T-Mobile agreed Friday to pay $350 million to settle class-action lawsuits brought over an August 2021 cyberattack in which a hacker infiltrated its computer systems to steal sensitive data relating to millions of customers.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier also agreed to make an additional $150 million investment in data security and related technologies this year and next, according to an SEC filing Friday afternoon.

The proposed class consists of more than 76 million customers, according to a copy of the proposed settlement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, where several related cases were consolidated. The $350 million payout will fund claims submitted by class members, plaintiffs’ legal fees, and administrative costs.

If the court approves the settlement, it “will resolve substantially all of the claims brought by the Company’s current, former and prospective customers who were impacted by the 2021 cyberattack,” T-Mobile said in its SEC filing.

The company continues to cooperate with various regulators who are separately investigating the incident, according to a T-Mobile spokesperson.

T-Mobile issued a statement Friday about the settlement on its website. “As we continue to invest time, energy, and resources in addressing this challenge, we are pleased to have resolved this consumer class action filing,” the company said.

According to the SEC filing, T-Mobile expects to record a pre-tax charge of about $400 million in the second quarter as a result of the settlement. The filing notes that the charge and the $150 million investment in security were anticipated in its prior financial guidance to investors.

Amazon is publishing two new mobile games through its Amazon Kids+ service, based on the original Amazon specials Super Spy Ryan and Do, Re & Mi.

The new games are both published by Amazon Mobile, which makes them the first mobile games published directly by Amazon since 2015’s Til Morning’s Light and the internally-developed To-Fu Fury, as well as the first mobile games in a new line of Amazon Kids+ Originals.

It also represents a continued focus on the children’s media market in Amazon’s current intiatives, along with the Amazon Glow’s recent emergence from beta.

Super Spy Ryan is based on the 30-minute 2020 special of the same name, which itself is based on the multimedia content empire built from the popular “Ryan’s World” YouTube channel. “Ryan’s World,” which features various kid-friendly skits that star pre-teen toy reviewer Ryan Kaji and his family, has 32.3 million subscribers at time of writing.

The Super Spy Ryan game was developed as a collaboration between the Kaji family, and mobile game developers Pocket Watch and Amber Studio. It’s billed as a “fun, kid-safe, multiplayer romp for ages 6-9+.” It puts the player in the role of Ryan and friends as they avoid traps, play competitive minigames, and reclaim stolen presents from Ryan’s (fictional, animated) archnemesis Packrat.

The game is explicitly designed with safety features for a child audience. Players in online multiplayer are randomly assigned spy-themed usernames, there are no chat features or friends lists, and parents have the option to turn on a single-player mode that lets a kid go solo against computer-controlled competition.

Super Spy Ryan is now available for the Apple and Google Play app stores in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Ireland, and is “coming soon” to the Kids+ subscription for Amazon Fire tablets. It’s the third video game to be based on the “Ryan’s World” brand, following 2019’s Race with Ryan on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC and 2022’s mobile game Ryan’s Rescue Squad.

Do, Re & Mi is likewise based on an Amazon Prime series of the same name, which features Kristen Bell (The Good Place, Frozen), Jackie Tohn (GLOW), and Luke Youngblood (Community, Harry Potter) as a trio of musical songbirds.

The game, by Prague-based mobile developer About Fun, features Bell and Tohn reprising their roles in an educational music game designed for preschoolers. Its minigames include lessons on how to play bongos and the piano, how to read sheet music, and the basics of musical concepts such as the duet.

Unlike Super Spy Ryan, the Do, Re & Mi game has no firm release date at time of writing, and is scheduled for release on the Apple app store at an unspecified point in the near future.

T-Mobile beat analyst expectations at the end of its second quarter, reporting $20 billion in revenue, up 13% year-over-year, and $0.78 in earnings per share. Analysts expected revenue of $19.3 billion and earnings per share of $0.53.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless company added 1.3 million new customers. It led the industry in postpaid net subscriber growth and service revenue growth.

Shares in T-Mobile were flat in after-hours trading.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile announced it extended the range of its 5G network, now covering 305 million people. It also reported that now 165 million of those people are covered with Ultra Capacity 5G.

The mobile provider in April launched a home internet service powered by its mobile network. It costs $60 per month and reaches internet speeds of 100 Mbps.

Following its acquisition of Sprint, T-Mobile reported one-third of Sprint’s customers have been moved to its network. Approximately 80% of Sprint customer traffic is carried through T-Mobile network.

Calling a strong, affordable internet connection for every American a “must-have,” Sen. Patty Murray, was joined by Microsoft’s Brad Smith and other digital access advocates to push for additional federal spending to improve broadband access and affordability across the country. 

“It’s time to invest in broadband in a big way,” Murray said in the online conversation about her legislation, the $1.4 billion Digital Equity Act. Smith, president of the Seattle-area tech giant, agreed and called internet access a basic need for everyone.

“Broadband had become the electricity of the 21st Century,” Smith said.

Murray, who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, seeks to put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money into local projects by targeting three broad categories: connecting people to high-speed internet; helping them get internet devices beyond mobile phones; and teaching the necessary skills to navigate an online world. 

The pandemic, the panel said, didn’t reveal what is known as the digital divide; all said they have known about this problem for years. Instead, they said, the months of working-and-learning from home made it impossible to ignore the problem any longer. 

“When the pandemic forced schools to close in March of 2020 it was quickly apparent to me and my colleagues that children would not be able to attend school without a working device and adequate home broadband,” said Susan Enfield, superintendent of Highline Public Schools.  

She added: “I want to be clear: We’ve known about the digital divide for years. And we chose to look away because we could.”

Murray, Smith and Enfield, were joined by King County Library System Executive Director Lisa Rosenblum, Equity in Education Coalition co-founder and Executive Director Sharonne Navas and City of Seattle Digital Equity Program Manager David Keyes.

Navas noted that when the Equity in Education Coalition did detailed research during the pandemic they discovered more than 18,000 King County households lacked internet access and more than 285,000 students statewide lacked internet access.

In part, that information is what drove Kitsap County Rep. Drew Hansen to successfully push for legislation to allow municipal governments to become internet service providers and expand the reach of broadband.

Taking effect in three weeks, Hansen’s HB1336 grants legal authority to public utility districts, counties, towns, and port districts to offer retail broadband service to subscribers in the same manner that a private company such as Comcast does. The bill gives municipalities legal authority to become internet service providers. 

But Navas said much more needs to be done. The pandemic showed that the internet has become a requirement along the lines of food, housing, education, and medical care. “(The internet) was the one thing technically that was holding this state together,” she said. 

With the work-from-home phenomenon becoming more of a long-term reality, T-Mobile is looking to capitalize on its 5G wireless network — expanded thanks in large part to its Sprint merger last year — to drum up more business from large companies.

The Bellevue, Wash., wireless carrier announced a new T-Mobile Home Office Internet service that includes a 5G wireless router for companies to have sent directly to employees’ homes. T-Mobile says it’s attempting to break the “stranglehold that AT&T and Verizon have on the enterprise.”

T-Mobile Home Office Internet, which starts at $90 per line per month, is part of a broader set of services for business announced by T-Mobile on Thursday morning under the name “WFX.”

Dialpad investment: The company also announced a new business-oriented phone service in partnership with San Francisco-based Dialpad. T-Mobile said it has taken an equity stake in the cloud business phone and contact center provider, in addition to an observer seat on the Dialpad board. The size of the equity stake wasn’t disclosed by the companies.

Post-merger employment: T-Mobile reported in its recent 10K annual filing that it had 75,000 employees as of the end of 2020, about 5,000 less than the combined total of Sprint and T-Mobile employees at the time of their $26.5 billion deal last year. As reported by wireless industry news publication LightReading, T-Mobile had pledged to preserve and expand the employee base.

“We’re not backing away from our commitment on jobs,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said in a statement. “In 2020 we worked through the integration and as with any merger we addressed some redundancies, however we have continued hiring in spite of a complex pandemic environment. We currently have nearly 3,000 job openings, only a portion of which are part of our Un-carrier Job initiative that we launched last summer to hire 5,000 more employees.”

