Mobile, Smartphone | featured news

Struggling BlackBerry maker Research In Motion said Wednesday it has started laying off employees as part of its restructuring plan aimed at saving about $1 billion this year.

The Galaxy S III offers some startlingly creative features, but it may take some time to master... In the galaxy of app phones, this one is a bright, beautiful star.

Smarter smartphones? New devices gain ability to learn by touching. There’s a form of extra-sensory perception called psychometry, whose practitioners claim to learn things about objects by touching them. Smartphones set to be released this month by Samsung and Sony will have some of that ability: they’ll learn things when you touch them to pre-programmed “tags.”

Co-founded in 2009 by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, Square enables people to accept credit card payments on iPhone, iPad or Android devices... In a move that positions the company for a potential initial public offering, Square has hired former Goldman Sachs and Salesforce.com executive Sarah Friar as chief financial officer.

Nokia shares are trading higher Friday morning in a move that at least one report attributes to dubious rumors that the company could be a takeover target for Samsung. Honestly, the rumor seems ridiculous. Samsung has little reason to buy a struggling handset maker given its own success in dominating the market for Android-based smart ...

Microsoft has announced that it will be launching a new music service known as Xbox Music. Xbox Music will offer more than 30 million songs on Xbox 360s, Windows 8 PCs, tablets and phones.

Samsung's new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, will be launched by all of the Big 4 national U.S. wireless carriers this month, starting at $199, the phone maker said Monday.

Samsung design VP Chang Dong-hoon has refuted accusations that the Galaxy S III was designed "by lawyers." Responding to the reports that stated the new handset was tweaked to circumvent deliberate trade dress claims made by Cupertino in its lawsuit, he said that the redesign is part of the company's five-year plan rather than a sudden change. He went on to say that the flagship went through hundreds of iterations before the team alighted upon the model that will shortly make its way into sweaty palms all over the world.

Made-in-China mobile devices are clicked on every continent. The same isn't true of Chinese mobile software, which is mostly aimed at domestic users. One company that reckons it has a product that crosses continents is UCWeb, a developer of mobile browsers that has gone head-to-head with Tencent's mobile platform in China.

This is a guest post by Caribou Honig, a partner with QED Investors in Alexandria, Va. In a prior post on the topic of mobile payments, I made the case that the mobile wallet will become the foundation of a new, disruptive "payment Operating System."