Sprint pulling out the stops

On my way to watch "Ready Player One" yesterday, I walked through the mall and saw them advertising the heck out of a Sprint / Hulu connection.

Very nice for a certain kind of new phone hardware.

Yes, Sprint’s Unlimited plan just got better! Only Sprint gives you the BEST price for Unlimited.  That’s Unlimited streaming data, talk and text. And NOW it includes the TV you love, with the Hulu Limited Commercials plan. Your Sprint Unlimited plan also includes a 10GB mobile hotspot so you can watch on the go, where you go. You’ll be able to watch the most popular next-day TV, original series, thousands of hit shows, movies and more. 

Sprint Bundling Hulu

Another reason I'm looking forward to the Voga V

CNBC

Sprint will offer its unlimited data plan customers free subscriptions to the streaming service Hulu, the companies said on Wednesday, marking the latest move by a U.S. wireless carrier to bundle content with mobile service.

Under the agreement, Sprint's unlimited plan, priced at $60 a month for a single line, will cover Hulu's $7.99 a month basic subscription. The No. 4 U.S. wireless carrier is also working on plans to offer Hulu's $39.99 live TV streaming service to customers next year, potentially at a discounted price, said Allan Samson, senior vice president of marketing at Sprint, in an interview.

U.S. wireless carriers are seeking ways to provide content to win over customers in a saturated market. In September, T-Mobile said it will offer free subscriptions to Netflix with its unlimited data family plans.

AT&T, which is in the process of buying Time Warner for $85.4 billion, has already started bundling the premium channel HBO with wireless service. Earlier this year, Sprint tested a promotion with Dish Network's streaming service Sling TV in Chicago and Atlanta.

Smartphone boom about to bust?

Thanks for the heads-up Roger.

Then again -- perhaps RoBoHon will pick up some new market.

From Yahoo Finance -- more at the source.

We have a situation where market saturation is happening. (There are 7 billion people on earth, and 1.4 billion smart phones sold annually -- 2015 numbers -- so one in six people on earth last year got a new smartphone. Expecting them to be a little bit durable -- that's nearly total penetration of the possible market.)

The smartphone boom is about to go bust, with sales growth expected to fall to single digits in 2016. That’s a far cry from the 73% growth the industry saw just six years ago.

According to market research group Gartner Inc., worldwide smartphone sales will increase by just 7% in 2016. IDC Research, meanwhile, predicts growth will slow to just 3.1%.

>>>> Of course, that's 98,000,000 more smartphones than were sold last year, if you consider the 1.4 billion sold last year. <<<<

Why such a precipitous drop? Simply put, because consumers already have too many smartphones in their hands. Smartphone markets in North America, Europe, Japan and more mature Asia and Pacific markets have already reached 90% penetration, according to Gartner. That’s a lot of smartphones.

To try to counteract this trend, some US carriers and handset makers are taking steps to get consumers interested in purchasing phones at a faster clip. Gartner, for example, points to Apple’s buyback program that lets you get a new handset after having your phone for a year. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon offer similar upgrade programs.

But without a fundamental shift in smartphone design or function, the market will likely continue to see minimal growth going forward.

>>>> Bring on PicoP -- which can lead to a fundamental shift in smartphone design and cause a market boom that the industry is craving. <<<<