Latest results: T-Mobile added a net total of 1.7 million in the fourth quarter, growing to 102 million total customers. It posted quarterly revenue of $20.3 billion and profits of $750 million.

T-Mobile added a net total of more than 2 million customers in the third quarter, giving it more than 100 million customers for the first time.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless company posted of revenue of $19.3 billion and profit of $1.3 billion, or $1 per share, topping Wall Street’s expectations by both measures. Analysts surveyed in advance of T-Mobile’s earnings release expected the company to post earnings of 43 cents/share on revenue of $18.34 billion.

The results represent “the strongest financials in our history,” said Mike Sievert, the T-Mobile CEO, on an earnings call with analysts and investors. The company raised its financial guidance for the second half of the year by a variety of measures, including free cash flow between $700 million and $900 million, up from guidance of $300 million to $500 million previously.

Sievert said the growth took place despite COVID-19 creating a “slower switching environment” for customers who might otherwise look to jump ship from other wireless companies.

T-Mobile’s continued growth follows the company’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint, which was completed in April after a lengthy legal battle and extended regulatory review. The company is looking to the ongoing rollout of its 5G wireless network and the launch of the iPhone 12 to fuel further growth in its business.

Following the completion of the Sprint merger, the newly combined T-Mobile claimed the position of the number two wireless company in the country, with 98.3 million customers at the time, ahead of AT&T and behind Verizon.

AT&T reported a total of more than 94 million postpaid and prepaid wireless subscribers as of the end of the third quarter, which T-Mobile has described as a comparable number, but this is a subject of debate between the companies, and it’s tricky to make an apples-to-apples comparison based on the numbers they release.

The company launched its revamped TVision service on Nov. 1, following the conclusion of the third quarter, so results from the new offering aren’t included in this earnings report. Sievert told GeekWire last week that he doesn’t expect the new service to be a major source of profits for the company. 

T-Mobile unveiled an overhauled version of its TVision television service on Tuesday morning, along with a new TV streaming device, launching a new challenge to the cable industry and jumping into a crowded and competitive field of video platforms.

The revamped TV service is one of the first big competitive moves by the Bellevue, Wash., based wireless carrier following the completion of its $26.5 billion merger with Sprint earlier this year. It’s part of T-Mobile’s broader push beyond traditional wireless services, which also includes a move into 5G home Internet service.

Packages include a collection of live news and sports channels for $40/month, including ESPN, Fox, Disney and others, with additional content at higher tiers, up to $60/month total. A package of 30 entertainment channels such as AMC, BET, HGTV and others starts at $10/month.

TVision will be available via dedicated apps on Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV boxes, in addition to apps for Android and iOS devices. The TVision HUB device and remote control will sell for $50. It’s an Android TV device, which plugs in via HDMI, allowing users to access TVision and other services.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, the longtime T-Mobile executive who took the helm of the company earlier this year, continued the trash-talking tradition started by his predecessor, John Legere, in the announcement Tuesday morning, taking a series of competitive jabs at the big cable companies.

“If ever there was an industry that needed an Un-carrier overhaul, it’s cable and satellite TV,” Sievert said, using the company’s term for its disruptive moves in the wireless industry. “I mean, it’s no secret why these companies are dying, they treat their customers so badly.”

The announcement plays into a larger shift by consumers away from traditional cable packages and toward smaller packages of channels and streaming services. In addition to trying to siphon its share of customers from cable companies, T-Mobile will be going head-to-head against similar live TV and streaming services such as Google’s YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, Dish Network’s Sling TV, and AT&T’s TV Now.

T-Mobile compared its $50/month TVision Live TV+ service (with sports channels including NFL Network) to the standard $65/month YouTube TV plan. However, YouTube TV offers additional perks such as unlimited cloud DVR storage, while T-Mobile limits cloud DVR storage to 100 hours.

One of T-Mobile’s competitive advantages is its network of stores across the country, which the company says will sell and support the TVision service.

The new TVision is set to launch in phases starting Nov. 1, beginning with T-Mobile postpaid wireless customers, before becoming generally available next year.

It’s a successor to a higher-priced offering that the company launched last year based on technology from Layer3 TV, the Denver-based company that T-Mobile acquired for $325 million in late 2017.

[T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert will join us at the GeekWire Summit later this week for a conversation about T-Mobile and the future of tech and telecom.]

Microsoft is launching an Office mobile app today for Android and iOS designed to make some of its signature software — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — must-have tools for all smartphone users.

Microsoft first unveiled the Office app at its Ignite conference in November. The app hit the 10,000-user limit for Apple’s TestFlight beta program just a few hours after the announcement, Microsoft said.

Having a unified app means users won’t have to jump between tools as they work on documents, Microsoft says. It also takes up less space and is designed to be more simple and efficient than the individual Office apps.

The Office mobile app takes advantage of smartphone cameras to do things such as convert images into editable Word and Excel documents, scan PDFs and capture and enhance whiteboards. It also aims to simplify common phone tasks, including taking quick notes, signing PDFs, scanning QR codes and moving files between devices.

Microsoft also teased a few new features it is working on that will make using the Office programs easier on smartphones:

• Users will be able to speak to the app and turn their words into text through Word, and then use basic toolbars to add formatting and punctuation.
• Card view in Excel will let users edit spreadsheets in a more mobile-friendly way so that they don’t have to scroll across columns that extend beyond the limits of the screen.
• A new PowerPoint feature will let users come up with an outline, and the program will fill in the blanks, turning ideas into a proper presentation with design and styling.

The new Office app is another example of Microsoft’s evolving mobile strategy. Following the failure of the Windows Phone operating system, Microsoft shifted its focus toward packaging its apps and services to work well across iOS and Android.

However, Microsoft’s thinking is due for another evolution as the tech giant is getting ready to put out a phone of its own. Later this year, Microsoft will release the foldable Surface Duo device, which will run on Android.

The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint — the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers — cleared one of its last major hurdles when a judge sided with the companies in a lawsuit brought by attorneys general in more than a dozen states.

Judge Victor Marrero rejected three core arguments made by the attorneys general when ruling in favor of T-Mobile: That the combined companies would hurt competition; that Sprint could be a viable wireless carrier on its own; and that a deal to sell some of T-Mobile’s wireless spectrum to Dish Network wouldn’t be enough to prop it up as a competitive alternative.

T-Mobile executives took a victory lap following the ruling Tuesday morning.

“Today was a huge victory for this merger … and now we are FINALLY able to focus on the last steps to get this merger done!” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in a statement.

Legere said the two companies will form a “supercharged un-carrier” that will be good for customers and competition with incumbent powers AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile began rolling out its nationwide 5G network in December, and the merger is critical to the success of that plan.

????ATTN: America  ????
The moment we've been waiting for – we WON in Court!! The #NewTMobile is now 1️⃣ step closer to being finalized!! The new Supercharged Un-carrier will provide benefits for ALL customers & drive competition! We can't wait!???? key info: https://t.co/szV2VJEcxw

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) February 11, 2020

After celebrating the ruling, Legere pivoted to fire a shot across the bow at T-Mobile’s wireless competitors, as well as rivals in the TV business, now that T-Mobile has its own cable service.

“Look out Dumb and Dumber and Big Cable – we are coming for you … and you haven’t seen anything yet,” Legere said.

T-Mobile and Sprint announced plans to merge in April 2018, a deal that would create a $146 billion wireless carrier under the T-Mobile banner. Legere plans to step down from his executive role following the merger and T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert will take over.

The lawsuit filed in June by state attorneys general challenged the $26.5 billion deal, which was previously approved by the Justice Department and FCC. The 13 states and the District of Columbia claimed that combining the carriers would hurt consumers and competition.

CNBC notes that the deal still has to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission before it can close. T-Mobile stock is up nearly 12 percent this morning, while Sprint shares spiked 73 percent.

Amazon is the latest tech giant to pull out of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona later this month due to the coronavirus outbreak.

