T=Mobile/Sprint Merger

The years-long wireless industry twist on the will-they-

won't-they romantic comedy is finally reaching its climax.

T-Mobile and Sprint finally -- finally! -- agreed to get

Together.

The $26 billion deal would combine the nation's third

and fourth largest wireless carriers, creating a larger

player to better compete against industry leaders

Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Under the deal, T-Mobile

parent Deutsche Telekom will assume control of the

two businesses, with Sprint parent SoftBank taking

seats on the board of the new company, to be called

simply T-Mobile.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere and his management

team would take over day-to-day control of the

combined business. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure

will be a director of the new board. The deal is

expected to close by the first half of 2019.

The merger marks the culmination of years of

flirting between T-Mobile and Sprint, which nearly

agreed to a merger late last year before talks fell

apart in November. As carriers have upped their

game to win you over, tossing in everything from

unlimited data plans to free Netflix and even a free

year of service, the intense environment has the

two carriers joining forces -- and resources -- to

better compete.

Both companies have made their impact felt on

the industry over the last few years. T-Mobile

eliminated contracts and phone subsidies and

last year led the push to bring unlimited plans

back to the industry in a bigger way. Sprint

introduced the concept of a phone-leasing plan

and in 2017 began offering a year of its service

for free.

No company in the wireless industry has been

as effective at turning itself around as T-Mobile,

which under firebrand Legere has routinely

outstripped the rest of the players in subscriber

growth.  It's no surprise he's sticking around.

Who Wants a Stylus?

"Who wants a stylus?" Steve Jobs famously asked when

he unveiled the original iPhone in 2007, implying that the

answer was "no one." Now, 11 years later, analysts believe

that a new iPhone may work with a stylus anyway.

The prediction comes from analysts at investment firm

Rosenblatt Securities (via AppleInsider), who believe that

a premium 2018 6.5-inch OLED iPhone (referred to as the

iPhone X Plus) will support an "iPen" device.

iPhone support for a pen would firmly veer into Samsung

territory, where Apple'sbiggest rival pioneered the use of

a digital stylus in the Galaxy Note series. Note phones,

like the Galaxy Note 8, have included a stylus (called the

S Pen) ever since.

Apple's support for a digital pen could bolster Samsung's

bragging rights over innovation, and also popularize the

digital stylus at the time we expect  to see Samsung's

next stylus-wielding phone, presumed to be the Galaxy

Note 9.

The "iPen" would not be included in the box with the

iPhone X Plus, according to analysts. If true, that would

give Samsung's Galaxy Note phones an advantage.

Those phones have a hollowed-out holster to store the

included stylus.

Samsung VR

Production company Sibling Rivalry has joined forces

with Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and

design and director of research and development at the

Museum of Modern Art, to create an immersive virtual

reality (VR) experience for the Samsung VR video service.

Dubbed ‘&Design’, the episodic virtual reality experience

is rooted in themes of death, love, play and the idea of self,

along with featuring eye-popping design work, and it made

its debut during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. It was

originally conceived by Antonelli, who brought it to Sibling

Rivalry partner and creative director Mikon van Gastel.

“Design is one of the highest and most complex

expressions of human ingenuity,” Antonelli explained in

a release. “Design is about life. It tells us who we are,

where we have been, and where we are going. With

&Design, we are giving viewers a deep experience of

what makes up this creative field, and we are describing

a fascinating and diverse universe, of creators, thinkers,

and makers.”

The VR experience was made possible by a grant from

Samsung VR Video’s Pilot Season, a new initiative

aimed at infusing exclusive, original, episodic VR content

into Samsung VR Video service, driving growth within the

independent VR filmmaker community.

Women and Smartphones

As innovation in mobile changes how society operates,

women are using their phones to assist them in practically

every aspect of their lives, from consuming news to

budgeting to waking up in the morning. Almost half of

women ages 18 to 34 check their phones as soon as they

wake up, and another 36 percent check them within five

minutes. Screens have become so ingrained that over 60

percent of women own two or more mobile devices and

use them on a daily basis.

“Our research shows the incredible degree to which

smartphones are a millennial woman’s constant companion,

a gateway to constantly connecting with her passion points

and increasingly becoming her mobile wallet,” said Rob

McLoughlin, vp, PopSugar Insights. “Marketers need to

lean into the disruption these devices wield and deliver

content and commerce offerings that seamlessly fit into

her daily routine.”

