Apple

Apple concedes top smartphone vendor title to Samsung

Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones last quarter, nearly doubling the amount of handsets it sold in the same three month period a year ago. But despite its record-breaking performance, the company still conceded its top smartphone vendor title to Samsung.

During the holiday quarter, Apple shipped 37.1 million handsets — the most out of any of the other smartphone manufacturers in the world. And it looked like it was set to do it again this time around, but the Korean handset-maker edged it out...

This Liquidmetal iPhone 5 concept looks quite believable

As rumors about Apple switching to the all-new metallic glass material for a next-generation iPhone continue to persist, one designer has weighed in with own rendition of what the device might look like, both from the inside and the outside - and it's quite noteworthy.

As you know, Apple obtained a worldwide exclusive license to use Liquidmetal alloy in consumer electronics products. With previous rumors alleging a complete redesign, a Liquidmetal-based iPhone is certainly a plausible proposition...

Apple asks court to hide Samsung logo from jurors on court televisions

As Apple and Samsung continue to duke it out in courts the world over, the iPhone maker has filed an unusual request with the U.S. district court, seeking to conceal from jurors the Samsung logo seen on television sets used in the courtroom. Apparently, Apple fears that the subconscious effects of the Samsung logo on court-owned TV sets might potentially skew their perspective...

Zuck says Steve Jobs inspired Facebook’s new organ donor tool

The internet went abuzz yesterday as Facebook's Zuckerberg dropped hints of a new feature said to "save lives".

Turns out the Facebook co-founder and CEO was speaking literally: today, the social network unveiled a new tool aptly named Organ Donor.

It's basically a way of letting anyone identify their organ donor status on their Facebook Timeline. The move should help over 114,000 people waiting for transplants in the United States alone.

Zuck also said it was inspired by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who underwent a liver transplant in 2009 and later that year publicly urged WWDC attendees to become organ donors...

RIM confirms it was behind recent ‘Wake Up’ stunt

Finally, all of the speculation can come to an end. Remember that ridiculous 'wake up' flash mob that hit an Australian Apple store a few days ago? Of course you do, we've been hearing about it nonstop.

Well as it turns out, Macworld was right. RIM was behind the whole thing. How do we know? Well, because the BlackBerry-makers just gave a statement to Macworld Australia confirming it...

Confirmed: Bloom Energy to power iCloud cell farm

Itćs been officially confirmed today that Apple will use cutting-edge, power-efficient, eco-friendly fuel cells from California-based Bloom Energy startup to power its huge iCloud data center located in Maiden, North Carolina.

Hopefully this move will appease Greenpeace, whose recent report titled How Clean Is Your Cloud slammed Apple over the company's use of "19th-century coal energy” for its data centers...

iTunes Match goes live in new markets across the globe

iTunes Match, Apple's $25 a year cloud locker and scan-and-match music service, is being rolled out in additional countries, according to web reports. Last time we heard, Apple expanded iTunes Match to 19 countries, with a focus on the Baltic states, Latin America and the Netherlands.

Macstories first spotted that the iTunes terms and conditions for Italy have been updated with new terms suggesting an imminent launch in the country. Other web reports confirmed a similar changes to iTunes terms and conditions for Greece, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Bulgaria and other markets...

Rivals left with loose change as Apple, Samsung pwn mobile industry profits

Apple and Samsung have pwnd the entire cell phone market, which includes smartphones, feature phones and dumb phones, one analyst noted. Together, the two frenemies have managed to gulp literally all of the cell phone industry's profits during the first quarter of this year, leaving rival device makers with inadequate revenues to fund research and development and justify costs associated with carpet-bombing the market with numerous handsets...

Specifically, Apple accounted for a whopping 80 percent of all mobile industry profits while rival Samsung clung onto the remaining 20 percent. Together, Apple and Samsung accounted for more than an astounding three-quarters of the cell phone industry revenues...

Tony Fadell spills the beans on iPhone prototypes [video]

Here's a nice little nugget that sheds more light on how Apple at one point had seriously considered giving the iPhone a physical keyboard, as we learned last week.

The Verge's sweet little teaser for their podcast series features former Apple engineer Tony Fadell (also known as the iPod Godfather) going into detail on different iPhone prototypes Apple originally tested...

“Something even bigger” coming as Angry Birds Space clear 50M downloads

Angry Birds Space, the latest installment in the popular birds vs. pigs videogame series, has amassed more than 50 million downloads on all platforms in the 35 days since its March 22 launch, Rovio announced on Twitter this morning.

This makes Angry Birds Space "one of the fastest growing games ever" and by far the fastest-growing game on mobile, the company bragged.

Previously, the game zoomed past the ten million mark in less than three days. Rovio largely owes such a successful launch to Angry Birds's seemingly unstoppable popularity, still rising across the globe. Another crucial factor: Apple's iOS platform which now powers more than 365 million devices, as this is where the vast majority of paid downloads occur...

New evidence suggests RIM behind Wake Up stunt

Last week's childish Wake Up protest outside Apple's retail outlet in Sydney has really infuriated fans of Apple as well as a bunch of observers - yours truly included - who pointed the finger of blame at Samsung on shady clues.

While the South Korean conglomerate denied organizing the flashmob-style stunt, coincidental evidence and the ambiguous official wording have left room for some speculation.

New strong pieces of evidence that surfaced last week link the campaign to the embattled BlackBerry maker, Canada-based Research In Motion, as part of their upcoming BlackBerry OS 10 launch on Wednesday. Who knew, right?

Microsoft takes on Apple, invests $300 million in Nook biz

Microsoft just announced this morning plans to invest in Barnes & Noble's Nook division, in an effort to better compete with the likes of Apple and Amazon in an increasingly competitive market for electronic books.

The Windows maker will form a yet-to-be-named subsidiary with Barnes & Noble, pouring a cool $300 million of its own money into the new entity. It will encompass all of the Nook biz, it has been confirmed, in addition to educational college content.

With this investment Microsoft is thinking big, securing a 17.6 percent stake in the new company valued at a whopping $1.7 billion...