Technology, Smartphone | featured news

Google’s short-term goals for its Motorola smartphone division are two-fold: clear the rubble on the runway and build for the future. 

Mobile money may seem like a hot concept, but consumers aren't warming to it. At the world's largest cellphone trade show, here in Barcelona this week, the 70,000 attendees are encouraged to use their cellphones -instead their keycards- to get past the turnstiles at the door. But very few people took the chance to do that. The process of setting up the phone to act as a keycard proved too much of a hassle.

A flurry of new mobile operating systems were released at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, all looking to take a piece of Android’s market pie. While each brings their own advantages and foibles to the table, Ubuntu has the best chance to hit the ground running, as it’s essentially an upgrade of a tried-and-true desktop operating system—as long as it’s actually ready soon.

Look out, Android: three challengers are gunning for your app cash. Firefox OS, Tizen, and Ubuntu Touch have all made their debuts at mobile industry shindig Mobile World Congress this week. And in my opinion, Samsung and the mobile industry are backing the wrong horses.

HTC has unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the revamped HTC One, in an attempt to regain lost market share.

Android continues to dominate the battle to be the top smartphone system in the world, thanks in part to Samsung, which reigned as the top phone manufacturer for 2012.

Apple is experimenting with designs for a watch-like device that would perform some functions of a smartphone, as part of explorations of potentially large product categories beyond the smartphone and tablet.

Apple has become the leading U.S. mobile-phone vendor for the first time last quarter, securing a record 34% of market share, and knocking rival Samsung off the top spot. The Cupertino, Calif., company shipped 17.7 million phones during the fourth quarter, growing 4% annually, according to a new report by research firm Strategy Analytics. For comparison; that number jumped from 12.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, when Apple captured 25% of the market.

The launch of the iPhone 5 and the declining popularity of non-smartphones have made Apple the biggest seller of phones in the U.S. for the first time, research firm Strategy Analytics said Friday.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected Apple Inc's request to revive its bid for a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, dashing the iPhone maker's attempt to recover crucial leverage in the global patent wars.