The largest U.S. phone carrier has seen its revenue growth improve in recent quarters as Verizon Wireless — its joint venture with Vodafone Group — launched shared-data pricing plans to better capitalize on increasing data usage. Meanwhile, Verizon’s wireline business has benefited from increased FiOS Internet and television subscriptions and expanded networking and cloud-computing services, mitigating the impact of a shrinking landline business.

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Mozilla, the foundation behind the popular Firefox Web browser, wants to take the lead amid the multiple companies vying for third place. The company is working on the Firefox OS, a mobile system software initiative similar to what Google is doing with the Chrome OS for the desktop. In a nutshell, it’s taking the set of standards coding for a browser environment and bringing it to an entire operating system for the phone.

Here’s the thing: If the duopoly of the massively popular Android and iOS is working for consumers — and sales prove that it obviously is — why do we need a new operating system entirely?

Or, as Walt Mossberg put it so aptly: “Firefox OS. What the f**k?”

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs’s answer, in two words: The ecosystem.

Kovacs made the case for Firefox OS at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference today, claiming that while consumers may enjoy the many apps they have now, that experience will grow exponentially if Firefox OS is adopted.

“Our whole mission is to stimulate the ecosystem,” Kovacs said, citing the first wave of innovation that Mozilla’s Firefox browser created years ago when first released. “The number of people, websites and experiences exploded.”

The main pitch here is to developers: Unlike Android or iOS, Firefox OS apps are based on open Web standards, which many developers came of age using over the rise of the first dot-com boom.

And that could appeal to coders in the developing world, where the Firefox OS is really targeted. Worldwide low-cost (under $150) smartphone shipments are forecast to grow to 311 million in 2016, after having doubled every year since 2010, according to research data from NPD group. Markets like South America, Africa and Asia are ripe for the targeting in going after the low end.

Of course, Kovacs and company will face stiff competition, as both Google and Facebook are going after international emerging markets with Android and Facebook Home, respectively.

Kovacs admits that we may not see the ecosystem explode right off the bat. The company expects the first wave of devices to kick things off, while hoping for wider appeal later on, after developers (hopefully) take up arms and start creating apps for the OS.

“This is a V1 product,” Kovacs said. “Short-term, it will be a brand appeal. But the innovation will explode later.”

According to a forecast from Analysys Mason, telecom revenue will increase just 1.7 percent annually through 2017, with growth in mobile offsetting a decline in fixed connections. Meanwhile, revenue will be flat or down in most parts of the world, with key emerging markets accounting for the bulk of growth.

Currently, around two-thirds of revenue comes from North America, Europe and developed parts of Asia. However, the biggest growth will come in emerging markets.

Emerging markets will grow an estimated 5.3 percent yearly through 2017, while North America will see a fractional gain, and revenue declines are expected in Europe and the developed parts of Asia.

Three countries in particular will account for 60 percent of all revenue growth in the forecast period: China (40 percent of all growth), India (12 percent) and Brazil (8 percent).

The partnership, which includes participation from more than 18 carriers across 14 countries, offers free or discounted cellular data access to people using Facebook’s Messenger application for iOS, Android and Facebook on feature phones.

The story here is the locations Facebook has targeted in its initiative. Participating carriers span multiple continents — including Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America — key to Facebook’s continued growth as it reaches the higher end of U.S. population penetration. Even those who aren’t sure they want to hop on the Facebook train can take advantage of the deal, thanks to Facebook’s “no account, no problem” initiative, which allows people who don’t have a Facebook account to still use Facebook Messenger.

That’s effective for a few reasons. First, the countries this deal targets aren’t necessarily beholden to Facebook in the first place; remember, there are a number of other social networks in the world, and Facebook isn’t the top dog in every country. Give folks more incentive to use Facebook by making it cheaper to do so, and perhaps you’ll convert new users to the network.

