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Samsung’s road to global domination — South Korea’s Samsung is trampling rivals and gunning for Apple. Can its hot streak last? — FORTUNE — To understand how Samsung — yes, Samsung — became America’s No. 1 mobile phonemaker and thorn in Apple’s side, it’s helpful to rewind to last fall.
via Techmeme
Google’s conference call regarding its quarterly earnings mostly rehashed themes we’ve heard before – cross-platform remains a priority. But Google CEO Larry Page had a few words to share about hardware in his own kick-off spiel. Page reiterated what we’ve heard recently about hardware supply levels from the Google Play store, and dropped (it’s a pun, you’ll see why later) a hint around what Motorola is doing at Google in terms of hardware.
Page said that there is “work to be done managing our supply better… and that is priority for the teams.” While it isn’t very detailed, it is at least acknowledgement that the issues around low supply for the hard-to-get and very much in demand Nexus 4 are fully recognized by the very top brass at Google. Page’s comments didn’t go so far as French LG Communications Director Cathy Robin, who promised better supply by February last week, but they show both Google and LG are working together to resolve the backlog.
Also on the hardware front, Page talked briefly about Motorola, and what they’re doing in terms of delivering innovation on that front from their new position under the Google umbrella. Page was even more cagey on this front, but he did come up with possibly telling examples of what kinds of issues they could be looking at. “Battery life is a huge issue,” and he added that you shouldn’t have to constantly worry about your devices, noting that, for example, “When you drop your phone, it shouldn’t go ‘splat.’”
Clearly, these are obvious pain points for mobile devices: durability and longevity in terms of battery life. If Motorola’s hardware engineering team is genuinely being put to work on making real improvements to these and other major smartphone sore spots, I’m content to wait and let things percolate a while longer before we see the union bear fruit. We haven’t yet seen what Google will do once it holds the reins with Motorola’s hardware division, because as Google’s Patrick Pichette pointed out on the call, the company is still working through Motorola’s existing hardware pipeline, which he said accounted for about 12-18 months of releases at the time of acquisition.
via TechCrunch
The first two official Firefox phones are here, but you¿ll likely never be able to buy either one of them. On Tuesday, Mozilla and Spanish phonemaker Geeksphone announced the first two Firefox OS developer preview handsets ¿ the Keon and the Peak.
Google just announced its earnings for Q4 2012, and guess what? They made a ton of money. We’re shocked.
Actually, Q4 2012 was really great for Google. The company earned $14.4 billion in revenue, which is 36% better than what they did last year. While we tend to think of Google as an American company, only $5.99 billion of that revenue came from the U.S. while the rest was made in international markets.
With $1.51 billion in revenues, Motorola Mobility accounted for 11 percent of Google’s total revenue for the quarter. Even though Google made a lot of money, they only netted $2.89 billion in net income, which is still a lot, but only slightly better than the $2.71 billion they pulled in during Q4 of 2011.
To put Google’s profit in comparison, Apple netted $13.06 billion in profit for Q4 last year and is expected to shatter that mark during their financial report tomorrow. Cult of Mac will be listening to Apple’s financial earnings call tomorrow to provide a full breakdown on the latest results.
Source: Google
via Cult of Mac
Facebook announced this week that they are adding Wi-Fi Calling to the Facebook Messenger app on iOS. They also clarified to the BBC that BlackBerry and Android users are getting the feature. They are working on adding support now along with international support. I am just wondering if they are talking about BlackBerry OS 7 support or BlackBerry 10…
via BBC
SAN JOSE, Calif (Reuters) – Internal emails show that executives at tech companies such as Apple and Google believed that an agreement to refrain from poaching each other’s workers would bring real financial benefits, a U.S. judge said on Thursday. Five former employees of various tech companies have filed a civil lawsuit against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Corp and others, alleging an illegal conspiracy to eliminate competition for each other’s employees. At a hearing in San Jose, California federal court on Thursday, U.S. …
With all the hoopla around CES, we sadly missed this amazing milestone for one of the greatest little projects I’ve seen in a long time, Raspberry Pi. An estimated one million of these tiny computers have been sold so far, an amazing feat for a tiny $35 circuit board that can boot directly into a streamlined version of Linux.
To celebrate the company released this cute info graphic, informing us that, if stacked end to end, a million Pis would be higher than 111 Empire State Buildings.
We detailed the unique manufacturing challenges associate with the Pi with 4,000 Raspberry Pis leaving a U.K. factory every day – or one every 7.5 seconds.
Raspberry Pis have ended up as the brains for a mini arcade cabinet and a DIY GSM base station. It also runs RISC OS and, more important, is a great way for kids to learn how to use computers without spending a fortune on hardware.
via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/12/one-million-raspberry-pi-have-been-sold-since-launch/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
Android: Last Message is a simple app that texts, emails, Facebooks, or even tweets to the friends you specify when your phone’s about to die—so they know that you’ll be out of contact. More » 
via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5975287/last-message-texts-your-important-contacts-when-your-phones-about-to-die
On Friday, some WIndows Phone 8 users discovered that you can no longer access the Google Maps website via devices running Windows Phone 7 or 8. While on the surface it seems like Google is deliberately crippling its own services on a competing mobile operating system, there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.
The mobile version of Google Maps never officially supported Windows Phone, because the version of IE that comes with it doesn’t have the WebKit support that Maps needs to work properly. That doesn’t mean that Google isn’t intentionally blocking Maps on phones that run Microsoft’s OS, but it’s more likely that the company fixed a bug that allowed these unsupported devices access in the first place.
Since Google doesn’t seem too keen on developing apps for Windows Phone—the company has a search app that hasn’t been updated in over a year—and with the search giant reportedly preventing Microsoft from building a proper YouTube app, it’s unlikely that this development will make Google more popular with either Microsoft or the Windows Phone users out there who use its services.
Google may be pushing for people to buy into using devices that run Android, but if the company can make its offerings work on iOS then it can definitely do the same for Windows Phone.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
via PCWorld http://www.pcworld.com/article/2023757/windows-phone-loses-access-to-google-maps.html
Amazon today won its attempt to toss a claim made by Apple over its use of the name “App Store.” Apple has been fighting Amazon’s Android App Store, believing it to be confusing with its own iPhone App Store. It hit Amazon with lawsuits regarding trademark infringement and false advertising. Today’s victory saw a U.S. judge vacate Apple’s claim that Amazon’s use of App Store is false advertising. The lawsuit over Apple’s trademark claim will move forward.
via Phone Scoop – Latest News http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=11714
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