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.

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.]

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 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.