Second, and perhaps more important, data plans around the world are far from equal. While we in the U.S. may enjoy our all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffets, much of the world still face limited choice in data plans, and are often forced to pay high prices for relatively small data caps.

Keep in mind that it’s a promotion, not a permanent thing, so the deal will last for anywhere from three months to somewhat longer, depending on the carrier.

But three months may be long enough to coax a skeptical user into becoming a full-on Facebook convert. Especially if Facebook can find a way to expand its free voice-calling beyond just U.S. and Canadian users, and into the hands of the rest of the world.

According to new data shared with AllThingsD by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), the average monthly carrier bill of the typical iPhone user is the highest in the smartphone market. IPhone owners spend more on wireless fees than owners of any other handset, be they Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone.

Almost 60 percent of the iPhone users CIRP polled during October-December 2012 spent more than $100 per month on their wireless plan, with 10 percent spending $200 or more. Just 6 percent spent $50 or less; for Android users in that category, the percentage was double. And only 53 percent of Android users fell into the “over $100 per month” category, with 7 percent landing in the “over $200 per month” category.

Not vast differences, but significant — particularly when carriers like AT&T and Verizon are activating millions of smartphones per quarter.

Why do iPhone customers spend more?

“We think it has to do with their data plans and carriers, rather than their usage habits,” CIRP co-founder Michael Levin explained. “They are all on expensive data plans, unlike Android users, some of which are on prepaid or unsubsidized plans with regional carriers.”

That said, just because iPhone users on average spend more on their wireless plans doesn’t necessarily mean that the carriers are making more money.

“Given the subsidies on iPhones, the carriers are working hard to make their money back during the course of the contract,” said CIRP’s Josh Levitz. “With the exception of perhaps the hottest Android phones, we think the subsidies on Android phones are lower, so the carriers make more money even with slightly lower per-subscriber revenue.”

Incidentally, as part of this survey, CIRP also took a look at consumer retention by operating system and found that, in terms of smartphone stickiness, iOS and Android are the stickiest by far. For the survey period, the research house noted that 88 percent of the iPhone activations it charted were from prior iPhone users, while 64 percent of Android device activations were from prior Android owners. Just 7 percent of Blackberry users and 9 percent of Windows Phone users reported sticking with those operating systems.

Pity that all the tech giants want you to die.

Facebook fired the latest shot in the war on SMS on Tuesday morning, as the company made its Messenger app available to Android users across five countries — regardless of whether or not they have a Facebook account. Download the Messenger app and sign in with your phone number, and you’re good to send messages to anyone else using the product.

It’s yet another move by a mobile-focused tech industry to undermine the cellular carriers’ stranglehold on the global text-messaging market. As carriers have reaped rich rewards from the high-margin SMS business, handset giants like Research In Motion and Apple have over the years developed their own SMS killers, opting instead to use customers’ data plans to send messages instead of SMS. Though Facebook doesn’t offer a smartphone (yet), the Messenger app is available for iOS and Android phones, yet another alternative to SMS.

To be clear, it’s not exactly sounding the immediate death knell for SMS. The upgrade is meaningful for those with Android phones who do not hold a Facebook account. And it still requires you to download the Messenger app to use the service.

At the same time, there’s potential for international expansion.

Consider this: Beginning Tuesday, the product update will initially roll out in five countries — India, Australia, Indonesia, Venezuela and South Africa. Those happen to be areas with extremely expensive SMS rates. Convince users — Facebook account or no — to switch to the free messaging medium, and you’ve got an entirely new method for expanding Messages users and potentially driving new Facebook sign-ups.

And to start rolling the product out on Android first is a no-brainer. It’s the fast-spreading smartphone platform that is taking over the world, available on high-end devices as well as on the slew of cheap handsets that populate developing countries. That’s yet another way to break into areas that Facebook hasn’t captured the majority of users in quite yet.

