Samsung's big push for 2013: content, corporates

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the global leader in consumer smartphones, is planning two major thrusts in 2013: bulking up mobile content and moving faster into the corporate market dominated by Research in Motion.The South Korean electronics company is investing in devices that enterprise users like corporations will endorse, with a higher level of security and reliability than general...

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ZTE Grand S ‘phablet’ announced with a quad-core CPU and 1080p display

ZTE (0763) on Tuesday became the latest company to showcase a full HD “phablet” at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Android-powered Grand S smartphone comes with a 5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.7GHz and a 13-megapixel rear camera. The handset is also remarkably thin, measuring in at a mere 6.9 millimeters, and also includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB...

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Flextronics looks to Android for manufacturing innovation

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Flextronics International Ltd's recent agreement to take over Motorola Mobility's factories amounts to a big bet by the contract manufacturer on Google Inc's Android ecosystem, a senior executive said."We're doubling down on Android because we believe strongly in Google's innovative capability and ability to be a leader like Microsoft and Apple in iconic hardware," said Mike...

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Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone

Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft (MSFT), took aim at Google (GOOG) and the company’s unwillingness to develop for Windows Phone 8 in a blog post on Wednesday. Heiner claims that, “Google continues to prevent Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app [among other] for the Windows Phone.” Microsoft has been apparently been trying to get a full-feature...

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What Happened to the 2012 Tech Bubble That Never Was

Turns out Facebook's fizzled IPO was a pretty good microcosm for 2012 in startup land: it was all one big fizzle. The final numbers for last year in venture-capital IPOs and acquisitions are in, and while there was no dot-com-era type of explosion, the much hyped new tech bubble appears to have just... petered out. There remains hope, as always, for the unpredictable year ahead. Here are some key...

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Patent hints Apple may bring its own unique stylus to iOS devices

Many people had a good laugh when Samsung (005930) unveiled the Galaxy Note last year and made a big deal out of the device’s Palm Pilot-like stylus. But once the Galaxy Note became a hit, people stopped snickering and began to take the stylus seriously as an accessory once again. Apple (AAPL) is apparently considering hopping on the stylus bandwagon, as HotHardware reports that the company has filed...

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Quick fix for Boot Camp brings Windows 8 to new iMac computers

Early adopters of Apple’s (AAPL) new iMac computers who chose the 3TB Fusion Drive model have been unable to use Boot Camp Assistant. The program, which allows OS X users to install a Windows partition on their computers, is limited to drives of up to 2.2TB. Apple has hinted that the software may be updated in the future to support larger drives, however no set time frame has been given. Despite the...

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Samsung forced to reveal Galaxy sales data to Apple

Samsung (005930) was found to have infringed upon six of Apple’s patents this past August and ordered to pay the company $1.05 billion in damages. Apple (AAPL) is also seeking additional damages after its bid to blocks sales of eight Samsung devices failed. In order to asses the damages, Apple requested that Samsung hand over its sales data for its popular Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. The...

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RIM offers biggest clients incentives to adopt BB10

TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd on Thursday outlined a program of incentives to encourage its biggest customers to run its soon-to-launch line of BlackBerry 10 devices, seeking to persuade corporations and government users to stick with its secure smartphones.RIM is betting that the devices, to be launched on January 30, will revive its fortunes. That will depend to a large extent on the...

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Windows Phone shipments could surge by 150% in 2013

2013 might go down as the year that Windows Phone finally hits the mainstream. A new study from Digitimes Research predicts Microsoft (MSFT) is expected to see the highest increase in shipments among all mobile device operating systems next year as Windows Phone devices, including both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 models, will see shipments increase 150% to 52.5 million units, good for a 6.1%...

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iPhone 5′s lack of NFC called ‘a serious blow for the technology’

Phil Schiller, Apple’s (AAPL) senior vice president of worldwide marketing has said before that the iPhone 5 doesn’t have NFC because “it’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem.” While most Android smartphones happily tout that NFC’s wireless capabilities are the future of mobile payments, Juniper Research analyst Dr. Windsor Holden  wrote in his latest report that NFC growth...

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Apple and Samsung return to court to battle over $1 billion verdict

Samsung (005930) and Apple (AAPL) on Thursday return to a San Jose, California courtroom to once again square off in front of U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh regarding an earlier ruling from August, the Wall Street Journal reported. The South Korean vendor is looking to have the federal judge throw out or soften the $1.05 billion in damages it was hit with for infringing upon Apple’s protected...

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The best smartphones of 2012: Sprint

Sprint (S) is featured in the third installment of our series and while it doesn’t sell quite as many smartphones as its rivals Verizon Wireless (VZ) and AT&T (T), it offers smartphone users something the big-two do not: Truly unlimited data with no caps and no throttling. That unlimited data is somewhat slow in most parts of the country since Sprint’s  LTE network is in its infancy, but...

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