AT&T posted its fourth quarter results for 2011 on Thursday, highlighting smartphone sales in particular, which reached a record high of 9.4 million devices, beating the standing record by 50 percent. Apple should be pleased: Of those smartphones, 7.6 million were iPhones. Read More »
The AT&T-Mo saga wasted countless dollars and resources, dominating the attention of regulators and the wireless industry for a year, but AT&T’s failure more than made up for those losses. We now have more fearsome regulation and a greater awareness of the mobile market’s precarious competitive … Read More »
Music subscription service Rhapsody is going to Europe, but not under its own name. The company will use the Napster brand in the U.K. and Germany to compete with Spotify. The company announced the acquisition of Napster’s foreign assets three months after it bought Napster USA. Read More »
Netflix now has close to twice as many streaming subscribers than DVD subscribers, according to its most recent financial statement. And with DVDs declining rapidly, the company has to look elsewhere to finance any further international expansion. Plans to go abroad are completely nixed for 2012. Read More »
iTunes may be great for syncing your iOS devices, or buying songs, movies, apps and books, but it’s not exactly the most nimble music player anymore. Here are five great Mac-compatible alternatives that focus on the music, without the bloat that iTunes brings. Read More »
Here in the U.S., we’re lagging behind nations where HD Voice has been implemented. Thanks to Bria for Android, and its support for wideband audio codecs, I’m now starting to get a taste of this higher voice quality and recorded a demo for you to hear. Read More »
According to Facebook, reporters have been especially receptive to the Subscribe button feature launched in Sept. 2011. The number of journalists who have enabled the subscribe button is now in the thousands, and the average journalist has seen a 320-percent boost in subscribers since November. Read More »
Video of President Obama’s State of the Union speech has already been translated into seven languages, and additional translation efforts are underway online. The multi-lingual captioning efforts are the result of an election year partnership between PBS Newshour, Universal Subtitles and Mozilla. Read More »
In what is probably not a shocker, new research shows more companies are turning to SaaS-based business intelligence over traditional on-premises BI. About a third of IT managers surveyed said they plan to use at least some SaaS-based BI in the next year. Read More »
Apple’s iPhone 4S has helped it regain ground lost to Android in consumer smartphone market share, but it’s also having a very positive effect on enterprise adoption, according to a new report. The iPad remains by far the top tablet in business. Read More »
Gimmie, a new startup out of Tandem Entrepreneurs, is trying to take the idea of incentives and real-world rewards one step further by creating a rewards platform that incentivizes all kinds of engagement in apps with the goal of helping developers ultimately do more in-app transactions. Read More »
Telecom networking giant Ericsson is buying BelAir Networks, adding its high-performance outdoor hotspot technology to its portfolio, sources told GigaOM. The deal signals a shift in mindset for the big cellular vendors, which until now have never gotten serious about Wi-Fi. Read More »
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Ad-targeting company 33Across is acquiring link-tracking specialist Tynt Multimedia, resulting in a combined user graph spanning 1.25 billion users. Both are storing and analyzing billions of transactions daily, and they will use that data to help publishers compete on ad sales against mega sites like Google. Read More »
One day it could be common to have a home battery to store energy from a solar panel, and some battery makers and startups showed off their home batteries at DistribuTECH this week. Read More »
Apple’s record quarter is prompting a lot of analysts and Wall Street watchers to up their estimates for the stock’s performance. A slew of investor notes released Wednesday suggest few believe Apple’s fortunes have reached their apex. Investors seem to agree, as Apple’s stock opened strong. Read More »
If businesses have any doubt about the importance of Facebook data, they should talk to MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. MicroStrategy makes business intelligence software that companies use to sift their way through data and visualize trends. But their data is worth less without Facebook data. Read More »
One day before Nokia announces results for the most recent quarter, the company is touting a sales milestone: 1.5 billion Series 40 phones sold. That’s a huge accomplishment, but Series 40 now faces challenges from low-priced Android phones, so the momentum may not continue. Read More »
Apple is looking to sharpen the teeth on a recent import ban it secured from the ITC against HTC smartphones, according to an appeal filing discovered Wednesday. The appeal seems to at least seek to broaden the scope of the ITC’s ruling. Read More »
China is Apple’s second-most-important market after the U.S. But when it comes to finding other new emerging markets to sell its wares, Apple has its eye on Brazil. CEO Tim Cook spoke of the country’s growing importance during Apple’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday. Read More »
Skyfire, the mobile browser maker now working with carriers to tame mobile data, just raised a $8 million Series C round with participation from Verizon Ventures. The funding helps Skyfire expand its Rocket Optimizer product and launch a new browser portal for carriers. Read More »
Apple blew away observers and analysts on Tuesday with record earnings that included 37 million iPhone sold, which helps explain why research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said Wednesday that Apple’s U.S. smartphone market share now exceeds that of Android devices. Read More »
Amazon Web Services is rolling out a new feature called Storage Gateway that lets companies upload data to its cloud-storage services directly from their on-premise storage systems. This should enable cloud cloud backup and cloud bursting without worries about latency as data traverses the Internet. Read More »
