Mignon Clyburn said healthy competition is key to continued innovation.

“We have taken a light regulatory approach, but have touched when necessary,” Mignon said, speaking at the opening of the CTIA 2013 show in Las Vegas.

The most notable of those touches, of course, was the agency’s opposition to AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile USA. The agency has since approved other combinations, including Verizon’s partnership with the cable companies, and T-Mobile USA’s acquisition of MetroPCS.

Clyburn had some specific words of praise for smaller, regional carriers that she said provide excellent customer service and help connect rural America.

Speaking in her first week as acting chair, Clyburn said that an incentive spectrum auction remains on track, with rules to be issued this year and the bidding itself to take place next year.

“The agency is doing a lot of creative things to make more spectrum available,” said Clyburn, who will hold the post until confirmation of her successor, Tom Wheeler.

The aluminum-clad phone is similar to the Lumia 920 that has been sold for months at AT&T, as well as the just-introduced Lumia 928 for Verizon. The new phone, being introduced globally and headed here to T-Mobile, features a few new twists.

In addition to its different outer shell, the 925 features an improved camera with a sixth lens (other recent high-end Lumia models have five). The added lens helps better capture natural light.

On the software side, the company is offering what it calls Nokia Smart Camera — a feature that captures 10 images at once, offering the ability to choose the best shot or blend the results into an action shot or one with motion focus. Nokia said the software-based camera features would also be made available for all of Nokia’s other Windows Phone 8 products sometime in the third quarter.

The Lumia 925 is due to go on sale in Europe in June, with T-Mobile’s U.S. launch likely to be the following week. It is priced at 469 euros ($608), though Nokia U.S. head Matt Rothschild said he expected T-Mobile’s upfront price to be under $100.

“We expect really aggressive pricing,” Rothschild said.

With the launch of this phone, the recent announcement of the Lumia 928 at Verizon, as well as the entry-level Lumia 521, also headed for T-Mobile, Rothschild said that Nokia’s U.S. operation has plenty to keep it busy in the months ahead.

Nokia has struggled to make the same kind of inroads in the U.S. market that it has seen in some other places, but Rothschild said he is pleased with where the company finds itself.

“From where we were … basically starting from scratch with Lumia and Windows Phone, I couldn’t be happier with our progress,” Rothschild said.

Aio Wireless (pronounced Ay-Oh) is launching Thursday in three cities — Houston, Orlando and Tampa.

Plans range from $35 to $70 a month, and devices offered include smartphones from ZTE and Samsung, as well as the Nokia Lumia 620 (a Windows Phone model that previously hadn’t found its way stateside). Customers can also bring their own devices to the network.

It also has the iPhone at standard unsubsidized prices, meaning that a 16 gigabyte iPhone 5 sells for $649. At the other end of the spectrum, the ZTE Prelude, an entry-level Android device, is priced at $49.

Aio’s website has a decidedly non-corporate feel, with a woodgrain background and promises of being “simple” and “delightful” — two words not always associated with wireless carriers.

AT&T is taking another page from T-Mobile’s playbook, offering unlimited data with all its plans, but pricing the different options based on how much of that data customers want at full speed.

The heftiest plan offers a whopping 7GB of high-speed data for $70, while a 100MB plan costs $35 a month.

AT&T is not alone in establishing separate brands aimed at different segments of the market. Sprint, for example, sells prepaid service under both the Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands. Sprint has used both to try out different pricing and marketing tactics than it uses with its main brand.

A teardown analysis conducted by the market research firm IHS, due to be released tomorrow, has pegged Samsung’s cost of materials and manufacturing to produce the U.S. version of the 32 gigabyte model of the S4 at slightly above $237 per unit. Without a contract subsidy, the entry-level 16GB version of the phone costs $639 when sold by AT&T Wireless.

The cost is somewhat higher than that of Apple’s iPhone 5, the base model of which costs $205 to build for a 16GB version, according to an IHS analysis conducted last fall. It’s also well above the cost of Nokia’s Lumia 900, which costs $209 to build, IHS found at the time.

The S4 cost is not far below the cost of Samsung’s larger Galaxy Note tablet, the cost of which IHS estimated last year to be $270.

Most phone manufacturers source their components from many different suppliers. But Samsung, a large, diversified manufacturer of many different kinds of electronic components, has used its significant capabilities to supply itself with many of the key parts inside most versions of the S4 phone sold around the world.

