While the information is sparse, what you see above is the Motorola i776 from Boost Mobile, soon to be available through Target. While it will surely be carried elsewhere, it looks like Target’s the one that slipped up and leaked the info early. Honestly, I saw this at Phone News a couple of days ago, and I’m surprised as hell it hasn’t been taken down yet.

Not much is there in terms of specs. We learn that it has GPS, and that, duh, it’s a flip with text messaging capabilities. It does boast 3.5 hours of talk time. Yet, all is not well. As you can see below, it still contains the signature Nextel stub antenna. Not saying it’s the ugliest thing in the world…but it’s sure close. No, we haven’t heard anything on pricing or availability date yet. But at least we know it’s coming, and have the images to prove it.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

In sports, it’s common to see a good player struggle and suggest that he or she needs a change of scenery to get back on track. Typically, we do not think of such a solution in the telecommunications sector, but one failed U.S. MVNO might change that. Disney Mobile, which went dark at the end of 2007, has found success with a new MVNO venture in Japan. They’ve partnered with SoftBank, a telecom conglomerate, and have each brought something different to the table. The result is a success unlike anything they saw in America. The craziest part: women in their 20s and 30s, and not children, are filling the bulk of orders.

Serkan Toto of Tech Crunch brings up an interesting point:

In Japan, Disney strategically about-faced by pursuing an OEM-like strategy: They leave back-end operations (distribution, price planning, sales, billing, etc.) to their partner and focus on bringing content, design know-how and brand value into the partnership.

This was a prominent topic at the Prepaid Press Expo, particularly in the session I moderated on the future of MVNOs. Both Paris Holt of telSPACE and Daniel Csoka of AKOS Technology Corporation mentioned the separation of content and back-end functions being key to the future success of MVNOs. Neat that we’re seeing a story about just that.

This also touches on the MVNO 2.0 concept we discussed earlier this month. Disney is trying something totally different, not only with the content/billing strategy, but with their target audience of women in their 20s and 30s. Jason Ankeny of Fierce Mobile Content asked back in January if Disney was “too Goofy to succeed” in Japan. Looks like Disney’s surprising us all.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.