IBLOG SPACE

RIM rejected takeover overtures from Amazon for its BlackBerry business, sources have revealed, though the Canadian company’s attempts to license BlackBerry 10 to Samsung and HTC met with indifference. Neither firm could “see the value in tying up with BlackBerry”  Reuters ‘ sources say, meaning RIM will likely be on its own pushing out smartphones and tablets based on the new platform  at the end of 2012 . The news of the retailer’s interest in RIM comes amid claims that the BlackBerry company is also a possible target for a joint Microsoft and Nokia bid. None the of the named parties is saying anything publicly, but a head of technology investment banking at a Wall Street bank says “[RIM] have had approaches from folks who have wanted to have discussions.” Those discussions have met with silence, however, when takeovers are a possibility. RIM’s board has decided the company won’t entertain the possibility of a buy-out, split or partnership deal until the new platform has at least had

HTC has been embroiled in multiple patent litigations with Apple over the last year. One of the patent cases involved HTC infringing on some of the user interface patents that Apple held. The judge in that case ruled against HTC and said that the company was infringing one of the Apple patents in that case. HTC lost a patent case against Apple on a patent involving linking and analyzing data and resulting in an import ban on some products. Bloomberg reports that HTC has finished the workaround to avoid the patent Apple hold involving user interfaces. HTC CEO Peter Chou said, “It’s [the infringing tech] actually quite rarely used.” HTC still maintains that while it lost the patent case and was found to be infringing on an Apple patent, that the suit was a win for it. HTC says that out of the ten cases of infringement that Apple alleged, the ITC only found infringement on one of the patents. The courts gave HTC until April 19, 2012 to comply with the ruling. With the workaround already,

Apple’s App Store generates six times the revenue of Google’s Android Market for the top 200 grossing titles, app analysis firm Distimo has calculated, while in-app purchases account for 65-percent of revenues for the top grossing 200 Android software. The findings, part of Distimo’s January to November 2011 report, also include news that the Windows Phone Marketplace, Microsoft’s mobile download store, has overtaken Nokia’s Ovi Store and RIM’s BlackBerry App World for games, and is now the fourth largest app store in that category. In fact, the Windows Phone Marketplace grew by 400-percent in 2011, as Microsoft ramped up its developer outreach and pushed the new platform. The Android Market remains the place for free apps, though freemium titles – where in-app purchases are used to make money off of a free download – now account for almost 50-percent of iPhone titles in the App Store. iPhone app sales remain the biggest source of income from total revenue, including both one-off and i

It has been a while since we talked about Lovefilm. Certainly, the big news for the streaming service this year is that it was sold to another company looking to extend its reach in the UK. Lovefilm has now announced that it has landed new streaming rights to content from Sony pictures in its effort to better compete with Netflix streaming. The streaming deal with Sony will kick off in June of 2012 for Lovefilm. There are some big films included in the streaming deal including The Social Network, Salt, and 2012. The streaming content will also include cartoons like Transformers and the Spectacular Spider-Man along with older kid focused films like The Karate Kid. Lovefilm also landed the exclusive streaming rights to Arthur Christmas. These are going to be nice additions for UK fans of the service. Subscribers on the unlimited disc rental program with Lovefilm can stream for free.

If you like the thin ultrabooks that are starting to hit the market in greater numbers, but want a larger screen keep an eye on Acer. Acer is reportedly set to launch a new ultrabook that packs a 15-inch screen. At the start, Acer was only offering ultrabooks with smaller 11-inch or 13-inch screens. The sales have apparently been good enough that the company is now ready to step into the larger screen market. The ultrabook with the 15-inch screen is being produced by Pegatron according to a DigiTimes source in the supply chain. Perhaps the best news about the 15-inch ultrabook is that the machine is said to be coming to market for $699 making it a cheaper ultrabook. Many of the ultrabooks so far have been closer to $1,000 or more. Acer ultrabooks are made by ODM supplier Wistron. By the end of the year, the sales of the existing models are expected to be around 250,000 to 300,000 units. A larger screen ultrabook will help lure those that want portability with more screen space. Perhaps