“Samsung’s strength is this ability to in-source to itself,” IHS analyst Vincent Leung said in an interview. “They just keep adding to the list of components that they can supply to themselves.”

One key component that Samsung did not supply to itself for versions of the phone being sold in the U.S. was the main applications processor. U.S. versions of the phone contain a Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, which contributes $20 to the overall cost.

Versions of the phone sold in Korea and other markets around the world contain a Samsung-made chip called the Exynos 5 Octa that costs $28. Samsung is known to be manufacturing at least four variations of the phone for different market geographies around the world, including at least two being sold in the U.S., one going to AT&T and T-Mobile, and another going to Verizon Wireless and Sprint, said Andrew Rassweiler, another IHS analyst.

“Samsung is demonstrating its ability to suit the tastes of carriers in different regions of the world,” Rassweiler said. “It comes down to what the market is willing to spend on the features offered.”

The fact that Samsung used the Qualcomm-made chip is a testament to the U.S. chipmaker’s prowess. “Even with all the vertical integration it’s doing, it’s not like Samsung has given up on Qualcomm,” Rassweiler said.

One interesting difference between the U.S. and Korean versions resulted from the difference in the choice of processor. U.S. versions of the phone contain an image-processing chip made by Japan’s Fujitsu that added $1.50 to the total cost. Leung says that in the Korean versions, some of the image processing is handed off to Samsung’s Exynos chip.

Samsung also supplied the flash memory used to store data on the device. IHS estimates that 16GB of memory added $28 to the cost of the device.

The Korean giant also supplied itself with a display and touchscreen parts, which added $75 to the cost of components. The combined display package also includes Gorilla Glass, a strong glass material made by U.S.-based Corning.

Samsung is also thought to have supplied itself with several unlabeled components, including the camera module and some wireless baseband chips.

A few non-Samsung suppliers include Broadcom, which provided Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips; Maxim, which provided a power-management chip; and Triquint Semiconductor, which provided some wireless chips.

For the quarter ending March 31, T-Mobile reported a 7 percent dip in revenue from a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings, excluding interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $1.2 billion was also down 7.5 percent from a year earlier, though that figure was up from the fourth quarter.

However, T-Mobile has been pretty darn busy since the quarter ended — adding the iPhone, doing away with phone subsidies and closing its deal to acquire MetroPCS. The company is also spending billions to build an LTE network as it tries to catch up to its larger rivals.

T-Mobile had announced some quarterly metrics back in April, when it noted that it added 579,000 subscribers in the three-month period, with contract subscriber losses for the quarter narrowing to 199,000.

“Our first quarter operating metrics and financial results are showing positive impact from the changes we began making in the fourth quarter,” CEO John Legere said in a statement, adding that the company added T-Mobile branded customers for the first time since early 2009. “Things only get more exciting from here, having brought T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS together to create the wireless industry’s value leader and premier challenger.”

That’s especially tough in a country like the U.S., where big phone subsidies mean that one has to compete against free iPhone 4 and Android devices. Even the top-end devices generally sell for under $200 with a contract.

However, with T-Mobile’s recent move away from phone subsidies, Nokia and Microsoft are pouncing on an opportunity to offer a new smartphone at a noticeably lower price.

The Lumia 521, which runs on T-Mobile’s network, sells for around $150 unsubsidized. That’s hundreds less than many other smartphones. It goes on sale at Walmart and Microsoft stores next week, after selling out during a run on HSN.

Speaking at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference earlier this month, Windows Phone boss Terry Myerson noted the difficulty that Microsoft and its partners have had in subsidized markets such as the U.S.

“If every phone is $200, we are the challenger at the same price,” Myerson said. “That’s a playing field that is a little harder.”

T-Mobile’s move away from subsidies could create more room for Microsoft — and for others targeting the low end of the market.

The Lumia 521 is a T-Mobile customized version of a low-end model that Nokia introduced back in February.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that Windows Phone needs to continue to come in less-expensive phones in order to effectively compete against Android.

“There’s definitely an opportunity to push to even lower price points,” he said.

Microsoft is also taking a harder line in its advertising, debuting an ad that goes directly after Android and the iPhone.

“Don’t be confused,” Legere told AllThingsD. “We’re not running two companies. We are clearly going to be one integrated company that uses two brands to go to market.”

As for the iPhone coming to MetroPCS, Legere said it’s a possibility, but not a foregone conclusion.

