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Verizon offers to cut exclusivity periods so rural carriers can get phones quicker
Call it goodwill, call it a PR stunt, but either way, the intended recipients of the gesture aren't biting -- yet. Verizon has gone on record saying that it has offered to reduce its exclusivity periods on phones it sources from Samsung and LG to just six months for rural carriers wishing to pick up the same devices; thing is, we've seen phones straight-up discontinued in less than six months, and understandably, the rurals are unimpressed with the offer. Specifically, Verizon is making the offer to members of the 25-carrier Associated Carrier Group, all of which use CDMA and represent a grand total of roughly 2.6 million subs. With juggernauts like Thumb Cellular (slogan: "Talk of the Thumb!") in the ACG, Verizon's overture does virtually nothing to hurt its competitive advantage -- and ACG's concern is that they'll need time after the exclusivity period expires to tweak devices for their networks' needs, meaning you're actually looking at more than six months from Verizon launch to... say, Thumb Cellular launch. Interestingly, the ACG was formed primarily to achieve some of the handset manufacturing economies of scale that the big guys enjoy, so they've got some sway to produce models of their own and don't necessarily need Verizon's help to get timely devices to market -- but it'd be nice. And no, Verizon, six months isn't timely in this industry. [Via Phone Scoop]
AGC: Out on the show floor
Elizabeth Harper is covering the MMO-heavy Austin Game Conference for Joystiq and our WoW-obsessed friends at WoW Insider.Though Thursday was the second day of the conference, it was the first day for the show floor to be open. As many game developers are here recruiting for jobs (including Bioware, Blizzard, LucasArts, and Perpetual -- among others!), rather than selling a product, there's no ground-breaking new game announcements. But there's a lot of interesting things happening out there, and to see what I came across during my adventures on the convention floor, read on!
World of Warcraft Hits 7 Million Subscribers
Wednesday morning at the Austin Game Conference it was announced that World of Warcraft has hit 7 million active subscribers world-wide. And while the number doesn't surprise me - as we've yet to see an MMO present a serious challenge to WoW's dominance of the genre - such large figures are rather staggering. Despite all of the technical issues and player complaints, the game's popularity has continued to grow on a large scale. (The game only announced it hit 6 million active subscribers at the beginning of March, this year.) So congratulations, Blizzard, on another million players!