If you watch music videos on YouTube odds are many of them you have seen are actually vids from Vevo. Vevo is a music video streaming site that owes the bulk of its traffic to YouTube. The downside of that arrangement is that Vevo doesn’t make as much off advertising when its videos are watched via YouTube. Naturally, the music video streaming site is looking for ways to get people to view videos on its own site. One way that the company is looking to expand its direct viewership is by turning itself into a TV station like MTV was back in the day. Sources are claiming that the talks are in the early stage and Vevo could set itself up as a cable channel. It may also collaborate with existing content providers. The idea is that the TV channel Vevo launches would show music videos and other pop-culture entertainment. In October, Vevo reportedly had 57 million US users and streamed 827 million videos a month. Vevo is owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Abu Dhabi M

The automotive industry is doing very well again after a rough year or so with the economy tanking and consumers flocking to used cars rather than new. With the economy picking up the sales of new cars are starting to go back up. A report from the Wall Street Journal today claimed that Honda would be increasing the manufacturing capacity in North America. The WSJ report claimed that Honda CEO Tetsuo Iwamura noted Honda was going to shift some of its manufacturing capacity back to North America over the next two years. According to the WSJ, the Honda CEO had stated that it was getting to be too expensive to import cars to North America so it would build more of the cars inside North America. Bloomberg is now reporting that Honda is denying that 40% figure. A Honda spokeswoman has stated that Iwamura “didn’t say 40% at all.” That seems to be a carefully worded way of noting that the production increase may not be 40%, not a denial that it will increase North American production. Honda ha

Apple has quietly fixed the App Store issue preventing iPhone and iPod touch owners running iOS 3.1.3 from properly browsing the store and downloading new titles. Reported by users earlier this week, who were able to update existing apps on their devices but not download new ones, the fault has been apparently corrected by Apple according to new support forum posts. The exact cause of the problem is still unclear, with Apple yet to comment publicly on the issue. However, what’s important for owners is that they’ll be able to take advantage of the various holiday promotions generally launched just prior to the App Store team locking down the top ten charts. Speculation had grown that Apple might be quietly adding pressure to those running older devices to upgrade to newer versions of iOS, or even to newer iPhone and iPod touch models altogether. That now seems not to be the case, however.

Intel has revealed its latest Medfield smartphone and tablet reference designs, the path-laying hardware the chip company hopes will persuade manufacturers to adopt its x86 mobile chip rather than stick with ARM. The two devices – the phone running Gingerbread and the tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich were demonstrated to MIT’s Technology Review, though only a render of the handset has been released. Still, initial impressions from Intel’s first SoC seem positive. Unlike previous Intel chips, Medfield pulls all of the core processing tasks onto a single chip. This so-called System-on-Chip (SoC) design mimics the design strategy of ARM licensees like NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, which have been far more successful in getting their silicon in mobile devices than Intel has managed. Part of the benefit of a SoC design is battery frugality, something traditional Intel mobile processors have generally struggled with. The exact nature of the power improvements are yet to be seen, t

Microsoft and Nokia discussed a potential takeover of beleaguered BlackBerry manufacturer RIM, leaks have revealed, while RIM itself has approached Samsung, HTC and others about potentially licensing the new BlackBerry 10 OS. Talks between Microsoft and Nokia began several months ago, the WSJ reports, though while executives from the two firms apparently regularly meet with top brass at RIM, it’s unclear whether the Canadian company has been involved in potential acquisition planning. RIM is refusing to countenance any possibility of abandoning its hardware business and focusing instead on enterprise software and services. Instead, it has supposedly broached the idea of licensing out BlackBerry 10 – the company’s QNX-based next-gen OS that was initially to be called BBX until a trademark dispute forced a rethink – to other companies, in the same manner that Google and Microsoft license their own platforms. Whether rival firms would be interested in that is uncertain. Samsung and HTC, e

Android device activations have hit 700,000 a day, according to platform chief Andy Rubin, a huge increase on the 550,000 daily activations Google reported back in July. Over 700,000 Android gadgets – phones and tablets – are now coming online each 24 hours, as the OS continues to accelerate into the lead. Last month, Google announced that it had passed the 200m activated devices milestone. Perhaps to head off controversy about what, exactly, constitutes a newly activated device, Rubin followed up with a definition: “…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service” Andy Rubin, Google The achievement is the latest stage in a battle between Google and Apple over mobile platform dominance, with Android and iOS squaring off to take the coveted top spot. Android dominates the smartphone space but iOS on the iPad has significant

