August 19, 2003
Verizon Wireless Walks Into Walkie-Talkie Market and Lawsuits by Rival Nextel for Trademark Infringement, Drops Charges of Nextel Corporate Espionage
vs.
Verizon Wireless’ frontal assault on Nextel’s primary point of competitive differentiation – it’s Direct Connect feature – is hitting the streets; 95 percent of Nextel’s 11.7 million customers use the push-to-talk feature, and AT&T Wireless and Sprint are both expected to launch their own similar offerings later this year. Still, interoperability between networks is far from a done deal and that’s going to give Nextel some much needed breathing room to improve their service and pricing.
The amount of time it takes to connect the call will also be advantageous for Nextel, who began to prepare for the competitive threat from Verizon by going nationwide with Direct Connect in July.
Meanwhile, both Verizon and Nextel are being suitably litigious in their competitive strategy: in June Verizon filed a lawsuit against Nextel, saying the company had used “corporate espionage” to acquire prototypes of its new handsets and gained unauthorized access to its network; while Nextel sued Verizon over the use of the words “Push-to-Talk” as a trademark of Nextel’s service.
Still, Push-to-Talk is more Motorola’s technology than anyone’s and MOT appears to be ready to use it to propel it forward and out of its current funk with ambitious new plans to sell next-gen handsets.
- Arik
Here are a few more supplemental links on the issue:
Posted by Arik Johnson at August 19, 2003 01:29 PM | TrackBack
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