Microsoft, Gadgets | featured news

According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture. According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture.

Poor Microsoft. People who use your search engine seem especially interested in ... Apple. Bing published its most-searched news stories for 2012, and topping the list -- ahead of the presidential election, Superstorm Sandy and the London Olympics -- was the iPhone 5, the newest version of Apple's iconic smartphone.

CEO Steve Ballmer told French daily Le Parisien that sales of the company's first tablet "are starting modestly." Ballmer also said that the supply shortages were a "good sign." He added that Microsoft will "fix this problem quickly" as the company increases capacity, which is part of its overall strategy.

Microsoft is working with Asian suppliers to test its own smartphone design, suggesting the computer-software giant is increasingly adopting a similar business model to that of rival Apple.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't afford to be wrong about Windows 8. On Thursday in New York, Microsoft unveiled a dramatic overhaul of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will go on sale Friday, fused into more than 1,000 PCs and other devices. If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

When Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) unveiled the Surface tablet in June, it pulled back the curtain on nearly three years of secret development. This Friday, buyers will finally be able to get their hands on the $499 tablet.

At 9:00 this morning, Pacific time, Microsoft’s future goes on sale. The first Surface tablet, Microsoft’s dramatic foray into the hardware business, is available for pre-order starting today. It will be available for purchase in stores starting Oct. 26. With its release, Microsoft instantly becomes the third major player in the tablet market, a market where it is taking a fundamentally different approach than its rivals, Apple and Google.

Nokia and Microsoft Corp took the wraps off the struggling European company's most powerful smartphone on Wednesday, in what may be their last major shot at reclaiming a market lost to Apple, Samsung and Google.

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.

If you happened to peruse the annual report Microsoft filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week, you may notice that a rather obvious little bit of news was confirmed in the documents: That the Redmond-based company's Surface tablets will hit shelves on Oct. 26, along with Windows 8.