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AT&T Rolls Out ‘Cloud’ Services For Low-End Phones

AT&T (NYSE: T) has rolled out a trio of new services that brings smart-phone like features to low-cost phones. Users can now easily sync their address books from a personal e-mail account to their phone and send photos to the cloud on devices that cost between $20 and $40.

AT&T announced the three new services along with four new devices today. While syncing address books and cloud-services have not be exclusive to smartphones, AT&T is training consumers to spend more on monthly data plans and to become more dependent on using their phone for more than calling.

The three services:

—AT&T Address Book — Syncs contacts from an online address book to the phone and vice versa. There is no additional charge for this service.
—Next Generation Messaging: Allows users to send text message to up to 10 contacts at a time. Conversations are also threaded in a consolidated inbox.
—AT&T Mobile Share: Customers can transfer photos and videos from the phone to their home computer, social networking sites, other to an AT&T storage locker. The service costs $10 a month for 50 transfers, or 35 cents a transfer. Users get 250MB of storage at no charge, and an additional 10GB of storage costs $5 a month. Users will also be charged standard rates when browsing the online media locker from the phone.

The four phones: AT&T calls this category of devices “quick messaging,” which is their most popular and fastest category of devices:

—Samsung Strive: Arriving March 21, it will be the first phone with AT&T’s new services. It has a 2.0-megapixel camera and a vertical slide that reveals a full keyboard. It costs $20 for a limited time with a two-year agreement and after $50 mail-in rebate.
—Samsung Sunburst: Loaded with GPS, it will be available March 21 for $40 after a two-year agreement and $50 mail-in-rebate.
—Pantech Link and Pantach Pursuit: The Link will come in a few weeks, while the Pursuit will come later this summer. The Link has a number of social networking and navigation features, while the Pursuit features face recognition software and geotagging.

Mar 15, 2010 12:20 AM ET

Samsung Strive on AT&T

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Posted In: Companies, AT&T

  • MaxxoMedia represents VME and zaOza for content licensing in the US.

    If you are a US based content provider looking to provide content for this dynamic new service, please contact me at mark@maxxomedia.com. We are interested in video, audio, images and games from unique and exciting properties.

  • It should be noted that the beta of this portal just seeks youngsters "I am between 15 and 25 years old and would like to take part in the test groups" is what it states on T&C;for a test drive.

    Does this discrimination mean that if I am older then 25 my life has passed ? Do they know that I have money to spend on content ? Probably more then any teenager ?

  • Thanks for this article Dianne! That is going to be a huge success and it is not about luck but fresh and innovative ideas combined with talented creative and technical people.

    Proud that my company Clicmobile is a key technological provider of za0za/VME :-)

    samir Addamine
    COO and founder
    samir@clicmobile.com

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