• The tech giant has taken other precautions due to the disease, including restricting travel to China. Amazon joins a growing list of companies, including Sony, NVIDIA, LG and more that have pulled out of the event, which is one of the biggest annual showcases of mobile technology in the world.
• One company that hasn’t said anything about its MWC presence is Microsoft. The company planned to have a major showcase at the event. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information about its plans.
• MWC organizer GSMA recently said it is banning visitors from China’s Hubei province, where the epidemic is thought to have begun, as part of the safety precautions it is taking around the event. The virus has infected more than 40,500 people worldwide and killed 910.

Microsoft and Samsung took their partnership to the next level with a new smartphone that features a built-in Teams walkie-talkie capability.

The new Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro is a thin, durable phone designed for workers in industries like retail, manufacturing, healthcare and logistics. A pair of programmable buttons allow users to set up a push-to-talk function, bypassing the home screen and need to boot up apps, via the new Microsoft Teams walkie-talkie feature.

Microsoft foreshadowed the move last week, when it unveiled the Teams walkie-talkie feature as part of a series of new tools for “firstline” workers — the billions of people who work in retail stores, healthcare facilities and other customer-facing roles. The goal, Microsoft says, is to reduce the number of devices workers have to carry around.

In August, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a surprise appearance at Samsung’s Galaxy’s Note10 event to announce the two companies struck up a partnership to bring together their respective products and services. The XCover Pro-Teams integration follows that alliance, which began with tie-ins between the Note10 and Microsoft services such as Outlook and Windows 10.

“The powerful combination of Microsoft Teams and the new Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro builds on this partnership and will provide firstline workers everywhere with the technology they need to be more collaborative, productive and secure,” Nadella said in a statement.

The device also comes with a built-in point-of-scale scanner for retail workers. And the two programmable buttons allow users to pin other complex actions, beyond Teams’ walkie-talkie feature, turning on a flashlight or launching a CRM app. The phone features a long-lasting battery that can be swapped out to make sure workers’ phones remain charged.

Samsung didn’t say when the new device will be released. Microsoft said the Teams walkie-talkie feature will be available in private preview “in the first half of this year.”

What were the top tech stories of the past decade?

I’ve been discussing this topic with others recently on LinkedIn, and as I was editing GeekWire contributing writer Christopher Budd’s insightful commentary on the challenges created by technology over the past 10 years, it struck me that it would be worth sharing my list here, to add context and a different perspective.

Here’s my list.

• Machine learning, artificial intelligence.
• Breakthroughs in speech recognition and computer vision.
• Ascendance of Big Tech’s new guard: Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.
• Amazon 3.0: Everything Store becomes Everything Company.
• Microsoft’s surprising renaissance.
• U.S. vs. China, new innovation race.
• Recognition of diversity, equity and inclusion in shaping next generation of technology.
• Security reckoning, real-world consequences of breaches and vulnerabilities.
• Privacy awakening, recognition of trade-offs in personal info and ‘free’ tech services.
• Blockchain, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, transformation of financial markets.
• Tech employee activism, engagement.
• Smart speakers, voice assistants.
• Virtual and augmented reality.
• Cloud revolution, subscription software, developer tools.
• Rise of social media.
• Smartphone revolution.
• Digital photography explosion.
• Data, sensors and Internet of Things.
• Streaming, subscriptions, and the end of traditional TV.
• Commercial space travel and exploration.

What did I miss? What would you remove? What do you expect in the decade ahead?

Check out additional suggestions and input in the comments on LinkedIn. Ideas contributed by others there include quantum computing, the rise and fall of tablets, and social media’s impact on politics.

Email me or comment below with your thoughts.

Personal information of T-Mobile’s wireless customers, including names, addresses, phone numbers and more, was exposed in a recent breach.

T-Mobile told TechCrunch that the breach impacted less than 1.5 percent of its 84.2 million customers, or approximately 1.26 million people. The breach occurred earlier this month, and customer financial information, including credit card numbers, was not compromised, the company said.

“Our Cybersecurity team discovered and shut down malicious, unauthorized access to some information related to your T-Mobile prepaid wireless account,” the company wrote in a message to customers affected by the breach. “We promptly reported this to authorities. None of your financial data (including credit card information) or social security numbers was involved, and no passwords were compromised.”

A T-Mobile spokeswoman added that “like any other company, T-Mobile is unfortunately not immune to this type of criminal attack. We have a number of safeguards in place to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. Fortunately, we discovered this activity quickly and shut it down immediately.”

Data breaches have been on the rise in recent years, and the number of attacks rose 54 percent in the first six months of 2019 compared to the previous year, according to a report from Risk Based Security. T-Mobile suffered a previous breach in August 2018 that affected roughly 3 percent of its customers.

The breach comes at an important time for the company. It is pushing to close the mega-merger with Sprint, and recently showed off a series of benefits the combined company could provide for customers. Last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced plans to step down from the top job next year.

T-Mobile’s bold, attention-grabbing CEO John Legere is out, and he’s handing the reins to the longtime heir apparent, Mike Sievert.

Sievert will step into Legere’s magenta-colored shoes on May 1, 2020, and the company just revealed in a regulatory filing what Sievert and other executives will be paid under their new compensation plans.

Spoiler: it won’t be anywhere near the remarkable $66.5 million that Legere took home last year, largely thanks to tens of millions of dollars worth of stock tied to the pending Sprint merger. But at least Sievert’s pay will be within spitting distance of rival CEOs at Verizon and AT&T.

Mike Sievert, Incoming CEO

Siever takes on the CEO role with a base salary of $1.4 million that will jump to $1.5 million in year two and $1.6 million or more in year three.

He’ll also get a one-time $3.5 million cash award that will either be paid within 30 days of the planned T-Mobile-Sprint merger, on the date the deal is terminated, or on Dec. 1 2020 — whichever comes first. Under the terms of Sievert’s prior contract, he would have been able to leave T-Mobile if he wasn’t named CEO within six months of the merger closing.

Sievert will be awarded performance-based short-term incentives each year, which are targeted at $3.5 million and could be as high as $7 million. Under a long-term incentive program, the incoming CEO will also receive restricted stock with a target value of $13.5 million in the first year, which will rise to $14.25 million in year two and $15 million or more in year three.

We have built an incredible brand as the #uncarrier – one that is differentiated from the competition and known for customer obsession! I could not be more excited to continue to follow in @JohnLegere's footsteps and expand this mission as CEO of @TMobile on May 1.

— Mike Sievert (@SievertMike) November 18, 2019

Finally, Sievert will be entitled to around $20 million worth of stock after three years on the job as CEO, provided T-Mobile’s stock price hits certain performance goals.

In his role as COO and president, Sievert made a base salary of $1.2 million, short-term annual incentives of $2.4 million and long-term incentives valued at $10.35 million.

How Sievert’s pay compares to AT&T and Verizon

Due to the variable nature of CEO pay, it’s tough to say how Sievert’s compensation stacks up against that of Verizon and AT&T leaders. But based on the figures above, Sievert may well exceed $20 million in total compensation his first year, which would put him in the same league as his rivals.

Last year, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson earned $29.1 million, which was boosted by the acquisition of Time Warner. His base salary was $1.8 million last year and he earned $17 million in stock awards and $5.19 million non-equity awards.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg took home a total compensation package of $22.2 million last year. His base salary of $1.2 million was boosted by $16.6 million in stock awards, $2.75 million in non-equity incentives and $1.6 million in other compensation.

Neville Ray, President of Technology

Current CTO Neville Ray will become T-Mobile’s president of technology with a base salary of $900,000. Under the two-year contract, he’ll also get short-term incentives that are targeted at $1.8 million and a long-term incentive program that is valued at a targeted $6.75 million.

J. Braxton Carter, CFO

T-Mobile CFO J. Braxton Carter will remain with the wireless company until July 1, 2020 under his new contract. He’ll continue to receive his $950,000 base salary and benefits, but will not be eligible for incentive-based awards starting next year. Upon his departure, Carter will get a cash bonus of $7.5 million.

Today’s announcement that John Legere will step down as CEO of T-Mobile next year immediately added fuel to rumors that the eccentric executive is intrigued by the challenge of turning around beleaguered co-working giant WeWork. But less than an hour later, Legere squashed those questions, for now at least.

