Apple’s 37 percent U.S. market share in Q4 (vs. 62 percent for Android) fell 2 points from the year-ago quarter, “consistent with Apple’s own announcement of softer sales,” Consumer Intelligence Research Partners reported Monday. Apple peaked in December market share in 2014 (50 percent vs. 45 percent for Android) with the iPhone 6/6 Plus launch; the company typically has a higher share that quarter due to its fall phone launch, said analyst Josh Lowitz. Android (92 percent) and iOS (91 percent) reached their highest loyalty rates per date, measured as percent of activations with the same operating system. That continues a trend over several quarters “as customers have become comfortable with the features and consistency of their" OS, said analyst Mike Levin. “Learning a new operating system takes effort, so fewer and fewer customers have found the need to switch.” He noted quality and reliability of new phones also contribute to longer upgrade cycles. CIRP surveyed 500 U.S. subjects who activated a new or used phone October-December.

New Street Research is watching closely the aftereffects of the first U.S. high-band auction, of 28 GHz spectrum, which ended last week (see 1901250043). “We’ve had a fairly bearish view on the value of mmWave [millimeter-wave] due to the unfavorable economics,” it wrote investors Monday. “This has been supported by anemic investment in the mmWave to date.” The 28 GHz auction “was a highly imperfect yardstick for value given several issues with the spectrum being auctioned, but it did not indicate a more positive view of mmWave emerging,” the firm said. “The 24GHz spectrum about to be auctioned isn’t a perfect yardstick either (it has some modest sharing requirements), but it is a better one than the 28GHz auction.” Verizon owned most of the 28 GHz spectrum, “and the licenses being auctioned only covered about one-fourth of the country, so the results were unlikely to be large in terms of dollars or important in terms of changing the competitive dynamic,” emailed Blair Levin, New Street analyst: “The 24GHz auction could prove far more interesting since it is greenfield for the carriers.”

Groups led by Public Knowledge asked the FCC to reconsider a 3-1 decision in December clarifying text messages are a lightly regulated Communications Act Title I service (see 1812120043). The order’s reasoning “is fallacious and fails to support its outcome,” the petition said. “Events since the order was issued confirm the need for the Commission to reconsider its action -- specifically, controversies concerning the privacy of customer location data and whether carriers will hinder the ability of schools and teachers to use third-party tools to stay in touch with students and parents.” The Benton Foundation, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Greenlining Institute, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, Open Technology Institute and The Utility Reform Network were among signers, in docket 08-7. The FCC didn't comment.

KNZ Technology bowed a combination Bluetooth speaker/Qi charging station called Dock'n'Roll that claims 30 percent faster charging than most OEM chargers. Its driver and bass radiator are powered by a 7.5-watt amplifier, and the speaker can be detached for portability, said the company Friday. Range is 50 feet, battery life is 12 hours, it has five presets and can be paired for stereo sound. Price is $119.

Nokia phones return to the U.S. with licensor HMD Global announcing Friday collaborations with wireless providers Cricket Wireless and Verizon. In the U.S., Nokia's Android smartphone lineup is the 2 V, the first Nokia phone on Verizon, and the 3.1 Plus, which began selling at Cricket’s website Friday for $159. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 439-powered 3.1 Plus, with a 5.99-inch HD Plus display, has an 18:9 aspect ratio geared to content streams and social media, a 3500mAh battery said to last two days between charges, a fingerprint sensor, near-field communication and three cameras. No price was given for the Verizon phone, which the carrier's Brian Higgins, vice president-device and consumer product marketing, said has "an affordable price.”

Major U.S. freight railroads operated positive train control on 83.2 percent of the required class I PTC route miles nationwide on Dec. 31, the Association of American Railroads said: Railroads have spent $10.5 billion to develop, install and implement PTC. They face a Dec. 31, 2020, deadline for full implementation. AAR President Ian Jefferies said Thursday that at year's end, "Class I railroads had installed and were operating PTC on the vast majority of their required networks, met all other statutory PTC requirements and remained on track to fully implement this critical safety technology by the final 2020 deadline.”

CTIA supports the FCC at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the case challenging the March wireless infrastructure order, Keetoowah Band v. FCC, No. 18-1129. “Actions in the Order serve as a long overdue recognition that its prior environmental review regulations are out of step with the manner in which modern wireless facilities are deployed,” CTIA replied (in Pacer) Friday. “The agency’s decisions in the Order are thus completely reasonable, if not required.” To get to a 5G world, “wireless carriers will need to deploy approximately 300,000 small cells in the next few years,” CTIA said, saying small cells don’t raise the same review issues as macro towers. The Natural Resources Defense Council countered that the FCC made two errors. The agency “overlooks the additional responsibilities that the National Environmental Policy Act imposes on it independent from the Commission’s obligations under the Communications Act,” NRDC said (in Pacer). "The FCC also overlooks the continuing federal role it plays in overseeing the conduct of those it licenses to provide wireless service.”

Ford’s “confidence level” remains unchanged that it’s on track to deliver a “purpose-built” autonomous vehicle “at scale” by 2021, said President-Mobility Marcy Klevorn on an Q4 call Wednesday. It's “uniquely building the technology along with building a business,” so when Ford AVs become available, the automaker will have “figured out how we want to monetize them,” she said. Ford will be among the two or three “winners” when AVs are ready for large-scale commercialization, she said. The company's work on connected mobility also is “advancing quickly,” said CEO Jim Hackett. “We are connecting every new Ford vehicle in the U.S. to the cloud.” Those vehicles soon “will talk to the world around them through the technology known as C-V2X,” he said of cellular vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity. Through C-V2X, “we will help usher in a new transportation system that reduces traffic congestion, accidents and improves CO2.”

Crown Castle said it installed a record number of small cells in 2018 and expects to double that to 10,000-15,000 nodes in 2019. “We have a line of sight into meaningful small cell revenue growth beyond 2019,” CEO Jay Brown said Thursday on an earnings call. “Our customers continue to invest heavily in their 4G networks to keep pace with data demand growth from existing technologies, while the deployment of 5G is just getting started.” The scale of data growth is “staggering” with mobile data traffic in 2022 expected to be five times the volume of all internet traffic in the U.S. in 2005, Brown said. “I get even more excited when I consider how early we are in the digital transformation of the U.S. economy and the critical role mobile infrastructure will play. I think we’re just scratching the surface.” The tower owner reported earning $213 million for Q4, compared with $98 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 15 percent to $1.21 billion. The revised outlook for 2019 "reflects a consistent march toward small cell densification with a growing pipeline of ~25k nodes over the next 18-24 months," Macquarie Research analyst Amy Yong wrote investors Thursday. "Though municipality/FCC approvals can create a bottleneck, it appears to be easing. T-Mobile/Verizon-insourced small cells also present a threat." Crown Castle "continues to ramp small cell volumes and revenue, but again, higher costs ate into returns because colocation economics are much worse on small cells than on towers," wrote New Street Research's Spencer Kurn Wednesday night.

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit it shouldn’t delay the Feb. 25 deadline for the FCC to file a final brief in the tribal challenges to a March wireless infrastructure order, in United Keetoowah Band v. FCC, No. 18-1129. Other tribes, the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and the National Trust for Historic Preservation supported that argument (in Pacer). The FCC Wednesday asked for additional time citing the partial federal shutdown (see 1901230047). Other tribal interests led by the Blackfeet Tribe filed in support of the FCC (in Pacer): “The Blackfeet Petitioners themselves are enduring extreme hardships in the shutdown, with federal and tribal workers furloughed and services like healthcare, law enforcement, and schools closed and unavailable.”