Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) stepped to the precipice of blackout Armageddon—and wisely took a giant step back. Instead of risking their standing with subscribers and viewers, they put away the harsh rhetoric, kept working through the midnight deadline Wednesday and made a deal that keeps ABC owned-and-operated stations, ESPN and a host of Disney cable nets on Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable and Bright House Networks without a blip.

The new deal, described in the announcement as Disney’s “most expansive content agreement to date,” moves beyond broadcast and cable to broadband, gaining berths for ESPN3 and creating a “TV Everywhere” option for ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.

Carl Icahn is not being conservative about his opinion that Motorola (NYSE: MOT) will be a more valuable company once it has been split into two publicly held entities. Rather, the shareholder-activist billionaire, who has been investing in the handset-maker since 2007, has bet an additional $111 million into the company in just the past week. His stake now stands at around 250 million shares, or 10.7 percent, reports Barron’s.

In February, the non-profit global Mobile Marketing Association took steps to tap into the soaring awareness of mobile by breaking up the organization into four operating regions. Today, it is announcing further measures to make sure that the MMA continues to be relevant as the market matures, by announcing new principles and logo.

As if a sign of the times, Verizon Wireless is offering data to smartphone users who prefer to pay by the month and not commit to a long-term contracts for the very first time. However, the service is neither discounted, nor more expensive than what you get if you did sign a contract. Furthermore, there’s much cheaper plans available in the universe, so this deal will really only appeal to someone who is specifically interested in Verizon’s network, or the variety of phones that it offers.

Since Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold three million iPads during the device’s first 80 days on the market, its closest rivals have been busy working on several copycats. Samsung is no different, and has unveiled the Galaxy Tab today, a device very similar to the iPad, although smaller and powered by the Android OS. Samsung believes it can ship 10 million units and take a third of the global tablet market next year, reports the WSJ.

Most media owners are strong believers in a strategy of “any-and-every-platform” ubiquity.

But, for this season’s mobile strategy, the makers of the UK’s popular X Factor TV show are launching an “exclusive” app only on Nokia’s Ovi store.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) today announced a slew of new products and features on its phone, music and video viewing offerings. Check out a visual tour of Steve Jobs’ presentation, as well as our coverage, below:

Samsung is getting ready to combine both state-of-the-art mobile phone design with an entire content strategy in recognition that in order to remain the U.S.‘s largest handset maker you can no longer rely on hardware alone to stand out of the crowd.

To that end, it has created partnerships with book publishers, movie studios and social networking providers. The true content portion of this strategy is called Media Hub, and is not yet available to users, but is expected to launch this fall through over-the-air updates to its lineup of Android-powered devices.