RELATED: T-Mobile CEO John Legere to step down in 2020; COO and President Mike Sievert will succeed him

“I want to be clear; I was never having discussions to run WeWork,” Legere said on a call with analysts and reporters Monday. “And because we had this announcement pending, I couldn’t say that.”

Legere’s contract ends April 30, 2020, and he will step down as CEO after that. Succeeding him will be current President and COO Mike Sievert, a key player in the company’s transformation under Legere.

So what’s next? Legere said he is not retiring, and his status as a future executive free agent is sure to make many company boards salivate. Legere has created a legacy for himself as a driving force behind T-Mobile’s transformation from a wireless also-ran to a major player in the market, shaking up what he called a “stupid, broken, arrogant industry.”

However, until his contract runs out, Legere said he is focused on completing the mega-merger with Sprint and setting up the transition to the next era for the company. Legere said he is already getting interest from other companies that want to turn around their culture.

Here’s what Legere had to say about his future on the call with analysts:

This was kind of an awkward couple of weeks. I want to be clear, I was never having discussions to run WeWork. And because we had this announcement pending, I couldn’t say that. Because it wasn’t complete enough. But it did create an awkward period of time.

I’ve also been clear with my board — and that’s why the announcements are structured as such — I’m not retiring. I’ve got at least 30 to 40 years and five or six good acts left in me. I’m already getting a tremendous amount of input of companies that could use the kind of culture transformation, leadership and things similar to what we’ve demonstrated here.

I can tell you, on my list of things to do: Settle with the AGs and/or win at trial; find the right Christmas present for Mike Sievert; and then help set up the integration and the announcement of the New T-Mobile and the transition to Mike.

Some time, come around May, we’ll look at that. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of speculation and ideas on (Legere’s next job). Unfortunately some of them happened a little prematurely.

Legere noted he has no restrictions on future employment beyond standard industry norms reflected in his non-compete agreement. He also jokingly assured his fans that he won’t turn his back on the company to join one of the two wireless giants he has long referred to as “dumb and dumber.”

“The restrictions are, it can’t be companies I hate, which eliminates AT&T and Verizon from the list,” Legere said.

Since joining T-Mobile in 2012, Legere has helped turn around the company, guiding it to 26 straight quarters with more than one million net customer additions. As CEO, Legere his driven an aggressive campaign in which T-Mobile branded itself the “Un-carrier,” with new pricing strategies, subscriber benefits and promotions that forced rivals to change their own packages and promotions.

T-Mobile’s customer count now tops more than 84.5 million, and the company has become the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier behind Verizon and AT&T.

When Legere came in, T-Mobile was flailing. A distant fourth among U.S. wireless carriers, T-Mobile agreed to be acquired by AT&T for $39 billion in 2009. But the deal fell through in 2011, leaving T-Mobile’s future uncertain.

Legere was appointed CEO of T-Mobile nine months after the AT&T deal fell through. Legere had just led telecommunications company Global Crossing, where he served as CEO for 10 years, through a $3 billion sale to Level 3 Communications in 2011.

Legere spent 20 years at AT&T, leading its Asia operations and serving as head of global strategy and business development. He then had a two-year stint as an executive at Dell before going on to lead Global Crossing.

When he joined T-Mobile, Legere aimed to re-brand the company, and that also required a self-transformation. Aiming to buck the stereotype of “inaccessible suit,” Legere donned a casual magenta-hued wardrobe and made himself available to fans and customers on social media. He agreed to speak at the 2014 GeekWire Summit only after GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop switched from AT&T to T-Mobile, and tweeted Legere with proof that he had made the switch.

Referring to himself as “Batman,” Legere injected his personality into his role, becoming known for guzzling Red Bull, running marathons, dropping f-bombs and attracting fans with his popular Slow Cooker Sunday cooking show.

“I think the question that most investors are focused on in the wake of this is, what’s going to happen to Slow Cooker Sundays?” joked analyst Jonathan Chaplin of New Street Research on the call Monday morning.

“When the time is appropriate, I’m fielding offers from cable TV stations,” Legere replied, as the executives around him broke into laughter, “because frankly I have 10 times more viewers than Gordon Ramsay and the rest of them combined.”

Sievert has traditionally been a little more buttoned-up in his style and rhetoric, but he clearly revels in Legere’s irreverent tone. One test will be whether Sievert can maintain the momentum and culture Legere established while also putting his own stamp on the company.

Legere is sure to receive interest from a variety of companies looking to tap his unique leadership style. He will remain on T-Mobile’s board, and even after his tenure as CEO ends, he doesn’t expect to change his approach much.

“In some way, I am going to be connected with T-Mobile as it relates to the brand, or I’m just going to be a T-Mobile brand fanatic,” Legere said. “You can expect to see more of the same. I’m going to be that crazy guy outside the shareholder meeting, who may happen to own 5 percent of the stock.”

Minecraft Earth, Microsoft’s take on the smartphone-enabled augmented reality gaming craze, made its U.S. debut after months of testing.

Microsoft said the early access version of Minecraft Earth is now available on Android and iOS devices in the U.S. The game already debuted in the U.K., Australia, Canada, Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Sweden and South Korea.

Like the smash hit Pokémon Go, Minecraft Earth layers its universe over the real world, and that takes a lot of planning and computing power. That’s why Microsoft is rolling the game out slowly, and it plans to achieve global availability by December.

Even though it is making its debut around the world, Minecraft Earth remains a work in progress. The early access version is the minimum feature set needed for a strong experience, but more content and features will be added in future updates.

The game takes Minecraft off the computer screen and brings the game into the real world — through the lens of a smartphone. Players collect items, go on quests and use their inventories to put together impressive structures that can be captured and shared. There’s important elements of cooperation in defeating bad guys in missions and collaborating on tabletop Buildplate structures that can be ballooned up to life-size scale.

Microsoft first teased the game in May at its Build developer conference and unveiled it a few days later. and The beta test began two months after that in five cities, including Seattle.

Microsoft bought Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.

T-Mobile added a net total of more than 1.7 million customers in the third quarter, its 26th straight quarter with more than 1 million net additions, bringing its total to 84.2 million customers in its quest to catch its larger rivals AT&T and Verizon.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier posted $11.1 billion in total revenue, up 2 percent, shy of the $11.3 billion expected by Wall Street analysts. However, the company’s profits of $870 million, up 9 percent, translated into earnings per share of $1.01, topping analyst expectations of 96 cents per share.

In an investor factbook summarizing the quarter, T-Mobile says it now expects that its merger with Sprint “will be permitted to close in early 2020.”

T-Mobile CEO John Legere reiterated that statement on a conference call with investors, saying that the company continues to be open to talks with state attorneys general to resolve the remaining legal hurdle keeping the Sprint merger from being finalized, and is having discussions with some of them.

The Federal Communications Commission this month joined the U.S. Department of Justice in approving the merger, which was originally announced in April 2018.

Although it has taken longer to close the deal than planned, Legere said, “the silver lining is that we have had more time to prepare for the coming integration.” He said the company has prepared “detailed integration plans,” including a strategy to deploy Sprint’s 2.5 Ghz wireless spectrum “soon after close,” a key part of T-Mobile’s plan to boost its network with Sprint’s wireless capacity.

Sprint and T-Mobile contend that the combination of the companies would position them to compete more aggressively against Verizon and AT&T in the emerging market for 5G wireless services. Each of the two larger carriers currently has about twice as many wireless customers as T-Mobile does.

T-Mobile has said it plans to keep its Bellevue headquarters following the Sprint merger, and operate a second base in Overland Park, Kan., Sprint’s hometown.

T-Mobile today also rolled out Magenta First Responder, a new rate plan designed for state and local first responders and their families.

Watch the live stream of the conference call below.

Some of the world’s biggest technology companies are pushing forward with foldable phones and hybrid dual-screen devices that could represent the next evolution in personal electronics. However, it’s unclear how big of an audience there is for these expensive devices — especially as the companies building them are still working out the kinks.