Apparently, Facebook wants to bring the feature to iOS users as well, though has no timeline to do so. I’d imagine that would be an unwelcome addition for Apple, considering that the Cupertino company would probably rather you stick to using iMessage than switching over to Facebook’s message system.

There’s certainly more on the horizon. The space is rife with competitors — especially fast-growing mobile messaging platform WhatsApp, which Facebook has previously expressed interest in (though it isn’t currently in talks to acquire, as we reported) — so I’d expect the social giant will continue to put the heat on at a rapid pace.

And there are still massive swaths of the market to be captured. While smartphones are exploding in popularity, the majority of the world still uses “dumbphones” or feature phones. As devices continue to become cheaper over time, it’s open season on those new audiences.

For now, carriers can continue to reap in massive returns in the SMS market. Happy birthday, SMS. Enjoy your party while it lasts.

Clearwire, a wireless broadband network operator that loses money and is carrying a heavy load of debt, holds vast reserves of spectrum that were important to Softbank, people familiar with the matter said. By negotiating an agreement with other investors in Clearwire, in which Sprint holds a 48 percent stake, Sprint is gaining control of the company without having to acquire all of it, the people said.

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A person with knowledge of the negotiations said the value of the deal could exceed $12.8 billion.

Softbank would end up with roughly 70 percent of Sprint, with the remainder of the company being publicly traded, people familiar with the matter said, adding that negotiations are continuing and could fall apart.

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The acquisition, if agreed upon, will mark a massive gamble by Softbank, the country’s third-largest carrier by subscribers, to expand its business outside of Japan. Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has made big bets in the past including acquiring the Japanese arm of Vodafone Group PLC in 2006. It paid for the deal through a leveraged buyout, which vaulted the company in the mobile phone business.

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Sony Xperia S

All three phones are “unlocked” — meaning, they’re available without carrier contract and are unsubsidized.

The 5-inch Xperia S retails for $600, has a 4.3-inch HD display and boasts a 12-megapixel camera. It’s running a 1.5GHz Qualcomm dual core processor, while the other NXT phones run on 1GHz dual-core processors.

The slightly smaller Xperia P has a 4-inch HD display, an eight-megapixel camera and includes a new screen technology Sony calls WhiteMagic, which is supposed to automatically adjust the brightness of the screen, depending on the environment the user is in, to conserve battery life. That phone costs $480.

The $300 Xperia U has a 3.5-inch display and a five-megapixel camera. Unlike its more expensive cousins, which capture 1080p HD video, the Xperia U records in 720p HD. Also, the Xperia U doesn’t have built-in near field communication capabilities.

A couple things to keep in mind: All three phones are running Android 2.3, an older flavor of the Android operating system. While they are upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich, Android fanatics will likely turn their focus toward even-newer devices that run Google’s Jelly Bean 4.1. Also, none of these smartphones are 4G/LTE compatible.

The Sony Xperia Ion smartphone, which my AllThingsD colleague Bonnie Cha reviewed here, was Sony’s first smartphone entrant into the market following the electronic giant’s buyout of Ericsson, after a decade of making cellphones as a joint venture.

It was also Sony’s company’s first 4G smartphone for the U.S. market. Unlike the unlocked Xperia NXT phones, the Xperia Ion launched through AT&T for $100 with a two-year contract. For users in AT&T’s 41 4G markets, that means zippy data speeds with the phone, although Bonnie found the Xperia Ion to have low call volume and an anemic battery.

And that’s a big deal.

Those fees generate some $4.09 billion for RIM annually, which is about a third of the company’s revenue. Any reduction in them at this point in RIM’s don’t-call-it-a-death-spiral would add further drag to the company’s already hamstrung efforts to right itself. And while neither RIM nor its carrier partners are commenting on these service fee reductions, analysts are already predicting they’re a sure thing. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu, for example, expects service fee revenue to drop to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2014 and $2.3 billion in fiscal 2015.