“The answer to that is not ‘No,’” Legere said, but added, “It’s not imminent; I think that’s safe to say.”

There are two big factors. One is how T-Mobile decides it wants to position the two brands and manage its marketing.

“It’s also something that involves Apple,” Legere said, but added that “we’ve started those dialogues with our partners.”

Beyond the iPhone, though, T-Mobile plans to move quickly to introduce new devices as early as next month that bear the MetroPCS brand but run on T-Mobile’s network.

Even as it maintains the MetroPCS brand, T-Mobile wants to transition customers quickly to T-Mobile’s network. That’s critical to minimizing the time spent operating incompatible networks and to allowing T-Mobile more efficient use of its spectrum.

“This is about customer migration, not network integration,” Legere said, reiterating a point CTO Neville Ray made in an interview shortly after the deal was announced last October.

Offering MetroPCS handsets on the T-Mobile network also allows that brand to move into new cities. Legere said the company is working through a double-digit list of cities and plans to aggressively target new markets this year, though he didn’t say whether the first new cities would come in the second or third quarter.

“We’re deciding those cities this week,” Legere said. “We’re going to move fast and big.”

Meanwhile, Legere also said that T-Mobile is making good progress on its “uncarrier” approach that began last month, noting that both its prepaid and postpaid businesses are ahead of expectations, though he didn’t give specifics. He also said the company’s iPhone sales have exceeded expectations, though again he declined to give hard numbers.

Legere did say the company is on track for its goal of shifting from losing postpaid customers to gaining customers at some point this year and being positive for the full 2014.

With the deal done, the company will turn to the task of rapidly integrating the prepaid carrier into its existing business and technology roadmap.

The company has been working on integration plans for months and aims to hit the ground running. CTO Neville Ray promised that the company is well aware of what happened to Sprint when it bought Nextel and is taking pains to avoid that fate.

T-Mobile plans to keep MetroPCS as a separate brand targeting different demographics. That means operating separate stores and maintaining both brands. Plus, T-Mobile has the opportunity to now expand the brand into markets that MetroPCS had missed out on due to a lack of spectrum.

However, T-Mobile hopes to quickly start selling new and renewing MetroPCS customers on a new crop of devices that run on T-Mobile’s spectrum.

“This isn’t about integrating these two networks,” Ray said in an October interview. “It’s about moving MetroPCS over to a bigger and stronger converged network.”

Meanwhile, T-Mobile has made a number of big moves separate from the MetroPCS deal. Last month it announced a plan to scrap phone subsidies, eliminate long-term contracts and, at long last add the iPhone to its lineup.

And the company has spent $4 billion modernizing its network, moving to more widely adopted spectrum and adopting LTE.

In acquiring MetroPCS, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom also turns T-Mobile USA into a publicly traded company, albeit one still three-quarters owned by the German telecommunications firm. (T-Mobile will trade under the ticker symbol “TMUS” on the New York Stock Exchange.)

That said, one big thing hasn’t changed. T-Mobile remains the No. 4 U.S. carrier and even with MetroPCS, it will significantly trail its top three rivals in all measures of scale.

Update: T-Mobile’s investor relations website has been updated to reflect the combination as having taken place, with its executive leadership team updated to list Thomas Keys as Executive VP and operating chief of the MetroPCS business unit. Meanwhile, MetroPCS’ investor relations page now points to T-Mobile.

You recently mentioned the HTC One as being priced at $200. I’ve just been on the phone with my carrier T-Mobile, which offers me the HTC One for $100 down and $20 a month for 24 months. They explain they “no longer offer discounted phones” under their new world order or whatever. Can you explain?

A:

In the U.S., carriers traditionally subsidize the price of mobile phones and then make back the money by requiring buyers to sign a two-year contract, so they don’t defect before the carrier has made back the subsidy from them. Under this formula, the HTC One is indeed $200 at AT&T.

But T-Mobile recently announced a new approach under which it won’t subsidize the phones, but will charge something close to what the phone maker charges it, spread out in monthly payments. In return, it won’t require a two-year service contract. In the case of the HTC One and some other high-end smartphones, like the iPhone 5, that amounts to $100 down at purchase, plus $480 over two years — $20 a month. The actual voice and data service is in addition to the cost of the phone.

Q:

I have always been a Windows user, and always used security software. I just purchased a new iMac and the folks at the Apple store have told me that security software is not needed on Apple computers. What is your opinion?