In the last few days, reports of new progress on these devices show that the tech world is going full speed ahead on foldable devices. Here is a look at all the recent activity:

• Bloomberg reported that Samsung is working on its second foldable device, which collapses into a pocket-sized square. The device is reportedly smaller at 6.7 inches than the Galaxy Fold that was announced earlier this year and meant to be more affordable. Speaking of Galaxy Fold, the $2,000 device may have a release date after months of delays stemming from hardware issues. Over the weekend, Samsung began taking “pre-registrations” to buy the phone, and tech insider Evan Blass tweeted that the device will arrive Sept. 27.
• Meanwhile, Dell is continuing to work on a Windows 10-powered, foldable, dual-screen device. Dell applied for a patent last month focused on the ever-important hinge that will make the device work. The news comes as Microsoft prepares for a hardware event in New York City in October that some observers expect will include the unveiling of a long-rumored foldable Surface dual-screen device.
• DigiTimes reported that Microsoft and Intel are working together to establish standards for dual-screen notebooks. The two companies are reportedly looking to extend those standards to foldable devices.

Why they are doing this: The markets for PCs and smartphones are showing meager growth and even declining in some cases, leading manufacturers to search for the next big thing. Given the activity around foldable and dual-screen devices, it appears that tech giants see these gadgets as one way to juice sales heading into the busy holiday season and in the future. However, as these devices were being unveiled, they caught some flak online as being not exactly revolutionary.

First Flip Phone?!? #Apple #iPhone #SamsungFold #GalaxyFold https://t.co/gsjkLLYBAm

— Todd Garland (@ToddieG) February 20, 2019

First Flip Phone?!? #Apple #iPhone #SamsungFold #GalaxyFold pic.twitter.com/eupc05b9QH

— Todd Garland (@ToddieG) February 20, 2019

Who wants them: Unclear. The most high-profile foldable devices announced so far, the Galaxy Fold and Huawei’s Mate X, have yet to be released, so we still don’t know how big of an audience there is. In the wake of the Galaxy Fold announcement tech site Goosed asked the question, do people really want this?

Samsung kicking off #Unpacked2019 with the Galaxy Fold – a folding phone/tablet. Is folding tech something you're interested in? #Unpacked

— goosed.ie (@goosed_ie) February 20, 2019

Others preached patience, pointing out that what we are seeing now is the first generation of a brand new type of hardware. These types of innovations tend to start slow and at a high price point.

People freaking out about a $2000 phone? Bruh, your fully loaded iPhone XS Max is almost at that price ??? This is Gen 1. It’s never cheap to be an early adopter. You decide if it’s worth it for you. #SamsungFold

— Brian Tong (@briantong) February 20, 2019

T-Mobile is pulling back the curtain on a new device testing lab in its hometown of Bellevue, Wash., as it prepares to roll out next-generation 5G wireless service across the country next year.

The new 20,000-square-foot device lab was created inside a larger innovation and testing facility that T-Mobile calls the Launch Pad. About 200 T-Mobile employees in the new lab test devices, including smartphones and Internet of Things gadgets, for functionality and durability. They check to see if devices work well running everyday actions that a typical user might perform, and they also put new phones through the wringer: forcefully dropping them, soaking them in simulated rain storms and baking them at extreme heat.

It could be a metaphor for what T-Mobile itself has been through in its attempt to merge with Sprint to create a $146 billion wireless company. Originally announced more than a year ago, the deal faces ongoing challenges from states and lawmakers even as FCC approval appears likely following a nod from the U.S. Department of Justice. T-Mobile says the merger would position the combined company to better challenge larger carriers AT&T and Verizon in the era of super-fast 5G wireless connectivity.

In the meantime, T-Mobile is laying the technical groundwork for that era on its own. The new devices lab shares the facility with the company’s network testing lab for the entire U.S., where it experiments with everything to do with connectivity. Along the winding hallways are soundproofed rooms to monitor audio quality, labs optimized to test wireless spectrum that enables fast download speeds but can’t travel very far, and other areas working on the kind of low-band spectrum needed to bring 5G to far-flung rural regions.

“We have lots of smart engineers coming up with ideas,” Grant Castle, vice president of engineering and quality assurance, told GeekWire on a tour of the facility this week. “When they want their ideas to come to life, this is where they come. So they come up here and we do testing, we do proof of concept and we do some trials.”

T-Mobile first established the facility nearly 20 years ago and it has grown steadily since then. It started at around 10,000 square feet and has ballooned to nearly 100,000 square feet as the Launch Pad today. T-Mobile has another office building across the street from the facility where engineers can work when they’re not performing tests.

T-Mobile sees the facility growing even further, as the company has “acquired rights” on some of the nearby buildings to potentially grow the Launch Pad footprint, Castle said.

Launch Pad is about 5 miles north of T-Mobile’s headquarters in what used to be an appliance store in a transition zone between Bellevue and nearby Redmond, the home of Microsoft. It’s just down the road from a new neighborhood coming out of the ground, the Spring District, which will feature a new headquarters for REI and a major office for Facebook.

For much of its existence, the Launch Pad was shrouded in secrecy, hidden away in a forest of low-rise office buildings and warehouses. It didn’t have a big sign on the front like it does today, and there wasn’t the smallest hint of the company’s signature shade of magenta. As T-Mobile evolved under CEO John Legere to paint itself as the rebel alternative to AT&T and Verizon, the company started to become more open and vocal about its work.

“People would always assume we were kind of the little carrier, and we didn’t really do much, that we just followed everybody,” Castle said. “We wanted to show off our technology leadership and our network leadership because we were getting no credit for it. We wanted to tell our story.”

Launch Pad is uniquely T-Mobile. Everything is magenta, from traffic control structures in the parking lot to sound proofing and signal testing equipment in the labs. Displayed along the walls are more than 500 plaques commemorating patents the company has received.

A significant chunk of the facility is dedicated to tests related to low-band spectrum, which covers longer distances than other spectrum types and shores up signal strength within buildings and in rural areas. T-Mobile spent close to $8 billion on low-band spectrum in a 2017 FCC auction, making it a centerpiece of its 5G push.

The lab also features testing areas to make sure phones continue to function smoothly after software updates, from either the carrier or the smartphone manufacturer.

“It takes two hands to clap,” Castle said. “So we have to transmit and the phone has to receive, and we want to make sure the phone can receive our signal as far away as possible.”

Often in tours of device labs, the companies tightly restrict what visitors can view and document, but that wasn’t the case with the T-Mobile facility. The one exception was a room home to the smartphone robot Tappy, a testing device that was at the center of an international legal battle between T-Mobile and Chinese wireless giant Huawei.

There are about 20 of the original Tappy devices in the facility. T-Mobile built an updated version of the testing robot, which uses finger-like appendages to test all the buttons and functions on new phones. T-Mobile records the actions and can spot errors and communicate them to device manufacturers.

In addition to the testing space, T-Mobile built a “Tech Experience” dedicated to the futuristic capabilities of 5G. It’s been open for about 18 months for partners, sponsors and others.

The idea is to show everything that 5G and T-Mobile’s technology investments can do. The demos provide a peek at an Internet future that’s just around the corner, including a smart mirror that customers can use to view more information and interactive features about retail products they’re holding in their hands.

A familiar symbol of T-Mobile’s past sits in the middle of the Tech Experience. T-Mobile repurposed the magenta Ducati motorcycle that was a centerpiece of ad campaigns featuring its former commercial spokesperson Carly several years ago and gave it a new life.

Today, it is being used as a demo for the potential of augmented reality and 5G. In this hypothetical situation, something is wrong with the motorcycle, and the owner has to figure out how to fix it. Scanning the bike with a tablet camera and an app brings in a virtual repair tech to perform a diagnostic test and walk the owner through what’s wrong and how to fix it.

“Imagine this being linked to a pair of smart glasses that then connects to your 5G-enabled device. All this content streams directly to your device in real time,” said Jason Mazur, a senior engineer at T-Mobile and design lead for the Tech Experience. “This could be a paper jam stuck in your printer. This could be how to change the water filter at home, how to set up your Internet connection, walking you through all of these steps, streaming to your device very quickly without having to download all this content in advance of the expected use.”

A 34-year-old citizen of Pakistan is charged with paying more than $1 million in bribes to employees at AT&T’s Seattle-area offices and call centers to install malware on the company’s network to unlock millions of smartphones.