A precipitous decline. But perhaps a realistic one. On its last earnings call, RIM said its service revenue was down approximately 12 percent.

Reached for comment, RIM declined to elaborate on its discussions with carriers, saying only, “RIM intends to continue generating a revenue stream from the services we offer.”

In a sea change for consumer behavior, the amount of time spent making old-fashioned voice calls has fallen every year since Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone in 2007. The rub for carriers is that voice billings still account for about two-thirds of what they charge cellphone customers every month.

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Additionally, it said it is partnering with four software providers to gain access to 50,000 small- to medium-sized merchants.

Meanwhile, tomorrow will be exactly a year since Google launched its mobile wallet.

So, you ask, which large technology company is winning the race to gain the hearts and wallets of consumers and retailers?

Pretty clearly, it’s neither.

Google may have gotten off the blocks first, but ever since, it has been plagued by execution issues and management departures. In contrast, PayPal has a lot of institutional advantages, but it still has a long way to go before it is synonymous with Visa or MasterCard.

Here’s just a snapshot of the two companies’ advantages and disadvantages:

Google:

Pros: It has relationships with 25 national retailers, totaling 140,000 locations.

Cons: It bet too early on using near field communication technology. Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, is the only provider so far that is backing it and it’s deployed on only six Android devices.

PayPal:

Pros: There are 110 million people using PayPal worldwide, who are on track to spend a record $7 billion in mobile payments this year using PayPal on the phone.

Cons: The company is expecting to deploy with 20 retailers by year’s end, but based on the 16 retailers announced yesterday, I calculated that it has access to about 16,000 U.S. locations (far fewer than Google Wallet). That does not include the thousands of locations that those 50,000 small- to medium-sized retailers would contribute if they signed up for it.

Clearly, it is still early days.

And when you look at the broader market opportunity, the race is not just between Google and PayPal. All of the incumbents, including American Express, MasterCard and Visa, have announced digital wallet strategies. And then there are the start-ups, such as Square, which is seeking a $4 billion valuation in its next funding round.

There are two points to be made on the debate between PayPal vs. Google Wallet that can’t be stressed enough: PayPal has the user base, and it has the technology with the lowest barriers to entry.

In theory, if a consumer has signed up for the service from their PayPal account, they will be able to conduct a transaction using their mobile phone number and PIN – without changing carriers or phones. Likewise, merchants won’t have to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware.

In an interview, PayPal President David Marcus acknowledged there’s a chicken and egg problem: Without a lot of locations, there won’t be a lot of consumers using it. But this year is about learning and testing, he said, and next year, “it will be about iterating and full-on execution.”

If you asked the folks at Google, I’m sure they would agree. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but already, there are signs that Google has learned a lot and has started to pivot.

Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with Aite Group, believes that Google is distancing itself from NFC and from being the merchant of record.

“I think they will follow the path of least resistance, because for them, it’s not about payments — it’s about advertising,” he said. “It’s about pay-for-performance marketing. Just like how they get paid for a click-through on the Web, they want to get paid when you walk through the door — but no one is monitoring that.”

Last month, Google purchased TxVia, a little-known payments technology company, another sign that it’s changing directions.

Tony Felice, a senior digital strategist for Vladimir Jones, who worked with TxVia at his former job at Red Door Interactive, said TxVia and Google Wallet together can be very powerful. He said TxVia has all the banking relationships, which will help enable payments, gift cards and other services, and also has the ability to produce analytics about what consumers are doing and spending money on.

“Together, they will be able to get a 360-degree picture from the moment of truth to purchase,” he said. “In order to do that, you have to pull in disparate sources and synthesize it in a single place. The transactional data from TxVia is just one piece of a puzzle.”

Oglesby said despite Google’s hiccups, it’s not yet out of the race.

“It’s been a slow-growing situation, and there’s been big turnover on the executive team, but they are reassessing the situation and have made an acquisition,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they’ve screwed up because no one has run way ahead of them. They were leading the market, and tried an approach, and now there’s other approaches for them to try.”

