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You are at work and your cell phone dies. To charge it, you simply set it on your desk.
No -- there's not a new line of office furniture that automatically charges portable device batteries. Still, a company in Cambridge, England, hopes to make this scenario possible.
The startup, Splashpower, has developed a prototype electromagnetic chip that can be embedded in any device that requires charging, such as a PDA or cell phone. The second component of the product, which Splashpower is in the process of shopping around to manufacturers, is a pad that can be set anywhere.
The pad needs a power outlet to work, but it eliminates the necessity of custom cradles and cables to charge multiple devices. Any device with the Splashpower chip can be charged on the pad.
Splashpower hopes to release a product for sale as early as next year, said CEO John Halfpenny.
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Made in Redmond, Washington: After a year of all buzz and no bite, Microsoft (MSFT) delivered its first smartphone in the United Kingdom and France last week.
Unlike the company's Pocket PC with cell-phone capabilities, the Windows-powered smartphone looks like a mobile phone and is designed for one-handed operation. It has a color screen, an address book, calendar, Internet connectability and e-mail. It also comes with Windows Media Player so users can listen to music.
Microsoft claims the 3-ounce device offers 2.5 hours of talk time.
European carrier Orange is selling the phone for $277. Other carriers in Europe and in the United States have said they will carry the phone, although there is no set release date.
Meanwhile, competitor Handspring (HAND) has slashed the price of its Treo Communicator 180, a monochrome combination cell phone, PDA and e-mail device, from $349 to $249.
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Cheap talk: Wireless phone customers may ooh and ah over fancy cell phones with full-color screens and all the bells and whistles, but they tend to buy the cheap ones or keep their outdated phones a little longer, according to a study by marketing research firm J.D. Power and Associates.
To the chagrin of wireless phone manufacturers, which are releasing flashy phones at a dizzying rate, typical cell-phone subscribers hold onto their phones for 18 months, compared with 16 months in 2000, according to the study.
While the average price a consumer is willing to pay for a cell phone has decreased from $100 to $75 in the last two years, the number of customers who receive a free wireless phone with their cell-phone subscription has increased from 18 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2002, the study reported.
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Hello? Customer service? Hello? After getting much grief from customers and the press for charging subscribers $3 to speak with a service representative, Sprint PCS (PCS) said it has abandoned the practice.
Sprint PCS President Len Lauer said the company no longer tacks on a $3 fee to the bills of customers who choose to speak to customer service representatives rather than navigate through its maze of prerecorded menu options.
To further simplify the process for customers, the company plans to have each service representative handle multiple inquiries rather than send customers to multiple departments, Lauer said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
