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TELUS reported its financial results for Q2 2008: Revenue of $2.4 billion (8% increase from a year ago). Subscriber connections increased by 478,000 in the twelve-month period ended June 30, 2008. The number of wireless subscribers grew by  to 5.83 million. Darren Entwistle, TELUS president and CEO said, “On strategy growth continued in data and wireless this quarter with solid operational execution on multiple fronts. This included strong second quarter wireless customer additions and increased momentum on high-speed Internet additions.” Full report here

Eagerly awaiting the arrival of the HTC Touch Diamond in Canada, HTC has released it latest results and posted a 26% revenue growth in July and financial earnings of US$372.64 million

Bell has certainly had an eventful past couple weeks. They hired new President and CEO George Cope who layed out a 90-day plan to restructure and rebuild. Let go of 2,500 management positions – including beloved Frank & Gordon. Now, the new brand has been launched with a simple and clean looking logo and website.

The site itself is easier to navigate through and very intuitive. The images are clean, some links still lead to the old site with the old logos and info but regardless… it is a sexier site. Bring Bell up to the web 2.0 era. You might have seen a bunch a teaser advertising over the past couple weeks that only indicated a “er”… well this new strategy was created by agency Zulu Alpha Kilo,Leo Burnett, Ig2, and Cossette Communication Group with the goal to create “Bell-ements”. The tagline is “Today just got Better”.

George Cope says: “The new Bell brand underlines that we are moving forward as a company and as a service provider, with new services, a new strategy and a new goal. It’s a straightforward and customer-focused brand that directly supports the Bell team’s goal: To be recognized by customers as Canada’s leading communications company.”

Regarding the Instinct – it is now available for the price of The price will be $129.95 on a three-year contract, $279.95 on a two-year contract or $429.95 on a one-year contract, Or no contract for $479.95.

If you remember when they originally announced the phone it was going to be $149.95 on a three-year contract, $249.95 on a two-year contract or $399.95 on a one-year contract and no contract it is $449.95, but with the success Sprint had in the Unites States the price was increased.

Check out the new site and the “Apple Eater” Samsung Instinct here.

Bid day tomorrow in Canada! Another highly anticipated launch of what is expected to be a massive seller. The Samsung Instinct will be available to all those who are waiting for the “iPhone Killer” or “Apple Eater“. Bell and Telus are the lucky ones who will reap the benefits of this phone…It has done wonders for Sprint in the US.

We had a chance to play with the Instinct at the official launch party and we must say it is incredibly light and easy to navigate. This gem features a touch screen interface that vibrates when you change applications, full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, a music player, full HTML browser, watch movies, 2.0 mega pixel camera with 4x digital zoom and video camcorder. The price will be $129.95 on a three-year contract, $279.95 on a two-year contract or $429.95 on a one-year contract, Or no contract for $479.95. We will have a full review shortly.

Here are some pics and handouts from the launch party:

Fido released the FULLFIDO plan that gives you 1000 weekday minutes, 1000 evening and weekend minutes, unlimited On-Device Mobile browsing (available on select Fido certified devices), Unlimited Incoming text messeges (There is a charge per text message received via e-mail and for premium text messages such as alerts, messages related to content, contests and promotions) and per second billing.

Sounds good so far… now the cost: $40 per month (plus $6.95 monthly System Access Fee and a 50¢ monthly 911 Emergency Access Fee) and they also throw in 50% off for the first three months (upon activation). Read the fine print very carefully as this applies to certain areas only (see them here in this PDF). Available until November 3, 2008

Back in March, RIM partnered with pop artist Will.i.am to help merge social networking and multimedia. Well it seems from his latest video “One More Chance” the massive amount of product placement has started where he sings and stands in front of a bus stop laced with a Blackberry ad. Good beats though… See it here

Virgin Mobile Canada has hopped on the BlackBerry bus and launched the Pearl 8130 – it is available “while supplies last” for the following price ranges: 3-year: $0.00, 2-year: $299.00, 1-year: $249.00 and the whopping 30-day plan at $399.00.

We all know the how popular the Pearl is… Virgin describes their newest devise as “one hot little package, you can text, email, and instant message faster and easier than ever”.  More info here and make sure you carefully price out the plans as it might be easier to just buy an iPhone or Instinct. Basic Phone plans start at $25, then you add-on yourBlackBerry charges with very basic of $15 per month… here are more details of the “BlackBerry Add-Ons”

Telus to exclusively launch the highly anticipated touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder? In a Globe & Mail article titled “10 reasons to buy Rogers“, Scotia Capital analyst John Henderson said: “On the other hand, Telus is expected to launch (exclusively) a new touch screen BlackBerry this fall, which could steal some of the Bold’s Thunder, albeit temporarily.”

Fresh from its winning bids from the Canada Wireless Spectrum Auction, Globalive is getting ready to roll out a flat-rate Cheap Cell Phone Plans that would include such features as texting. CEO Anthony Lacavera said “You are going to be able to text and we aren’t going to be tracking and saying ‘Oh you know what you had 500 text messages, oh you had 501 text messages. We are going to charge you an extra 50 cents.”‘ Globalive will target small and medium sized business and offer several of its own cellphone brands to consumers who are looking for value

If you have an iPhone and want to set yourself apart from others, ColorWare might be a great choice. You can customize your iPhone 3G, the earbuds and dock to one of its 35 colors. The average cost is $150 (USD) with the only major downside is that you have to send it in to get officially customized – so you’ll be without your toy for a few days. More info here