Wireless and Mobile News Week in Review: March 9-15

marchmadness.jpgMad Mad Week of Deals and March Madness NCAA
The week of March 9-15 started off with more March Madness specials, not only are they giving phones away, one online seller, Let's Talk is giving back $250 with a new T-Mobile plan and Samsung Renew. The price of the T-Mobile G1 was reduced to $47.77 with a trade-in. 

Another March Madness craziness is the chance to win a million bucks from Yahoo! for college basket ball NCAA with the best racket. ChaCha will now answer txt quesitons about March mdness even when spelled rong. At&T is still offering free TV for the NCAA games and a great deal on the LG Vu.

Research and Reports
Even though the price of phones is decreasing, the price of calls is increasing, a study released by UCAN reported that the average price of a wireless phone call is up to $3.02. The state of Oklahoma leads in wireless-only houses while Vermont has the fewest wireless-only households. Although Bango reported the U.S. surpassed other countries in mobile web browsing, IDC predicted a -14.8% decline in all mobile device sales.

More Unlimited Competition and Data
Cricket unlimited was busy launching in Philadelphia and showing the world's largest cell phone in Chicago. MetroPCS began offering its first smartphone the BlackBerry Curve and a data plan. Prepaid Consumer Cellular also added data services.

New Phones Revealed
Nokia revealed the 5730 Xpress Music, 5330 Xpress Music and 5030 Xpress Radio. The X-tc is coming from Virgin Mobile.  Some features and plans were revealed for the Palm Pre.  A full line of rugged digital assistants were launched by Motorola.

Apps of the Week
The apps featured this week allow you to hail a taxi, read books on your phone, help the blind and vision-impaired to operate their phones, search for images easier and offer social networking for private meaningful relationships.

Starting to Sell Today
Three different phones go on sale today, the Palm Treo Pro (Sprint) Moto Q 9c and LG Rumor2.

Punk of the Week
Not many reporters were checking facts when this viral video of a race car driver using a BlackBerry Storm to steer a race car appeared on YouTube and was viewed nearly a million times.