Why?

They’re far too worried about what would happen to their customer-retention rates if they did so.

“We continue to believe carriers would lower iPhone subsidies if they collectively felt that competing devices would drive the same economics as iPhones,” says BMO Capital’s Keith Bachman. But right now, they don’t. And with no other hero handset to mitigate the risks of the spike in customer churn that might follow a reduction in iPhone subsidy, we’re unlikely to see one in the near term.

There are other reasons, as well, one being the presumed launch of a new LTE iPhone. That device will likely inspire a strong surge of upgrades late in the year. And with carriers looking to move subscribers onto their LTE networks, they’re probably not going to mess with a device that will surely be instrumental in helping them do it.

Finally, as we’ve noted here before, Apple’s multiyear agreements with its carrier partners very likely prevent them from changing iPhone subsidy pricing. These deals are said to have most-favored-nation clauses, so that any reduction in subsidy offered to one carrier would have to be offered to the others. And with Verizon and Sprint both newly locked into their contracts for some time, Apple has no cause whatsoever to even entertain the idea of a lower iPhone subsdidy.

Google’s strategy is a shift from its previous practice, when it partnered with only one hardware maker at a time to produce seven “lead devices” that showed off the newest Android software features, before releasing the software to other device makers. The change is a bid to exert more control over the apps that run on smartphones and tablets powered by Android, thus reducing the influence of wireless carriers over such devices, these people said.

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Mardini, with the backing of family and friends, is launching Voyager Mobile, a start-up that aims to bring cut-rate cellphone services to the masses. The company is launching with two rate plans with service via Sprint’s network. The company will charge $19 a month for unlimited talk and text, and $39 (plus tax) for unlimited talk, text and Web.

The 22-year-old Mardini, who is entering his senior year at New York University, told AllThingsD that he decided to get into the cellphone business after noticing how high his bill had gotten.

“It was just one of those things,” he said in a telephone interview. “I pay so much for my cellphone. I was thinking there has to be a better way to make it cheaper for everyone.”

Despite the low prices, Mardini said he believes he can offer a range of phones, including some fairly high-end Android devices, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S II, also known as the Epic 4G Touch. The company will also sell tablets, data cards and hotspots, though the rate plans for those have yet to be finalized.

Voyager is the latest in a growing number of companies looking to resell service on another carrier’s network.

Among the most high-profile such start-ups are Republic Wireless and FreedomPop.

The notion of a virtual mobile network operator has been around for a while. Some have persisted, while others — like ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile — have faded. In recent months, though, a new wave of companies have cropped up, promising to bring new business models and economics to the wireless business.

Voyager Mobile has said it will announce details of its plans on Tuesday at 6 am ET. Its Web site promises unlimited service starting at $19 a month, but offers only the barest of details, along with a countdown clock. However, details started trickling out on Monday, including its rate plans and phone lineup, which were reported by several sites, including PhoneScoop and CNET.

Though still in college, Mardini has been involved with several other companies, with the first one tracing its roots back to some DJ gear that he got at age 9. The record business evolved into a local tech firm, and eventually led Mardini to launch Munifi Networks, a broader IT services company.

Mardini said he is using proceeds from those and other family businesses to launch Voyager, which is starting out with just seven employees, and is based in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn. Given its tiny workforce, Voyager is relying on outsourcing to handle many aspects of its operations. Its small size is a key to the low prices, Mardini insists.

“In the end, we are able to offer the best price to our customers,” he said.

Update: Well, it looks like Voyager had some problems getting off the ground.

“During its Tuesday, May 15 launch, Voyager Mobile experienced a malicious network attack to its primary website: voyagermobile.com,” the company said on its Web site. “Due to the network outage, Voyager Mobile is postponing its launch to a time and date in the very near future.”

The company added that it won’t be derailed.