According to an indictment unsealed today by the U.S. Department of Justice, Muhammad Fahd and a partner who is now believed to be deceased unlocked more than 2 million smartphones from 2012 to 2017 that could be taken off the network and brought to other carriers. AT&T lost more than $5 million per year as a result of the alleged scheme, per the indictment.

Fahd allegedly recruited AT&T “insiders” to install malware programs that gathered confidential information and submitted unlock requests using employee credentials via a remote server. He encouraged insiders to recruit other potential co-conspirators and allegedly paid one employee $428,500 over five years.

AT&T investigators appeared to catch on to the scheme at one point as several workers left the company when confronted about their involvement in 2014. The defendants then allegedly recruited new employees to execute their plan.

The objective of the alleged scheme, per the indictment, was to “sell to members of the public the resulting ability fraudulently to unlock phones, so that the members of the public could stop using AT&T wireless services and thereby deprive AT&T of the stream of payments it was owned under the customers’ service contracts and installment plans.”

The indictment doesn’t get into how Fahd was caught. He was arrested in Hong Kong in February 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities. Fahd was extradited from Hong Kong to the U.S. last week to face 14 different charges in federal court in Seattle, including wire fraud, violating the Travel Act and intentional damage to a protected computer.

“This defendant thought he could safely run his bribery and hacking scheme from overseas, making millions of dollars while he induced young workers to choose greed over ethical conduct,” said U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran of the Western District of Washington. “Now he will be held accountable for the fraud and the lives he has derailed.”

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft was spending billions of dollars to write off the major acquisition of Nokia, and retreat from the smartphone business. Since then, the tech giant has carved out a niche building apps for iOS and Android, and today it hit an interesting milestone.

RELATED: Esports star Ninja ditches Amazon’s Twitch, inks exclusive streaming deal with Microsoft’s Mixer

As of Friday morning, Microsoft had the top free app and the top paid game on Apple’s iOS App Store, as noted by reporter Brad Sams. Minecraft has long been a staple of the App Store’s upper echelon, but Microsoft’s Twitch rival Mixer shot up the free charts following a huge acquisition — not of a company, but of talent.

Mixer’s rise comes a day after Microsoft signed esports star Tyler Blevins, a.k.a. “Ninja,” away from Amazon-owned Twitch to stream games exclusively on Mixer. Blevins is a Fortnite star and one of the biggest names in video games today with 40 million fans. He was the most-watched streamer on Twitch last year.

The app store bump is an early sign that Ninja could draw a larger streaming audience to Mixer, justifying what is likely a big-money deal from Microsoft. Android users weren’t as pumped as iOS users were about Mixer, with the game streaming app clocking in at No. 92 on the Google Play store.

Streaming is still a young business, and it’s unclear whether the audience is more interested in the platform or the talent. Ninja’s decision to take his talents to Mixer will make for an interesting case study in the importance of a single player and whether Microsoft can mount a strong challenge to Twitch.

Mixer’s last reported monthly active user count was 20 million, far lower than rival Twitch. Mixer also competes with YouTube Gaming.

The $6.99 Minecraft app has been a hit for years, even before Microsoft acquired Mojang, the studio behind the popular franchise, in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Another Minecraft mobile entry is on the way, this one a free game: the highly anticipated Minecraft Earth beta went live last month.

That both apps have ties to Microsoft’s gaming arm shows that the division continues to make strides, even as console sales have fallen off significantly. The gaming side just capped up its second year in a row of more than $10 billion in annual revenue, with year-over-year growth of approximately 10 percent.

T-Mobile had what it called a record Q2, however the results were a bit anti-climatic for observers waiting for a possible approval of the mega-merger with Sprint.

In an unusual step, T-Mobile rescheduled the call with investors that typically follows the release of a quarterly earnings report. The change in plans comes after reports surfaced that U.S. regulators were poised to approve the merger between the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers.

UPDATE: $TMUS earnings results will be released at 4:05p ET today, July 25, 2019. Today’s previously scheduled call with investors will be rescheduled. https://t.co/AZQsfhWm19

— T-Mobile IR (@TMobileIR) July 25, 2019

So…no deal today? https://t.co/eQ4d31grej

— Roger Cheng (@RogerWCheng) July 25, 2019

Waiting on the T-Mobile/Sprint news like pic.twitter.com/rvgh16gESb

— Tara Lachapelle (@taralach) July 25, 2019

T-Mobile reported 1.8 million net new customers in the second quarter, up 11 percent over the prior year. The company finished the quarter with more than 83 million total customers.

The company touted an all-time low churn rate of 0.78 percent in the second quarter, meaning less than 1 percent of customers discontinued their phone plans in that period.

?The moral of this sizzling earnings story? Taking care of your customers = good business! ❤️❤️❤️ And good business delivers (in our case) incredible, RECORD BREAKING results!! #WeWontStop https://t.co/UW09a1Xdfw

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) July 25, 2019

T-Mobile’s financials were a mixed bag in the quarter, with the company coming up short on revenue but beating Wall Street expectations for profits. T-Mobile reported earnings of $1.09 per share on revenue of $11 billion, up 4 percent over the prior year. Analysts surveyed in advance by Yahoo Finance expected T-Mobile to post earnings of $0.97 per share on $11.13 billion in revenue.

The company disclosed that it spent $222 million on merger-related costs in the quarter, up from $41 million a year ago. In the third quarter, T-Mobile expects to spend another $150 million to $200 million on merger costs.

T-Mobile stock rose slightly in after-hours trading. Prior to today’s news, the company stock was up 22 percent for the year.

The machinations of the Sprint merger represented the most significant event of the quarter for T-Mobile, but the company kept busy with a couple other major initiatives.

• In April, T-Mobile launched its first take on cable TV: A set-top box that gets to know users’ viewing habits with personalized DVRs for every member of the household. But less than a month later, T-Mobile’s head of home and entertainment Jeffrey Binder left the company. Binder was CEO of Layer3 TV, the company T-Mobile acquired to jumpstart its TV push.
• T-Mobile doubled down on banking as a target for disruption, expanding its mobile banking service, T-Mobile Money, out of the pilot phase and rolling it out nationally.
• All this activity came as T-Mobile shook up its marketing leadership to better integrate Metro by T-Mobile into the broader organization.

On this week’s Geared Up, we talk about the upcoming Amazon Prime Day, celebrating Amazon’s 25th anniversary. I bring you my tips on finding the best Prime Day deals, while naming a couple of my favorite Prime Day launch deals (which you can find right now – the Anker PowerPort Atom III and the Jabra Elite 85h headphones.) This year Amazon is extending Prime Day to be a two-day shopping event, which means competing retailers are also preparing their own deals to steal away some attention.

High-quality video game streaming is nearly here, with early launches of both Microsoft Project xCloud (an Xbox streaming service) and Google Stadia both taking place in the fall of 2019. A listener asked if the fact that people will be able to stream their games to any device — from web browser, to smartphone to smart TV and more — spells the end of the Xbox and PlayStation dedicated video game consoles as we know them. I weigh in with my thoughts, along with my impressions of using Project xCloud (which you can see in the video embedded below!)

Samsung sent out invites for its Galaxy Unpacked event, which takes place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY on Aug. 7. This will be where the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will make its debut, and we should likely hear news of updated launch plans for the Samsung Galaxy Fold as well. I discuss the expected features and specs for the new Samsung flagship smartphone.

Finally, I also talk about Jony Ive leaving Apple and what his departure means for the future of the company as many wonder if the iconic designs that Apple is known for will suffer as a result.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

• Hands-On with Microsoft Project xCloud Game Streaming to Phones!
• Amazon Prime Day Deals
• Amazon Prime Day: Anker PowerPort Atom III
• Amazon Prime Day: Jabra Elite 85h Headphones
• Peloton Bike High Tech Fitness Gadget

Here’s my hands-on impressions video of Project xCloud:

Listen to the episode in the player above or subscribe to Geared Up in your favorite podcast app to listen on the go:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• Google Podcasts
• Pocket Casts

It was a huge news week in the world of Apple, as the company took the stage at WWDC 2019 to show the world what’s coming next for all of its major software platforms. In this episode of Geared Up, we talk about all the big announcements coming out of WWDC. These include:

• The new iOS 13 features (including the long-awaited Dark Mode!)
• The future of macOS Catalina with iPad apps running on the Mac
• How the iPad is becoming more of more of a laptop replacement with the dedicated iPadOS
• How the Apple Watch will continue to help you become healthier in watchOS 6

In addition, we answer listener-submitted questions as well. If you’re looking for news and commentary on the new Mac Pro, we’ll be covering that on next week’s show.

