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WorldCom's former CEO Bernard Ebbers is seeking clemency from George Bush in the final days of his presidency.

Bernie Ebbers

(Credit: CBS News)

Ebbers, who was convicted of helping mastermind an $11 billion accounting fraud, is asking the president to reduce his 25-year sentence. Ebbers has filed a petition for commutation to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. And the petition is under review, a Justice Department spokeswoman told Reuters.

The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to pardon convicted felons either erasing their convictions or reducing their prison sentences. And it's common in the last days of an administration for criminals of all stripes to seek clemency from the president.

Reuters said Bush has already granted 14 pardons and commuted two sentences in low-profile cases. But the news service points out that Bush has so far granted far fewer clemency requests than his predecessor, former President Clinton.

An expert cited in the Reuters article said it's a tough time to ask for white collar convicts to ask for clemency given the state of the U.S. economy. I'd have to agree. I think it would be very difficult for the U.S. public to accept leniency for a man that caused thousands of people to lose their retirement funds. Especially, when the U.S. government is spending billions of dollars to bailout banking executives, who many suspect also gamed the system for their own benefit.

Ebbers founded the telecommunications company WorldCom, which grew to become a darling on Wall Street in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Early in 2002, things started to unravel at the company, and a massive accounting scandal was uncovered. Billions of dollars in market value vanished almost overnight. The Mississippi-based company filed for the largest bankruptcy protection in U.S. history in the summer of 2002. The company, which was renamed MCI, was later sold to Verizon Communications.

In 2005, Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy for his role in the scandal. And he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Ebbers, who is now 67, isn't expected to be released from prison until 2027 when he will be 85.

Update at 9:15 a.m. PST: Clarification made to Nokia's market share expectations for the fourth quarter.

Nokia on Thursday lowered fourth-quarter sales expectations for the second time in a month. The world's largest maker of mobile phones also warned it can no longer predict its market share for the quarter.

Before the start of its Capital Markets Day in New York City, Nokia broke the bad news to analysts and investors that it sees more trouble ahead in the current quarter. Specifically, the company expects device volume to fall below the 330 million units it estimated in mid-November that it would sell for the quarter.

The company also said it doesn't see the situation getting much better in 2009, with an expectation of sales falling by at least 5 percent from 2008 levels. While Nokia has previously said it expected a "market decline" in 2009, it hadn't specified how much of a decline.

"The mobile-device-market slowdown has continued more rapidly than previously expected since Nokia issued an update on November 14, 2008," the company said in a statement. "The industry continues to be impacted by the effects of a global consumer pullback in spending, currency volatility, and decreased availability of credit."

The company also blamed "insufficient visibility in the marketplace" to confirm its previous expectation of 38 percent or better market share in the fourth quarter.

That said, the company did say it expects to gain market share in 2009.

While it's evident that consumer spending has slowed down in the industrialized Western markets, Nokia executives also pointed to slower consumer spending in developing markets. Nokia has been very successful over the past few years selling low-cost devices in these markets. The company had believed that these developing markets would be relatively immune to the slowdown hitting developed countries. But the company is finding that not to be the case.

Nokia has also taken a hit in the high-end smartphone market. Even though the company still dominates the market with about 42.4 percent market share for the third quarter, according to market researcher Gartner, it did see sales slow in that quarter.

Nokia wasn't the only company to be hit in the third quarter. This week, Gartner reported that overall sales of smartphones had slowed to their lowest level since the firm started tracking the sector.

In addition to the weakening economy, Nokia is also facing more competition in the smartphone market, especially from companies such as Research In Motion, which sells the BlackBerry devices, and Apple, which sells the iPhone.

However, Nokia isn't sitting still. Earlier this week, it announced its latest smartphone, the N97, which offers a tilted, full QWERTY keypad and a touch screen. The new device, which will sell for a whopping 550 euros ($695), will be available first in Europe.

