurred around 9 a.m. March 6 16 miles south of small college town of Alpine. Pilot, Charles Bella of El Paso, had flown Bezos and 2 other passengers to densely wooded area in Cathedral Mountains to look at property, report said. After helicopter took off, gust of wind forced it into cedar tree and it flipped over and landed on right side in 2-foot-deep stream, report said. Bezos and another passenger were taken to local hospital and treated for minor head injuries, report said.
FCC announced Tues. rule changes in low-power operations in the private land mobile radio band of 450-470 MHz. The rules are designed to allow different types of operations on the low-power channels in response to a petition for rulemaking filed in 2000 by the Land Mobile Communications Council. The FCC created 5 groups of channels for licensed operations to meet the different needs of low-power users and raised power limits for some operators beyond 2 w transmitter output power. The Commission: (1) Designated 49 12.5 kHz industrial/business channel pairs and one unpaired frequency for low-power coordinated use. The unpaired frequency and 39 of the channel pairs will be available for full power at least 50 miles outside of the top 100 urban areas. (2) Designated ten 12.5 kHz channel pairs for low-power nonvoice coordinated use nationwide, allowing voice operations on a secondary basis. (3) Set aside 21 12.5 kHz channel pairs and 4 unpaired frequencies for low-power noncoordinated use nationwide. Most of those channels are available now but some will become usable only after a deadline for medical telemetry operations migrating elsewhere. (4) Designated five 12.5 kHz channel pairs for low-power coordinated use, set aside for central station alarm operations, as under existing rules. (5) Designated fourteen 12.5 kHz channel pairs for lower power use in the public safety pool. The order said each group of frequencies was intended for a different market. The first will be used by low-power operators that need a certain protection level, such as campuses. The 2nd group covers operators that use nonvoice communications for remote control of devices such as cranes and robots, the order said. The 3rd group covers small businesses such as electricians, who need on-site communications on a periodic basis. The last is composed of certain centralized alarm operations. In other policy areas, the FCC raises the power limits for base/fixed operations in the first group of operators to 20 w. The FCC said that level was meant to strike a balance between the benefits of frequency reuse and those of meeting the diverse needs of low power operators among private wireless licensees. It also converted the power limits for mobile operations in the first 3 groups of frequencies to 6 w effective radiated power. It grandfathered high-power operations that now are licensed on the low-power channels.