Is 2012 “the year of mobile?” No sir. Mobile is simply too disruptive to have just one year. After all, who remembers the year of the TV or the year of the Internet? Talk of “the year of ...” is not only passé but also irrelevant. The disruptive forces of…

Google’s bid for Motorola (NYSE: MMI) is likely to get a thumbs up from the U.S. Department of Justice, but still could face opposition from other regulators both in the U.S. and in Europe. The landmark $12.5 billion deal is essential for Google’s attempts to play defense in the mobile…

It’s been almost a year since former Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2, and according to a new report, the company plans to launch the third version of its breakthrough tablet device around a month from now in early March.

When the consulting firm’s logo appeared routinely in Six Nations rugby broadcast graphics this weekend, James Cridland was amongst the viewers to ask: “Accenture advertises on BBC Sport - how?” Sponsorship on the license-funded BBC in the UK is strictly forbidden. But the workaround, for Accenture, was to build a…

Path, a company hoping to build a kinder, gentler social network based on sharing within a limited number of people, has apologized for a contact-finder feature in its software that uploaded users’ entire iPhone address books to its servers and said it has deleted that personal information.

All is indeed fair in love and war, but not everything is fair in patent licensing. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) are working on measures to level the playing field in the mobile patent disputes by clarifying what is “fair” when it comes to patent licensing terms.

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is expanding its Prime Instant Video library in a deal with Viacom (NYSE: VIA), bringing the total number of streaming videos available free Prime members to over 15,000.

Last week, we highlighted how Facebook is already using mobile devices for commercial services—enabling people to buy Facebook Credits and charge them directly to their mobile bills. Now, it’s increasingly looking like that may just be the beginning: today, UK-based mobile billing and analytics specialist Bango (AIM: BGO) announced that…

Today brings news of yet another round of capital-intensive cost-cutting for the challenged mobile phone maker Nokia: the company today announced that it would be transferring smartphone assembly from factories in Hungary, Finland and Mexico, and putting the operation in Asia.

For years, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) watchers have wondered why the company has used a unique browser on its Android software while maintaining a separate browser project in Chrome. Those days are over: Google has released a beta version of Chrome for Android, uniting two very important projects and raising questions…

It took one allegation of download bots on a message board, very little in the way of actual confessions, and a whole lot of murmurs, but Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is showing that it will respond swiftly if anyone starts messing with its App Store. But further investigation into the practices…

Research In Motion is undeniably on the ropes at the moment, with the mobile handset maker weathering a decline in global market share, delays on new products, and the departure of its co-CEOs/founders in the last month after several bad quarters. But at a developers’ conference that kicked off today…

For the most part, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has found the mobile industry willing to bow to its patent-licensing strategy. Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) decided to dig in and fight and it could be poised to score a point.

When you read the headlines of how ubiquitous smartphones are becoming, and how in some countries the mobile device is overtaking the PC in terms of internet access, you would think that mobile internet usage would directly follow from these facts. In reality, it seems that it still lagging behind:…

It’s not digital advertising in the sense of display ads and search results, but it looks like we are getting a bit more color on what it is that Facebook will do first in the world of mobile marketing, and it could be coming online “within weeks.”

Even if you throw the exploding tablet market in with the staid PC market, shipments of smartphones surpassed those of “client PCs” in 2011, a milestone for the computer industry.

The U.S. government likes to do things its own way. Along those lines, it has decided to embrace Android as a smartphone platform for soldiers and other government employees because of the control it can exert over the software, which in turn underscores how much control Android partners have over…

Much has been made of the mobile risks that Facebook laid out in its S-1 IPO filing earlier this week. Essentially, it’s seeing/pushing massive growth in mobile, but it still hasn’t tried out advertising, its most effective route to revenues, on this platform. That’s not to say it won’t. But…

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the last 24 hours has been dealt not one but two blows in court cases involving Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and patents in Germany, one involving IP licensing on older iPhone models (not the 4S) and one involving iCloud. However, as the day progressed, an injunction on…