Apple’s iPad sold 15.4 million units during the final calendar quarter of 2011, representing a 111-percent year-over-year increase in tablet sales. Android tablets may have gained market share during the same period, but it’s PC makers that should fear that growth. Read more »
San Francisco startup 1000memories has integrated its ShoeBox app for scanning and sharing old physical photos online with Facebook’s Timeline user interface. This means that people will be able to easily fill in the gaps on their Timeline between their birthdates and when they joined Facebook. Read more »
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 »
Apple reported impressive financial results on Tuesday, setting new records in its quarterly revenue and profit. Now, data from online portfolio manager SigFig indicates that the old Wall Street adage of “buy on the rumor, sell on the news” did not hold true in this case. Read more »
The top 20 Internet retailers changed their prices 30 times more often than their peers who had lower sales during the holiday season in 2011, according to BlackLocus, a startup that helps companies set competitive prices online. Its goal is to transform retail pricing with data. 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
SquareTrade, a San Francisco-based company that provides warranties for gadgets like the iPhone, landed a $238 million investment from Bain Capital. The new investment is being made jointly by Bain’s private equity and venture capital affiliates. Further financial details about the deal have not been disclosed. Read more »
Yahoo’s newly appointed CEO Scott Thompson wants the discussion over whether Yahoo is a media or tech company to come to an end — according to him, Yahoo can be both. But in this age of increasing specialization, is that a realistic goal? 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 »
Every time new Macs come along, people inevitably get the itch to upgrade. There are no new ones on the immediate horizon, but that new computer experience might be available for a lot less money, if your Mac is eligible for a simple, DIY memory upgrade. 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 available to all Facebook users. 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 »
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 design right. Read more »
LuxeYard, a site selling high-end home decor products, is launching Tuesday. Yes, it’s technically another flash sales site. But what’s interesting about LuxeYard is that it’s doing things a bit differently from the established players in the space such as One Kings Lane and Gilt Groupe. Read more »
Thin Film, a company that prints memory and logic circuits onto plastic films, has signed partnerships with three companies to create a cheap, disposable temperature sensor. The resulting product could be the start of the stupid web and an initial step to the Internet of Things. Read more »
iPod nano watch bands are common, with lots of options for Apple’s tiny touchscreen media player. But Scott Wilson’s Minimal design studio is trying something a little different, by taking the iPod nano out of the equation completely with its new line of Antik watch modules. Read more »
Sony Corporation unveiled its next-generation back-illuminated CMOS digital image sensor on Monday, which boasts a stacked design that saves space, lowers power requirements and increases quality, all of which adds up to a veritable mating call for Sony component customer Apple. Read more »
Want to download a car? Now you can, kind of anyway: The Pirate Bay has started to offer users a way to exchange 3-D designs for physical objects that can be reproduced with 3-D printers. This kind of sharing only complicates the copyright debate. Read more »
Well, it’s 2012 and our iPhones still somehow don’t come with built-in pico projectors. But at least Epson has a new app that lets you wirelessly connect to a projector to display your slide shows, quarterly earnings forecasts and vacation photos. Read more »
Toronto-based Polar Mobile, which provides a digital media distribution platform powering the apps of some of the biggest media companies in the world, including Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, announced a new $6 million funding round on Monday. Read more »
Apple’s new iBooks digital textbooks initiative has seen 350,000 downloads in just three days, according to new info. That’s a strong start for Apple’s expanded educational offerings, but the real question will be whether that can translate into long-term success. Read more »
Summify’s sale to Twitter this week was good news for the startup, but bad news for many of its users, who expressed frustration that the news aggregation service would be mothballed post-deal. But startups News.me and Percolate are now vying to take on Summify’s users. Read more »
MegaUpload, the file-sharing community, has had its physical offices raided by the FBI and its site shut down because the U.S. government says it has violated copyright. I asked a few companies that track web traffic to see how it affected the Internet. Read more »
The next time you struggle to buy a gift for the man with everything, consider a $250 set of cufflinks he likely doesn’t have. These aren’t just any old ones; how about a pair that doubles as a 2 GB flash drive and Wi-Fi hotspot? Read more »
It’s not surprising that Box CEO Aaron Levie says CIOs are ready to approve big corporate cloud storage deals. But it is somewhat surprising that outside experts with no dog in this fight agree that cloud storage is coming to the enterprise. Read more »
Super Bowl 46 is around the corner, and Verizon is taking huge steps to ensure the mobile broadband flows as fast the beer at Lucas Oil Stadium. Here’s a video look at the effort, which includes a 600 antenna Wi-Fi system for up to 28,000 people. Read more »
If you thought 2011 seemed like a big year for web startup funding, you were absolutely right. According to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, 2011 saw the highest level of VC investment in Internet companies over the past decade. Read more »
Google SVP of ads Susan Wojcicki said on the company’s earnings call that 60 percent of all video ads that appear on YouTube are TrueView ads, meaning that viewers can skip it and move on to the video if it’s not relevant or interesting. Read more »
Following Apple’s unveiling of e-book publishing platform iBooks Author Thursday, I reached out to Vook, the startup founded in 2009 by Brad Inman that provides a top-to-bottom publishing experience using a Software-as-a-Service model. Vook sees both flattery and opportunity in Apple’s e-book software. Read more »
Android devices have long been known for their laggy touch experience. Has this changed with the latest Android flagship? Not quite. Here’s a video that uses a developer option to show the lag, as well as new technology that could minimize it in the future. Read more »
In university, I used a single clipboard/portfolio to store my notes from every class, then mostly piled the day’s work on the floor according to subject matter. Apple’s iTunes U app makes keeping track of course material ridiculously easy compared to my days of academic foraging. Read more »
U.K. Netflix clone Lovefilm just announced an app for LG’s smart TV’s, and the company is also getting ready to launch on Roku’s media streamer once the device becomes available to Britons. Details on the Roku app are scarce, but it could launch in early February. Read more »