There is, bar none, no other televised, live event in the country that commands as much popularity and viewing numbers as the annual NFL Super Bowl. Last year’s sporting event drew over 100 million viewers. In a major announcement today, NBC and the National Football League today released their decision that the upcoming championship game of the professional football league will be the first one that will be “streamed online and to mobile phones.” As an avid football fan, what more can I say, than, “truly awesome”? Furthermore, beyond just the Super Bowl, NBC and the NFL is also gearing up to stream “NBC’s broadcasts of wild card Saturday, the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl would be available on the league’s and network’s websites and through Verizon’s NFL Mobile app.” This will reportedly also allow viewers access to exclusive camera angles, game highlights, as well as live-updated sports statistics. The announcement doesn’t cover which Verizon devices will be streamed to, though it’s ve

Reportedly just in today from Bloomberg, Verizon Wireless’s current negotiations for spectrum with cable companies are under governmental scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department, for their possibility of being detrimental to competition in both the cable and wireless industries. The Justice Department is allegedly looking at whether Verizon would have too much control of the spectrum, and whether some components of the deal would potentially violate antitrust laws. According to Bloomberg, Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman from the Justice Department, stated that the antitrust division is examining the transactions, and declined to comment any further than that. Verizon Wireless, the biggest mobile-phone carrier in the United States, introduced a $3.6 billion alliance earlier this month with cable companies (led by Comcast) that will try to change how customers purchase Internet, mobile and television services. The desire for a larger piece of the overall wireless spectrum has driven the rec

Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Nexus S hit a snag today, as Electronista reports that the company posted on its forums that it was holding the operating system update to “monitor feedback”, after users saw atypically high battery drain on the devices. Possibly induced by a spike in processor usage, the issue wasn’t enough to halt all updates worldwide, but the upgrade “wouldn’t return until Google was satisfied there wasn’t an issue.” The problem may possibly be related to a recent update to Android 4.0. Galaxy Nexus owners have mentioned throughout Google’s online forums that they’ve seen battery drain issues akin to that of the Nexus S. However, in their cases, it may be that the kernel behind the low-level software on the device is artificially keeping the device awake even when the screen itself is off, depleting battery far faster than it typically would. Google hasn’t issued an official acknowledgment of the Galaxy Nexus battery issue, although it hasn’t p

Until recently, Apple has only offered a music-oriented “Complete My Album” feature in the iTunes Store to allow users who have previously bought individual songs to upgrade to the full album at a discounted price. However, users have not had a similar option for TV shows, until now, that is. Apple has just launched the new feature for TV shows, not surprisingly dubbed the “Complete My Season Pass” feature, and it’s now available in the iTunes Store. MacRumors reports that when a user’s logged in and is viewing an iTunes Store page listing for a particuar season of a TV show, the Season Pass purchase price will be reduced by the number of previous single-episode purchases, allowing users to have access to the full season, without having to basically repurchase the episodes they had previously acquired singularly. If you’ve used the Complete My Album feature for music in iTunes, then this is essentially that, well, for TV show episodes/seasons. Season passes for TV shows will usually be

If you are an iPhone user that wants somewhere to put your iPhone when you are working on the computer,AOC has a new screen you might want to checkout. The new display is called the AOC e2343Fi and the dock for the iPhone is directly under the screen on its round base. The dock on the stand will also work with dockable iPods as well. The screen is 23-inches wide and the dock will shoot video content from the iPhone or iPod directly to the 23-inch screen for viewing. The dock also uses SRS Premium Sound loudspeakers. The ability to shoot video directly to the screen and improve audio makes the display a nice multimedia station for iPhone and iPod users. The e2343Fi will be on display at CES next month. AOC will also be showing off a new 3D display at CES in 23-inch size and a mobile USB display. That USB display can be a portable monitor or a digital photo frame. Pricing and availability on the displays is unknown.