Amazon Trunk Delivery

Last year, Amazon asked for permission to unlock your

front door so it could leave packages inside your home,

and a certain number of extremely trusting Amazon Prime

subscribers (Amazon won’t say how many) said okay.

Now, the tech giant wants to do the same thing with your

Car.

Amazon announced today a new service that gives its

couriers access to a person’s vehicle for the purpose

of leaving package deliveries inside. But rather than

use smart locks and a cloud-connected camera to gain

entry, Amazon wants to use the connected technologies

embedded in many modern vehicles today. The company

is launching this new service in partnership with two major

automakers — General Motors and Volvo — and will be

rolling out in 37 cities in the US starting today.

“We were really happy with the response to in-home

delivery,” Peter Larsen, vice president of delivery

technology at Amazon, told The Verge. “What we wanted

to do — and it was part of the plan all along — is how we

take that beyond the home.”

Amazon has been beta testing the new service in California

and Washington state for the past six months. In a video by

Amazon, a woman said she likes getting diapers delivered

to her car because it meant her toddlers could nap without

being disturbed by the doorbell. Another woman used it to

have a few birthday presents delivered to the trunk of her car

so as not to tip off her daughter.

No Apple OS Merger

In an interview published in The Sydney Morning Herald

today, Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested that Apple is not

working toward eventually running the same operating

system on Macs and mobile devices like the iPhone and

iPad, counter to widespread speculation.

The interview took place at the education-themed event

in Chicago at which Apple unveiled the last iPad. Here's

the relevant quote from Cook:

“We don't believe in sort of watering down one for the other.

Both [the Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons

that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them

to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two…

you begin to make trade-offs and compromises.

So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of

the day. But that's not what it's about. You know it's about giving

people things that they can then use to help them change the

world or express their passion or express their creativity. So

this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don't think

that's what users want.”

Earlier this year, Bloomberg ran a report saying that Apple will

soon unveil tools for developers that will allow deploying an app

for both macOS and iOS machines. Apps that target both

platforms would be usable with either a touchscreen or a mouse/

trackpad, depending on which device launches them. While

some outlets are saying Cook's statement debunks that rumor,

that's not necessarily the case; apps that support macOS/iOS

interoperability don't require a unified operating system.

MSFT Translator App

Chances are you mostly need a translator app on your

phone while you are traveling. But that’s also when you

are most likely to not have any connectivity. While most

translation apps still work when they are offline, they can’t

use the sophisticated — and computationally intense —

machine learning algorithms in the cloud that typically

power them. Until now, that was also the case for the

Microsoft Translator app on Amazon Fire, Android and

iOS, but starting today, the app will actually run a slightly

modified neural translation when offline (though iOS users

may still have to wait a few days, as the update still has

to be approved by Apple).

What’s interesting about this is that Microsoft  is able to

do this on virtually any modern phone and that there is

no need for a custom AI chip in them.

Microsoft’s Arul Menezes tells me that these new

translation packs are “dramatically better” and provide

far more human-like translation than the old ones, which

relied on an older approach to machine translations that

has now been far surpassed by machine learning-based

systems. The updated language packs (which only take

up about half the space of the old ones) are now available

for Arabic, Chinese-Simplified, French, German, Italian,

Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and

Thai, with others to follow.

ZTE Phones OS Problems

ZTE Corp executives are investigating software options

for the company’s smartphones after a US technology

ban threatened to cut off the operating system at the heart

of its devices, a source said.

The Android operating system, designed by Google, is

the core of ZTE smartphones, powering their apps and

other services.  

The US Commerce Department on Monday banned

American firms from selling parts and software to ZTE

for seven years. The move was sparked by ZTE’s

violation of an agreement that was reached after it was

caught illegally shipping US goods to Iran.

The move threatens to further complicate relations

between the United States and China. The two countries

have already proposed tens of billions of dollars in tariffs

in recent weeks, stoking fears of a full-blown trade war

that could hurt global supply chains as well as business

investment plans.

ZTE lawyers have been meeting with Google officials

about the issue, according to the source with knowledge

of the matter, who asked not to be identified because

the talks were private.