As competition in the handset market intensifies, Nokia is also focusing more attention on its services. The company also announced this week enhancements to its messaging and mapping services that can be used on mobile devices as well as PCs.

The Agora phone is set to launch Down Under on January 29

(Credit: Kogan Technologies)

The first mobile phone running Google's Android operating system will hit Australia next month, with a company called Kogan Technologies announcing the imminent release of an Android-based handset it calls the "Agora."

The phone, which can be ordered from Kogan's Web site, will be shipped to Australian and international customers on January 29. The price to buy the standard handset has been set at 299 Australian dollars ($193.90), with a more featured version called the Agora Pro going for $399.

Standard features of the Agora include a full QWERTY keyboard with a central navigation key, a 2.5-inch touch screen, a microSD slot, and 3G connectivity. The Pro adds a 2MP camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, and GPS navigation.

There has been no news yet as to when the other Android phone, the HTC Dream, also known as the G1, will reach Australia.

Suzanne Tindal of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

Smartphone sales slowed in the third quarter of 2008, market research firm Gartner said Thursday.

The firm reported that the growth in sales of smartphones around the world only grew 11.5 percent during the third quarter. The firm also said that this was the weakest growth it has seen in the sector since it began tracking smartphone sales.

Gartner had previously reported that first quarter sales grew about 29.3 percent in 2008 and second quarter sales were up about 15.7 percent compared to the same quarters a year earlier.

In total, smartphone manufacturers sold about 36.5 million devices during the third quarter of 2008, the firm said.

Smartphones, which offer more computer-like features, such as e-mail and Web browsing, have become the biggest growth engine in the mobile handset market. While sales of basic cell phones have dropped off dramatically for many phone manufacturers, smartphones have continued to grow. But it looks like that growth is being curtailed by the weak economic outlook throughout the world.

"The current economic climate is negatively impacting sales of higher end devices," Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "Going forward, we should expect the smartphone device market to continue to grow but at a slower pace."

While smartphones are typically more expensive than regular mobile phones, Gartner's Cozza also points out that expensive data plans are also hindering growth of these devices.

"Although leading mobile operators are subsidizing more smartphones, to reach lower prices they tie the device to two year contracts with monthly data plan rates which remain too expensive for the mainstream user," she said.

Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile handsets and the largest producer of smartphones, continued to the lead the market with 42.4 percent market share in the third quarter of 2008. But for the first time, the company recorded a decline in sales of about 3 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Also on Thursday, Nokia cut its global outlook for sales of handsets for the second time in three weeks. The company warned that the slowdown in the market is occurring much more quickly than it had originally expected. The company said it now expects the volume of sales to fall at least 5 percent next year compared to 2008 levels.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion came in second in the smarthphone market with a market share of about 15.9 percent. But like Nokia, RIM has also warned that it expects sales to slow down. Earlier this week, the company cut its sales and profit targets for its fiscal third quarter.

Apple, which took third place in smartphone market share with 12.9 percent, saw the biggest jump in growth. In the third quarter of 2007, the company only had about 3.4 percent market share. Apple, which uses its own Mac OS X operating system on its phones also overtook Microsoft for the first time in the mobile operating system war. Apples' OS X software ran on 12.9 percent of phones sold, while Microsoft Windows Mobile lost about 3 percentage points and was available on 11.1 percent of phones sold.

Competition in the mobile handset market is only likely to intensify as new players such as Google's Android phones come onto the market. The entree of Android and other open source mobile operating platforms is likely to cut into Microsoft's business, while Nokia is likely to continue to feel pressure from Research In Motion and Apple.

One thing is clear. Even though sales of smartphones are slowing, these devices still represent the biggest growth opportunity for handset makers. But the success of the these devices will likely rely not only on their design but on the software and applications that run on them.

A company called Proximic says it has developed an easier way for consumers to do complex searches from their cell phones.