I put together a deep dive video taking a look at Dark Mode in iOS 13, which you can see below:

Listen to the episode in the player above or subscribe to Geared Up in your favorite podcast app to listen on the go:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• Google Podcasts
• Pocket Casts

T-Mobile is taking its mobile banking service, T-Mobile Money, out of the pilot phase and rolling it out nationally.

The so-called “Un-carrier” last year teamed up with BankMobile to launch pilot apps on iOS and Android as well as browser webpages for T-Mobile’s banking service. T-Mobile promises no fees for overdrafts or ATM withdrawals as a primary draw to ditch the big banks.

“We found people are just paying too much for their checking accounts in overdraft fees and banking fees,” Tiffany Minor, marketing director for financial services at T-Mobile said in an interview with GeekWire.

T-Mobile promotes a 1 percent annual percentage yield (APY) on all T-Mobile Money balances. T-Mobile wireless customers who deposit at least $200 per month get 4 percent interest on account balances up to $3,000. T-Mobile says this top-end interest is more than 50X over what traditional banks offer.

T-Mobile claims overdraft fees cost U.S. consumers $34 billion in 2017, and that doesn’t even take into account other fees associated with checking accounts.

Through its partnership with BankMobile, T-Mobile Money offers access to more than 55,000 Allpoint ATMs. Minor said roughly seven out of 10 consumers bank digitally these days, a trend that makes T-Mobile Money possible.

T-Mobile has turned its business around over the years by painting itself as a rebel within the wireless industry taking on established giants Verizon and AT&T. T-Mobile Money is an example of exporting this playbook to other industries as is its recent move into cable TV.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has taken the case for the megamerger with Sprint to the public in recent weeks, and today he released his latest pitch for the deal: Jobs.

Legere said the company found that “opposition-funded economists had practically pulled numbers out of thin air to justify their claims” of job losses at a combined T-Mobile-Sprint. Legere wrote in the blog post that between customer service jobs and retail store expansions, the “New T-Mobile” will employ 11,000 more people by 2024 than the individual companies would have.

Legere pointed to T-Mobile’s acquisition of MetroPCS in 2013 as an example of its job creation track record. Though Legere didn’t give hard numbers, he did write that MetroPCS, which T-Mobile recently rebranded, “added tens of thousands of jobs,” since the acquisition.

“We have doubled Metro’s customer base and store count, and expanded to serve five times as many markets,” Legere wrote. “As a result, we’ve added tens of thousands of jobs at Metro, including employees, dealers and contractors. Compare these results to others in our industry who continue to lay off workers and it’s pretty obvious we’re not like the others. We never have been, and we never will be. Side note – we really DON’T want to be, either.”

Last spring, T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to merge and create a $146 billion company called simply, T-Mobile. The consolidated company’s primary headquarters would be in T-Mobile’s hometown, Bellevue, Wash., with another office in Sprint’s home of Overland Park, Kan.

T-Mobile and Sprint have been making the case for their merger, which needs federal approval, for months. They claim the deal will allow them to better compete with industry titans AT&T and Verizon and catalyze American leadership in the development of 5G wireless technology.

Legere himself has been stumping for the deal through a series of blog posts. In the last six weeks he has authored several posts outlining what he sees as the benefits of the deal, including 5G, better prices for the consumer and alternatives to fixed broadband.

The companies want to get regulatory signoff on the deal in the first of the year. The deal has faced significant scrutiny from regulators, and in February 37 House Democrats signed a letter of opposition, expressing concerns about going from four major carriers to three and the deal’s impact on low-income communities and people of color.

T-Mobile’s upcoming wireless TV service got a major boost today, as the so-called “Un-Carrier” inked television heavyweight Viacom to a content deal.

As a result of the deal, T-Mobile’s TV offering will include a variety of live and on-demand programming from Viacom brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, Paramount and others. Viacom is T-Mobile’s first content partner for the new “over-the-top” TV service, which aims to disrupt the television industry the way the company has shaken up the wireless business.

“Viacom represents the best of the best, most-popular brands on cable, so they are an amazing partner for us!” said John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile. “TV programming has never been better, but consumers are fed up with rising costs, hidden fees, lousy customer service, non-stop BS. And Macgyvering together a bunch of subscriptions, apps and dongles isn’t much better. That’s why T-Mobile is on a mission to give consumers a better way to watch what they want, when they want.”

T-Mobile’s TV offering is years in the making and dates back to a 2017 acquisition of Denver-based Layer3 TV  for $325 million. The original plan was to launch the service in 2018, but now the company is saying it will deliver “compelling new mobile video services to consumers later this year,” according to today’s press release on the Viacom deal.

Leading the TV initiative is Jeff Binder, CEO of Layer3 and now an executive vice president at T-Mobile. He is joined by close to 200 others from Layer3, including former executives from AT&T, Fox, Comcast, Time Warner and more.

T-Mobile’s TV service will launch first with an in-home TV option, that the company says will aim to replace cable for the 5G era. Longer term, T-Mobile will introduce mobile TV services with Viacom as a key launch partner.

T-Mobile says 2018 was a record financial year, setting the stage for some lofty goals in 2019, chief among them completing a blockbuster merger with Sprint and getting ready to build out a nationwide 5G network.

Revenue: T-Mobile posted total revenue of $11.4 billion in the fourth quarter, up 6 percent over last year and just ahead of analyst expectations. In 2018, T-Mobile brought in a total of $43.25 billion in revenue, also just ahead of analyst expectations and up 7 percent over 2017.

Profits: T-Mobile’s net profits dropped 76 percent in the fourth quarter compared to last year. At $640 million — or $0.75 per share — T-Mobile profits still came in ahead of analyst expectations. For the full year, T-Mobile’s net profits declined 36 percent to $2.9 billion — or $3.36 per share.

Excluding changes in the tax code, T-Mobile says its profits for both the quarter and the year were actually up 21 and 22 percent respectively.

New customers: T-Mobile added 2.4 million new customers in the fourth quarter, bringing the annual total to 7 million, up from 5.6 million additions in 2017. T-Mobile has added more than a million customers in 23rd straight quarters, and it now has nearly 80 million customers, up from 72.6 million at the end of last year.

T-Mobile stock is up close to 2 percent in early-morning trading.

T-Mobile has a big year ahead in 2019, headlined by the projected closing of the mega-merger with Sprint. If approved by regulators, the $26 billion deal would combine the nation’s third and fourth-largest carriers. T-Mobile and Sprint executives continue to lobby regulators, and the companies pledged not to increase rates for customers for the first three years post-merger in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Monday.

T-Mobile claims the deal will allow the combined company to better compete with industry titans AT&T and Verizon and catalyze American leadership in the development of 5G wireless technology. T-Mobile said it is building out standards-based 5G today, with plans to have nationwide 5G coverage in place next year.

In this episode of Geared Up, Andru Edwards and I discuss the FaceTime bug that allowed iPhone users to eavesdrop on the person they called, reports of a new gaming subscription service from Apple, the minimalist phone trend, signs of new iPads and a seventh-generation iPod touch, and a foldable phone from Samsung.

Plus, if you’re doing some last-minute TV shopping ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, Andru has some recommendations for you.

Listen to the latest Geared Up podcast above, and watch the archived livestream below for a behind-the-scenes look at the recording.

Subscribe to Geared Up in your favorite podcast app. We stream the recordings live from Seattle on Andru’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/gearlive) and GeekWire’s Facebook page. Tune in to the livestreams on Tuesdays during the noon hour (PT). Jake Greene runs the live stream, and Jim Valley edits the show.

