Are there too many smartphones on the market?

Are there too many smartphones on the market? That and other provocative questions were posed during a CES panel discussion Thursday between journalists for the The Verge and managers for Windows Phone at Microsoft and smartphone makers HTC and Samsung. The question of whether there are too many smartphone variations on the market was partly [...]

Apple iOS, Google Android new device activations skyrocket

Activations of new iOS and Android devices soared on Christmas Day, jumping by 142% over the same day last year, a Web metrics company said. Meanwhile, Google’s head of mobile claimed that 3.7 million new Android smartphones and tablets had been activated last weekend. According to Flurry, which provides metrics services to app developers, total [...]

BT sues Google in Android patent row

BT is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the US that says the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of its key patents. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware, relates to six patents mostly from the 1990s, which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, [...]

Sprint Disables use of Carrier IQ Software

Since the discovery and public announcement that Carrier IQ Software was secretly installed and gathering data from tens of millions of mobile handset users, Sprint has decided to disable using the software. I applaud Sprint for making the decision to stop using the Carrier IQ software. This does not mean that the software has been [...]

Free Windows Phones for Disgruntled Android Users

Microsoft wants to hear your Android-based horror stories… it may just land you a free Windows Phone device. Are you a disgruntled Android device owner who is just sick and tired of all that malware plaguing Google’s OS? Microsoft wants to hear all about it. In fact, the company may even give you a free [...]

Testing shows proposed 4G network interferes with 75% of GPS devices

A proposed nationwide, open-access 4G wireless broadband network has hit another snag. Testing carried out by a federal agency at the behest of the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and a handful of GPS makers showed that the proposed broadband service messed with the performance of 75 percent of the GPS receivers tested. According [...]

Android Market hits 10 billion downloads

It took about two years, but the Android Market has reached a new threshold with its 10 billionth download, Photobucket Mobile. And to celebrate that — and possibly crank up those numbers even more — Google is selling selected apps every day for another week for 10 cents each. Most of those apps usually cost [...]

AT&T, Sprint Sued by Customers Over Carrier IQ Tracking Software

AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Apple Inc. and T-Mobile USA were sued by mobile phone customers who claim that Carrier IQ Inc. tracking software installed on their phones violates U.S. wiretapping and computer fraud laws. The lawsuit cites a YouTube report by a technology blogger that purported to show that Carrier IQ software collects information [...]

Microsoft says Windows Phones have had Siri-like functionality for over a year

Microsoft’s Craig Mundie said that the iPhone’s Siri voice recognition software is not new technology as a similar system has been available on the Windows Phone for over a year, and claims Apple marketed the capability to shift focus away from the iPhone 4S’s lack of new features. In an interview last week with Forbes, [...]