While Apple's iPhone has helped make surfing the Web from a mobile device easier, it's still difficult to type in complex search queries. But Proximic has introduced a new application called Promixic Agents for the iPhone that will help. The new technology, which is language-independent, uses point-and-click technology to highlight bits of text. This means that users don't have to type in a long string of search terms.

Search results from a Proximic search.

(Credit: Proximic)

Unlike other search engines, which rely on keywords to find results, the search technology from Proximic looks for patterns in the text to see where these patterns overlap. It then delivers relevant results based on these patterns.

Proximic co-founder and CEO Philipp Pieper believes that conducting searches in this manner provides more contextualized and relevant search results and also makes conducting complex searches much easier.

"Mobile phones today lack ease of use when it comes to complex searches," he said. "But with our technology users can click on a paragraph or a whole Web page and get other relevant stories or information."

The application is initially being offered on the iPhone through the Apple App Store. It's free to download. But Pieper said that the technology will eventually be available to other smartphones. Future releases of the software will also allow users to do much more, like find more relevant search results based on location. Other search companies such as Yahoo and Google are also using location-based technology to provide local search results for mobile devices.

Users can highlight an entire paragraph for a search query.

(Credit: Proximic)

But Pieper believes that the Proximic technology will be able to take location-based search a step further. For example, in future releases of the software, users will be able to go into a store and take a picture of a product description and then be able to search for that product or a product with similar features. Users will then get reviews of that product or will even get results for where they can buy that particular product nearby.

"Imagine you're shopping for a TV in Best Buy," Pieper said. "You punch the product description or take a picture of the description, and you can get search results that show you the same TV is being offered for a lower price down the street at another store."

Pieper went on to say that these kinds of search results could be a boon for mobile advertising.

"Advertisers are looking for useful ad placements," he said. "Especially now in the current economy, advertising needs to be useful and relevant to users. It has to be something that users value and engage in to make it worthwhile to the advertisers."

Research In Motion is the latest smartphone maker to fall victim to the sagging economy.

The maker of the popular BlackBerry mobile devices late on Tuesday reduced its outlook for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on Saturday. The company said it expects to earn between 81 cents and 83 cents a share on revenue of between $2.75 billion and $2.78 billion. In September, RIM said it expected profits between 89 cents and 97 cents on revenue of between $2.95 billion and $3.1 billion.

RIM's executives blame the shortfall on the stronger dollar and the "general economic weakness in the United States." Other phone manufacturers have also reported lower-than-expected sales. Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, warned last month that it expects to sell fewer handsets than it had expected during the fourth quarter of 2008.

Palm, which makes the Treo, also reported that it expects dismal earnings. The company said revenue for its second fiscal quarter will be just $190 million to $195 million. Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts had expected Palm to bring in about $331 million in revenue.

In addition to slowing demand due to economic troubles, RIM also faces stiff competition, especially from Apple. Market research firms have crowned Apple's iPhone the most popular phone in the U.S. market and the second most popular smartphone worldwide.

RIM recently introduced its iPhone competitor, the BlackBerry Storm. The device, which, like the iPhone, has a touch screen instead of a physical keyboard, launched two weeks ago exclusively on Verizon Wireless's network in the United States.

(Credit: Verizon Wireless)

RIM says response to the new product has been very strong. The company said it signed up a record number of new customers the day the BlackBerry Storm hit store shelves in the United States. Indeed, customers lined up outside Verizon Wireless stores in several cities to be among the first to get the device.

Of course, the hype and frenzy surrounding the Storm paled in comparison to that surrounding the launch of the original iPhone and then the iPhone 3G this past summer.

Still, RIM believes that the strong momentum for the BlackBerry Storm will continue into the fourth quarter. Other new BlackBerry models, such as the Bold and the clamshell Pearl, should also help spur growth, executives have said.

