Guess Dell isn’t done making portable multimedia devices after all, and has announced plans to acquire Zing:

In a move that reflects the renewed interest and energy being directed at its Consumer business, Dell plans to use ZING and its capabilities to continue improving the entertainment experiences it provides its customers.

What makes this doubly interesting (and perplexing) is that Zing helped design/create the Sirius Stiletto (and Stiletto 2?), Sansa Connect, and upcoming Pandora device. I doubt they’ll continue this contract work under Dell…

A couple weeks ago I referenced the fact that Comcast’s basic cable subscriber numbers have declined of late. Now it turns out that Verizon’s DSL subscriber numbers are also slowing, with Verizon only signing up 85,000 DSL users in the second quarter, down from 329,000 a year ago. Some of that loss is due to the popularity of FiOS, but not all of it. So where have the DSL users gone? Where FiOS isn’t available, I would guess that Verizon is losing ground to cable, much like over in the wireline side of the business. It’s interesting to watch this push-pull dynamic as the big service providers choose where they want to compete. It’s only going to get more interesting over the next few years.

Comcast is reporting record earnings again this quarter with growth in digital voice and digital cable customers. On the other hand, the company has apparently lost 95,000 basic cable subscribers. Where did they go? Are these most price-sensitive consumers jumping ship altogether, or are they moving to satellite, Verizon and AT&T? From the way the press release reads, it doesn’t sound like the losses come from existing subscribers moving to a digital tier.

The Apple earnings webcast is later today, and bloggers are waiting everywhere with fingers over keyboards to see if Apple has something better than AT&T to say about iPhone sales in the last quarter. While we’re waiting, it’s worth looking at some of the other recent earnings announcements and what trends they suggest. As a non-econ specialist, I’m struck by one thing: people a lot younger than I am are having a huge impact on tech financials.

Three companies stand out in this trend:

• Nintendo had a great quarter, but not only because of the Wii as you might expect. Nintendo DS has two broadly successful new software titles out called “Pokemon Diamond” and “Pokemon Pearl”. I heard about Pokemon Pearl for the first time yesterday from a 5-year-old. In other words, she’s more clued in to one of the top technologies than I am.

• Amazon’s profit tripled because of Harry Potter sales. No, it’s not only kids reading Harry Potter, but they make up a large portion of the audience. Interestingly, the other thing Amazon credited for its strong financials was its Amazon Prime service: pay a flat annual fee and you get free 2-day shipping.

• MySpace is expected to do $1 billion in revenue this year. I may be completely off, but I don’t know anyone above the age of 25 who uses MySpace.

With relatively little fanfare yesterday, AT&T launched their cell phone Video Share service in nearly 160 markets. Sure the iPhone has brought in a lot of buzz not to mention revenue for AT&T (more on AT&T earnings later), but in the long run, the launch of video sharing is a bigger deal.

Years ago I worked with Motorola on the launch of the ill-fated Ojo video phone. There are many reasons why Motorola discontinued the product, but for me, the Ojo still has an important place in my living room. My almost-two-year-old talks to her grandparents on it several times a week, and has almost since she was born.

One of these days, video phones will hit the mainstream, and AT&T has found a way to ease people into the idea. Text messaging and photo messaging are common now, and video on a cell phone is simply the next logical step. I even think that sending a video clip versus talking via live video is a smart way to start with the concept. People are vaguely uncomfortable about sharing themselves live on video (think Jane Jetson’s morning face mask), but taking a quick clip of something and sharing it is as comfortable as posting something on YouTube. And on a cell phone it’s much easier, immediate, and more relevant.

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The latest issue of Business Week (7/30) could be the best ever and was obviously tailored for geeks like me with a ton of relevant stories worth checking out.

• Annual IDEA Awards
  The Best Product Design of 2007.
• Samsung is Having a Sony Monent
  The Korean titan is showing signs of complacency — and results are suffering.
• A Carmaker with Silicon Valley Sparks
  The tech veterans behind Tesla think they know a better way to build an electric car.
• Zander May Be Running Out of Minutes
  As profits vanish, will Motorola’s board bump the CEO upstairs?
• Nokia: Lesson Learned, Reward Reaped
  Offering products for every corner of the market is paying off for the mobile-phone maker.
• T-Mobile Dials Up Wi-Fi
• Paramount & Dreamworks: Splitsville
  Bad blood between the studio and Spielberg could could end this Hollywood marriage.

I don’t know what’s going on, but Comcast has served me very well this year. In prior years I haven’t had much positive to say. Maybe it was the possibly intoxicated installer who had to be escorted out by the Verizon installer, or his replacement who drilled a hole through our dresser, or the three visits to get the TiVo Series3 operational, channel lineup issues, unusable broadband, etc. But this year, Comcast has really been on top of their game (service and support) and they deserve some public lovin’.

When I joined Sling in February, I figured I’d want a little more bandwidth to stream up to 3 Slingboxes simultaneously. So I reluctantly gave up my Verizon DSL (capped at 384Kbps up in my apartment building) and moved on over to Comcast which offered 768Kbps. The process of adding broadband was very smooth and the service has been very good - fast and reliable.

Sometime in the spring I decided I didn’t need all these extra digital channels, but I did want to keep ESPN, Discovery, etc in HD on my S3. I called Comcast and they were able to cut the digital tier (~$15/mo) but retain the HD channels… for free. Nice! Also nice: In my region Comcast doesn’t charge for CableCARD rentals.

I gave Comcast a call this morning asking if they had any deals on the movie channels. Unfortunately they didn’t have any promotions running and it looked like the cable television portion of my bill would nearly double. However, the phone agent was very patient and went through a variety of TV packages and deals on my broadband until we found something agreeable. He asked if my CableCARDs were in a TV or a TiVo (!) and then put me on hold while he called in the changes. HBO HD and Showtime HD magically appeared (on both tuners). Then he wished me a good day, good week, and good weekend.

Maybe this competition thing (satellite, FiOS) is finally paying off for us consumers.

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