BlackBerry Bold coming in September: T-Mobile stakes first claim

blackberry-9000-bold-small.jpgWe’ve had to wait all summer, but at last we’re in sight of the BlackBerry Bold.

T-Mobile claims it will be the first UK operator to offer the handset, offering decent and improving national 3G support, thanks to a radio access network sharing deal the company has done with 3 UK.

The Bold includes integrated GPS, Microsoft Office document editing, expandable memory, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and two megapixel camera (see full specifications and a comparison with the iPhone 3G.)…

Pioneer to stop making sub-42-inch plasma panels, as its TV business suffers

pioneer-pdp607.jpgJapanese newspaper Asahi has reported that Pioneer will stop the production of 42-inch and smaller plasma panels as early as March next year, and instead buy those panels from Matsushita or Hitachi.

Pioneer’s plasma TV sales targets for this year, ending 31st March, are a mere 10 per cent of Matsushita’s (who use the Panasonic brand), at just 480,000 units compared to five million.

Pioneer will continue to manufacture its own plasma panels sized over 50 inches, while the company looks to sell the Kagoshima plant back to NEC. Pioneer already buys the panels for its LCD TVs from Sharp.

US business users get official iPhone tariffs

Though many people, including a good few geeks in company IT departments (sorry, but hey, I used to be one, so it’s justified), have said that the iPhone isn’t a good fit for business users. However, it would seem enough people have been using Apple’s wonder phone for business use — so much so that AT&T has decided to launch a business tariff.

It offers a similar feature set to the personal plans — unlimited data and visual voicemail, plus a varying amount of “free” SMS text messages depending on how much a user (or their company) stumps up per month. In addition, there are additional options for using data while roaming abroad.

It will be interesting to see how many business users are able to take up this offer. They’ll still need to gain the approval of their employer before taking the iPhone out, and that could well remain the sticking point.