Featured in this week’s episode:

• Woman claims she alerted Apple about FaceTime eavesdropping bug days ago, shares video evidence
• Apple Plans Gaming Subscription Service: Sources
• Apple reportedly making a 7th-gen iPod touch and new iPads
• References to New iPads and 7th-Generation iPod Touch Found in iOS 12.2
• Galaxy X: Price, specs, rumored March release date for Samsung’s foldable phone
• Best Super Bowl TV Deals 2019 & 4K TV Tech Explained!
• Light Phone 2 (Indiegogo)
• Verizon Palm

Don’t look now, but 2019 is almost here. Hope you had a refreshing break, because the new year, as it always does, kicks things off with a technological bang. CES, the biggest consumer tech trade show, gets started on Tuesday, Jan. 8 in Las Vegas. GeekWire will be reporting from the show floor.

Here are some of the items on our coverage list.

5G tech is likely to be all the rage this year.  We’ve been talking about it for about a decade, but it’s finally starting to show up. Some major cities got a sneak peek in 2018, but it’s set to roll out in even more locations in 2019. Another major topic will be AI and its increasing use in some products you might not expect, like mattresses and golf gear.

The competition between Alexa and Google Assistant is really starting to heat up. Google made a strong push in 2018, but will they be able to continue that momentum in 2019?

There’s an unusually large government presence this year. The U.S. Department of Transportation will be talking about using emerging technology in public transit systems and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation will be giving the scoop on how self-driving technology is likely to be implemented into everyday life.

Entertainment business executives will also be talking about using services like Twitter to make sure they stay on the cutting edge of marketing their products.

That’s just a quick overview of some of the things we can expect to see. Stay tuned to GeekWire throughout the show to keep up with the latest news.

Here are more highlights from the GeekWire Calendar.

• How to Build a Hydrophone: A presentation about how to build underwater microphones and what we use them for at the Ada Developers Academy in Seattle; 7 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, January 8.
• Alexa’s Former Product Lead on Voice-Driven Products: A presentation and networking event at Zillow Downtown Seattle; 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9
• OrcaCon:  A conference all about tabletop games at the Hilton Bellevue; 10 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 11 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan 13.
• From Stress to Bliss: A workshop about setting the right mindset to face future challenges at the Together Center in Redmond; 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13.
• Clear Vision Data-Driven Modernization: An education event about modernizing IT infrastructure at Google’s Fremont office; 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 15.
• Software Engineer Speed Mentoring: A presentation and mentoring workshop about software engineering in a variety of industries at the Flatiron School in Seattle; 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 15.
• Startup Financials with Kathleen Baxley: A presentation about how to make good financial business decisions in the startup space at the University of Washington Comotion Innovation Center; 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 15.

For more upcoming events, check out the GeekWire Calendar, where you can find meetups, conferences, startup events, and geeky gatherings in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Organizing an event? Submit details here.

Online sales rose 23.6 percent to $6.22 billion on Black Friday in the U.S., according to new industry stats released this morning by Adobe Analytics. The total was second only to the $6.6 billion in online sales registered on Cyber Monday 2017, according to Adobe.

Key takeaways from the numbers:

• More than $2 billion in Black Friday purchases this year were made via smartphones, or 34 percent of online sales, up from 29 percent a year ago.
• There was a surge in usage of “click and collect” services, in which consumers buy online and pick up at the store. Orders grew 73 percent via these services from Thursday to Friday.
• Average order volume rose 8.5 percent from Black Friday 2017, reaching $146. Adobe said this was due in part to online shoppers getting more comfortable purchasing big-ticket items.
• Overall online spending in the U.S. for the period of Nov. 1-Nov. 24 stands at $44.2 billion, up 19 percent year to date.

The overall trend has positive implications for Amazon but it also reflects the growing push by traditional retailers to accommodate the demand for online shopping among U.S. consumers. The numbers come from the Adobe Analytics service, which measures transactions among 80 of the top 100 online retailers in the country.

The era of the foldable smartphone is coming.

Samsung today gave a sneak peak of its long-rumored foldable device that can morph between smartphone and tablet. There’s still a lot unknown about the device, but we do know that Samsung is working with Google’s Android to support the launch of the phone next year, as The Verge notes.

The tablet configuration looks like a typical device, and when folded up the phone takes on a thicker “candy bar” look compared to today’s super thin smartphones.

Justin Denison, senior vice president of mobile product marketing at Samsung, detailed the” Infinity Flex Display” that makes the “new form factor” possible at the Samsung Developer Conference Wednesday. The protective glass layer found on most smartphones was replaced with an “advanced composite polymer.” The device will feature the ability to use three apps simultaneously.

Samsung painted the foldable device as the next evolution for smartphones, and several companies are working on their own versions. LG and Huawei are rumored to be developing foldable phones, and Microsoft has for years been linked to a dual-screen Surface device. Samsung, and all these other manufacturers, were beat to the punch when a San Francisco-area startup called Royole unveiled its FlexPai foldable phone earlier this week.

T-Mobile has cleared another hurdle in its pursuit of merging with Sprint to create the “New T-Mobile.”

The self-proclaimed Un-carrier said it has gotten shareholder approval to combine with Sprint. It came primarily from one source as Deutsche Telekom Holding B.V., which holds 63.5 percent of T-Mobile common stock, signed off on the deal Tuesday.

“This is another step forward in creating the New T-Mobile, so we can deliver on our promise to bring robust competition to the 5G era, giving consumers more for less and creating jobs,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in a statement. “For more than five years, T-Mobile’s Un-carrier strategy has disrupted the wireless industry, and together with Sprint we will continue our mission by securing U.S. leadership in nationwide 5G, creating a real alternative to fixed broadband and bringing a consumer-first mentality to entrenched giants. We can’t wait to continue improving the wireless industry for all consumers as the New T-Mobile.”

Legere reaffirmed on the company’s third quarter earnings call Tuesday that the deal is scheduled to close in the first half of next year. T-Mobile and Sprint still need a number of regulatory approvals before the deal can be completed.

Citing the need for more time to review the deal, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in September paused an informal 180-day “shot clock” to rule on the merger. This week, the New York Post reported that the New York Attorney General’s Office is stepping up its probe into the proposed deal, citing the potential of price hikes for low-cost and prepaid phone plans.

Still, investors are confident the transaction will close without too much drama. Wells Fargo analysts bumped up their odds of the merger happening to 70 percent this week, saying it’s possible that the deal could close as soon as the first quarter of 2019.

T-Mobile will carry the new OnePlus 6T, the first time a phone from the popular Chinese manufacturer has been offered by a U.S. wireless provider.

The 6T launches exclusively on T-Mobile starting Thursday, the company said during an unveiling event in New York City. But the company is offering an early sale at its Times Square store in New York City starting at 5 p.m. Eastern today.

In a press release, T-Mobile called OnePlus’ offerings “superphones packed with flagship specs at a fraction of the flagship price.” The 6T boasts 128GB of internal storage, fingerprint security functionality, 8GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 845 processor, a 20 mega-pixel dual rear camera and 16 mega-pixel front facing camera and a 6.41-inch OLED screen.

“We’ve seen real demand for OnePlus smartphones at T-Mobile. Nearly 200,000 customers have already brought theirs to the Un-carrier – paying full price up front – before we even started carrying them. Wow! So, we did what we always do: listened and delivered by bringing the OnePlus 6T exclusively to our customers,” said John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile.

The OnePlus 6T retails for $549, but for a limited time T-Mobile is offering it for $300. That translates to $0 down and $11.67 per month over two years if users trade in an eligible device.

Today’s featured stories

• Bill Gates pays tribute to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: ‘Personal computing would not have existed without him’
• Peanut, a matchmaking app for moms led by former Bumble and Badoo leader, launches in Seattle
• Lime previews shared e-scooters in Seattle, seeking public support to end the city’s ban

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[Editor’s Note: TLDR is GeekWire’s tech news rundown show, hosted by Starla Sampaco. Watch today’s update above, subscribe to GeekWire on YouTube, and check back weekday afternoons for more.]