“Our goal of low cost wireless service for all will not be undermined and we strive to continue the voyage for a better wireless world,” it said.

On Twitter, Mardini said that the Web site was hit with a packet attack, and that the company is working to restore service.

Also, we weren’t the only ones to track down Mardini ahead of the launch. Fred Fishkin had an interview that ran before ours.

Don’t worry so much. Apple doesn’t.

Remarking on the subsidy issue during the company’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, Cook dismissed it, essentially saying that the iPhone is so exceptionally profitable for carriers that they’re not likely to mess with it.

“From the carriers’ perspective, it’s important to remember the subsidy is not large relative to the payments across a two-year contract period,” Cook said. “Any delta between the iPhone and another phone is even smaller.”

Beyond that, there are a number of advantages to carrying the iPhone.

“A number of carriers have told me that churn from iPhone customers is lowest of any phone they sell,” Cook said. “That’s obviously a significant, direct financial benefit to the carrier.”

But the iPhone’s greatest advantage is this: It’s a device that customers want to use every day.

“At the end of the day, the vast majority of carriers want to provide what their customer want to buy,” Cook said. “That’s what motivates them. … The iPhone is the best smartphone on the planet to entice a customer who is currently using a traditional phone to upgrade to a smartphone. This is by far the largest opportunity for Apple and our carrier partners. It’s a win-win. All of these factors are missed in this discussion of subsidy.”

This morning alone, Apple shares fell more than 3 percent. And they’re down nearly 8 percent from last Monday’s close (caveat: The stock is still up well over 40 percent this year).

So what’s dragging the stock down?

Any number of things, really. The antitrust charges recently filed against Apple and major book publishers by the Department of Justice. Concerns that Apple’s carrier partners are tired of offering high subsidies on the iPhone and will soon begin to rein them in, cutting into the company’s high margins on the device.

Another thought: This could be profit-taking, plain and simple.

Or, as ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall suggests, the stock could just be cooling off a bit. “We believe this could be a simple ‘collapsing’ on its own weight given the year-to-date move (i.e., AAPL up ~45 percent vs. S&P 500 up ~10 percent).”

The database, which the wireless companies will build and maintain, will be designed to track phones that are reported as lost or stolen and deny them voice and data service. The idea is to reduce crime by making it difficult or impossible to actually use a stolen device, reducing resale value.

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In a blog post, Google disclosed the purchase but did not reveal the terms. The New York-based company was working on a number of payment technologies, including prepaid and gift cards.

It is no secret that Google Wallet has had a difficult time since launching about a year ago.

Since then, any momentum it had created was squelched when it failed to secure partnerships with the four major wireless providers in the U.S. Today, it only works on a handful of Android smartphones sold by Sprint. Other carriers — most notably, Verizon Wireless — have refused to adopt the Wallet and instead are working on their own mobile payments strategy in a joint venture called ISIS.

Additionally, the Google Wallet technology relies on near field communication, or NFC, which is not available at all retailers or embedded in many phones.

In the meantime, other companies have had some successes. EBay’s PayPal has rolled out its payment technology in all 2,000 Home Depots, and other companies, like Square, are going after the small-to-medium-sized businesses.

Google has also faced a number of internal setbacks, including a couple of departures from the team, such as the resignation of Vikas Gupta, who was the head of consumer payments, and the reassignment of Stephanie Tilenius. Additionally, it was reported today that Google Wallet’s co-founding engineer Rob von Behren has joined Square, according to NFC Times.

Osama Bedier, Google wallet and payments VP, wrote in the blog post that TxVia has partnerships with some of the industry’s best-known brands and manages more than 100 million accounts.

“Their leadership team has played an instrumental role in defining the fast-growing prepaid card segment of emerging payments,” he said. “We’ve worked closely with TxVia over the last year, and they’re a forward-thinking team that will help us take the next steps in realizing the future of commerce. We welcome the TxVia team to Google.”