Technology, Electronics | featured news

A bevy of big-name retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best-Buy Co. and Target Corp., are teaming up to create a company that will give customers another way to make purchases: with their cellphones.

A Samsung Electronics Co Ltd expert witness testified on Tuesday that Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad violate three of Samsung's patents, as the South Korean electronics company went on offense in the third week of a high stakes trial.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) hints at Windows RT tablet prices and their release dates. Another one of Redmond's mammoth blog posts is getting the reading-between-the-lines-analysis treatment today, as the company announces more details of Windows 8-on-ARM PCs.

The latest numbers are in: Android is on top, followed by iOS in a distant second. This word comes from Gartner, a top research firm for these sorts of things. Overall, within the last quarter, Android outsold iOS devices nearly three to one while capturing 64% of the worldwide market share. Samsung was the top dog accounting for 90M handset sales.

Google said today that it will cut about 4,000 jobs at its Motorola Mobility wireless phone business and will close or consolidate about one-third of Motorola's 90 locations. The reductions represent about 20% of Motorola Mobility’s 20,000 employees, and two-third of the job cuts will take place outside of the U. S. The company said today that Motorola Mobility has lost money in 14 of the past 16 quarters.

Nokia agreed to sell its software-development business Qt to information-technology firm Digia, as the ailing Finnish handset maker continues to divest assets in a bid to return to profitability.

The thought of Samsung design and BlackBerry productivity is clearly appealing to Research in Motion investors, who gave the company a surprise boost on the market Wednesday after reports that the BlackBerry maker was talking about licensing its upcoming software to Samsung.

In June, Google engineers took to the stage in front of thousands of cheering software developers to introduce the Nexus Q, a black ball meant to stream video and music. It was Google’s first try at building its own hardware — in the United States, no less — and Google called it “a third wave of consumer electronics.”

Well, it's official. According to the folks at Samsung, the Galaxy Note 10.1, a tablet described as offering the "functionality and precision of a pen and paper," will be here by the end of the month. The stylus-equipped Android device will have a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera. The Galaxy Note 10.1 will also include features such as Samsung's Smart Stay, which tracks a user's eyes in order to make sure that the screen doesn't dim while you're using your mobile device.

Lenovo unveiled a lighter, quicker ThinkPad notebook computer on Monday to appeal to customers who like the convenience of tablets and smartphones. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon will go on sale later this month, the Chinese computer maker said. Lenovo Group acquired the ThinkPad brand with IBM Corp.'s personal computer unit in 2005. Lenovo passed Dell Inc. last year to become the second-largest PC manufacturer after Hewlett-Packard Co.