"Initial sales of new products have been very positive, and we believe we have the strongest smartphone portfolio in the industry by far; however, product launch timing, general economic conditions, and foreign-exchange volatility have tempered our results in the third quarter," Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM, said in a statement. "We believe RIM is well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing smartphone market opportunity, and we remain focused on driving growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 and beyond."

Nokia's N97 runs the Symbian operating system, which will be released as an open-source project next year now that Symbian is part of Nokia.

(Credit: Nokia)

Nokia spent most of Tuesday buzzing about its N97 phone, but it also quietly completed an important step in its plan to evolve as a mobile computing company.

Symbian announced that Nokia has formally completed the acquisition of the world's biggest smartphone operating system company. The companies announced their plans earlier this year to have Nokia buy out the remaining partners in Symbian with the ultimate goal of releasing the Symbian operating system under an open-source license.

Devices such as the N97 run Symbian OS, which is by far and away the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world thanks to market-share leader Nokia's historically close ties with the developer. Starting next year, Nokia intends to form the Symbian Foundation with companies like AT&T, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and others with the intent of creating a royalty-free open-source operating system. Sound familiar?

After entertaining the world press in Barcelona during the early part of this week, Symbian and Nokia executives will be in San Francisco later this week to discuss their plans for mobile computing and open source, and we'll have reports from the Symbian Partner Event on Thursday.

Nokia has released new versions of its mapping and navigation service along with a new messaging service in an effort to build out its mobile services.

(Credit: Nokia)

The upgraded Nokia Maps offers new features, such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks. The new software also allows users to share their location using GPS. Nokia has also tied the latest version of Nokia Maps more closely with its PC-based service Ovi. And the new Nokia Maps allows users to plan their journey ahead of time on their PCs and sync the information with their mobile phones for when they're on the road. Currently, the pre-planning function is only available for Windows-based devices.

Some of the other new features available include: the ability to purchase turn-by-turn car navigation guidance; instant access to real-time information about traffic in certain countries; access to Wcities, an event guide that gives real-time information for events and movies in some 450 destinations; and the ability to see multiple entrances to the same underground subway stations in certain cities.

Nokia also announced it is upgrading its Nokia Messaging client so that it integrates e-mail and instant messaging from Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, Google Talk, AOL Mail, and thousands of international ISPs. The service is also integrated with Ovi and gives users 1 gigabyte worth of storage. It also provides a single sign-in on their cell phones. The beta version will be available this month in 12 languages.

All these service announcements come at the same time that Nokia has launched its latest device, the N97. This new phone, which is part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, comes with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen.

The smartphone, which is set to launch next spring, comes with a bunch of bells and whistles in addition to supporting the new mapping and messaging services. For example, it provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

Nokia N97

(Credit: Nokia)

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however.

The Centro is keeping Palm afloat, but it needs more than pretty colors to get back on track.

(Credit: Palm)

With revenue falling to dire levels, Palm may need a Christmas miracle to stay afloat next year.

The latest dose of bad news? Revenue for Palm's second fiscal quarter, which ended last week, will be just $190 million to $195 million, the company announced Monday ahead of its December 18th conference call. Wall Street analysts had been expecting Palm to record $331 million in revenue, an astonishing 41 percent gap caused by "reduced demand for maturing smartphone and handheld products," Palm said in a press release.

Last week Palm revealed plans to cut workers and refocus its business as it copes with a poor economy and strong competition from the likes of Apple and Research in Motion. Palm's Treos were once very popular, but they have looked positively ancient against the iPhone and new BlackBerrys such as the Storm and Bold. If it wasn't for the Palm Centro--which doesn't really break any ground on the software front but costs an attractive $99--Palm might already be dead.

The company's fortunes will be determined by a race against time: if Palm can get products using its Nova operating system--which scheduled to arrive in the first half of 2009--out in the market before sales of Treos dwindle to zero, it has a chance to regain its perch atop the mobile computing world. Otherwise, Palm is stuck in a moment and it can't get out of it.