The team behind design sales site Fab.com was outraged to discover a U.K.-based rival that seems to mimic not only their business but also their look. But outrage may not be enough to stop Germany’s Samwer brothers from going big with their latest clone. Read More »
ShopSavvy, a mobile app known for arming shoppers with the ability to scan products to find the best prices, is now giving consumers the ability to scan products they own so they can quickly put them up for sale. Read More »
Former Yahoo VP and chief cloud architect Todd Papaioannou is working on a stealth-mode startup called Continuuity, which aims to make it easier for developers to create data-focused cloud applications. The company has raised a $2.5 million seed round from Battery Ventures and Andreessen-Horowitz. Read More »
Google announced a new privacy policy and new terms of service that eliminate some 60-odd disparate policies across its myriad services. But fewer separate policies also means less privacy for some as Google finally delivers on its vision of a unified platform. Read More »
Following Apple’s announcement of record revenue and profit for its first financial quarter of 2012, its stock is surging in after hours trading. Share value has climbed to around $452, or 32 points above closing, which translates to a market cap of roughly $421 billion. Read More »
Social Q&A site Formspring has experienced a dip in monthly unique visitors, as the two-year-old startup transitions out of the role of hot newcomer. The company is looking to aggressive mobile web and app development and an updated design to get the growth back on track. Read More »
On Monday, the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional in most cases to use GPS to track suspects without a warrant — calling the attachment of a GPS device to a suspect’s property a trespass — but the Court declined to address some major privacy issues also … Read More »
Verizon customers craving a thin LTE smartphone with all-day battery life get their wish later this week. Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx launches on Jan. 26 for $299 with contract. But the battery is only one standout feature among many: Bluetooth 4.0, GLONASS and Super AMOLED. Read More »
Verizon plans milk as much revenue off of its 3G and LTE networks as possible, becoming the “premium” mobile data operator, but its plan could backfire. Despite the increase in 4G sales, Verizon is still primarily a 3G operator, and 3G doesn’t justify its steep prices. Read More »
The back-and-forth between Google and Twitter over Google’s new social-search results is only the latest manifestation of a much deeper problem with the relationship between the two former partners. The reality is that both sides need each other more than they would probably like to admit. Read More »
In a note to investors today, Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu discussed his company’s expectations for Apple’s earnings call Tuesday afternoon, which were up once again from earlier predictions. Wu’s revised estimate joins a chorus of rosy outlooks about the Mac-maker’s performance. Read More »
Facebook said Tuesday it will convert all users’ profiles to the new Timeline interface over the next few weeks. Soon Timeline, which shows each user’s life over an expandable Timeline that dates all the way back to his or her birth, will be the only design … Read More »
Producteev, a popular task-management tool, is taking a big step forward, updating its web and iPhone apps while launching new Android and Windows desktop apps. The wholesale improvements, which include TaskRabbit integration, help Producteev in its quest to become a universal task management service. Read More »
If Verizon has to visit a copper customer more than twice to repair the line, the communications company plans to just switch the customer over to fiber, said an executive on the company’s annual financial results call Tuesday. Read More »
A new iPhone application called Highlight hopes to use the data we are sharing about ourselves, our interests and our friends on social networks and combine it with persistent location data to help connect people who might have things in common. Read More »
Cloud collaboration service Huddle is targeting huge corporate customers, bringing them a new tier of service that allows an unlimited number of users for no extra charge. Can it help win new business and take on the industry’s biggest beasts? Read More »
Apple spent the most on semiconductors in 2011, beating out Samsung and HP to take the crown. HP dropped from the top spot, thanks to overall weakness in the PC market, while Apple soared upward on the rising tide of smartphones, tablets and the MacBook Air. Read More »
IBM is working the reins of its Smarter Commerce initiative by rolling out a new Netezza analytics appliance designed to help retailers churn through potentially petabytes of consumer sales data in real time. It’s trying to capitalize on the increased importance of e-commerce to revenues. Read More »
Dolphin Browser, a popular third-party web client for Android devices, is set to get even more popular. On Tuesday, the browser gained two new add-ons: support for both Skitch and Evernote, making it easier to annotate, draw on, or capture web content for saving or sharing. Read More »
Apple has been dealt another blow in its ongoing legal patent war with Samsung. A Dutch appeals court ruled Tuesday that an appeal by Apple against a lower court’s decision from August 2011 is invalid, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not infringe on Apple’s iPad … Read More »
IBM has teamed up with NEC to deliver an OpenFlow-based controller-and-switch combo that tries to find the sweet spot in software-defined networking between expensive, proprietary gear from Cisco or Juniper and the brand-new, open-sourced stuff that startups and webscale companies are peddling. Read More »
Energy software company Opower says it will send its 25 millionth energy data report to a utility customer by the end of January and will likely hit the 75 million mark sometime in 2012. Read More »
You are rarely rewarded for waiting until the last minute to go to a ticketed event, especially a concert. Will Call wants to be the place to connect promoters with extra last-minute tickets to sell with the spontaneous and the procrastinators among us. Read More »
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