A:

The Mac isn’t invulnerable to security problems. It’s just not targeted nearly as often as Windows PCs are. Relatively few Mac owners use security software because almost none of the vast array of malware programs around is designed for the Mac. Nearly every one is designed to run on Windows, and they can’t run on the Mac operating system, unless you install Windows on the Mac.

My advice: If security software makes you more comfortable, use it. Otherwise, unless you install Windows, the odds that your Mac could be successfully attacked are low enough that security software isn’t needed. However, you are still vulnerable to scams which rely on greed, carelessness or fear to get you to open suspicious links in email. Never do this, especially if the email purports to be from a financial institution or credit-rating service.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

In particular, the state’s attorney general took issue with the fact that T-Mobile forces those financing their phones to either continue service with the carrier until the device is paid for or to pay the full remaining cost of the phone when they want to cancel.

“Consumers who cancel their wireless service face an unanticipated balloon payment for the phone equipment — in some cases higher than termination fees for other wireless carriers depending on how early they cancel,” the Washington attorney general’s office said in a statement.

Under the agreement announced Thursday, T-Mobile consented to changes in how it markets the plans and to offer refunds to anyone who signed up with T-Mobile between March 26 and April 25.

“As America’s Un-carrier, our goal is to increase transparency with our customers, unleashing them from restrictive long-term service contracts — this kind of simple, straight forward approach is core to the new company we are building,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “While we believe our advertising was truthful and appropriate, we voluntarily agreed to this arrangement with the Washington AG in this spirit.”

Announced last month, T-Mobile’s new plans drop phone subsidies and two-year service commitments. Those who pay for their phone in full or bring their own device are free to cancel whenever.

Customers can also choose to finance their phone over two years; those who do find themselves in a situation that looks roughly similar to a contract.

That’s the good news in a report from RootMetrics, which measures real-world cellphone performance nationwide.

Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile all reduced their call failure rates from the first half of the year to the second, according to RootMetrics. Verizon’s rate increased fractionally, but was still an industry-best 0.7 percent for the second half of the year.

“In 2012, we found strong call performances from all carriers: the gap between each carrier’s average rate of call failures (dropped and blocked calls) was relatively minor,” RootMetrics said in its report.

Data speeds, meanwhile, are also showing across-the-board improvement as the major carriers spend billions to expand LTE service nationwide. Verizon was the first, and has the largest LTE network, but all its rivals are working hard to catch up.

A separate report from RootMetrics released earlier this year showed AT&T with the fastest LTE network and Verizon with the broadest LTE coverage.

“Due to overwhelming global demand of Galaxy S 4, the initial supply may be limited,” a Samsung representative told AllThingsD. “We expect to fulfill inventory to meet demands in the coming weeks.”

Earlier on Wednesday, T-Mobile and Sprint both said that full retail availability of the Samsung flagship device would come later than expected.

“We had planned to launch this next generation of the award-winning Samsung Galaxy line-up on Saturday, April 27,” Sprint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, due to unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung, we will be slightly delayed with our full product launch.”

AT&T, meanwhile, said it plans to start selling the S 4 on Saturday, as expected.

The deal is expected to close May 1.

T-Mobile agreed last year to merge with MetroPCS, creating a publicly traded company of which Deutsche Telekom would own 74%.

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“We had planned to launch this next generation of the award-winning Samsung Galaxy line-up on Saturday, April 27,” Sprint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, due to unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung, we will be slightly delayed with our full product launch.”

The No. 3 U.S. carrier still expects to make it available online and via phone sales Saturday, with retail-store launches once supply increases.

Update: T-Mobile said it, too, is pushing things back.

“We know customers are really looking forward to getting their new Samsung Galaxy S 4 soon,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “However, due to an unexpected delay with inventory deliveries, the Galaxy S 4 will not be available on www.T-Mobile.com as planned today. Instead, online availability is expected to begin on Monday, April 29. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working with Samsung to deliver the device to T-Mobile customers as soon as possible.”

As for stores, T-Mobile said the Galaxy S 4 is now expected in selected T-Mobile stores and other retailers on May 8, with nationwide retail availability starting May 15.

AT&T, by contrast, says its planned Saturday launch is on schedule. “We are on track with our planned April 27th in-store launch of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and are excited to hear what our customers think of this highly anticipated smartphone,” a representative told AllThingsD.

Verizon, meanwhile, has said it will start taking preorders on Thursday but won’t have the Galaxy S 4 available until May 30.