Business Tech

Ex-Palm chief joins Qualcomm's board

Qualcomm has added a former mobile chief to its board, naming Jonathan Rubinstein as a new director.

Rubinstein brings more than 30 years of experience in the mobile, computing, and consumer electronics industries, the chipmaker said, most notably as CEO of Palm. Rubinstein joined the company as executive chairman in 2007 and took over the role of CEO from June 2009 until it was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2010.

Rubinstein then continued at HP, most recently leading product innovation for the personal systems group after the company largely wound down Palm's operations. Earlier in his career, Rubinstein ran Apple'… Read more

Google Glass: Who's bringing the apps?

When Jonathan Gottfried developed a Twitter app for Google Glass called GlassTweet, he did so because he wanted a way to tweet photos from his Glass headset. Now it's looking as though he's onto something, although no one would characterize his user base as big -- yet.

"There's at least 10 people using GlassTweet," said Gottfried, who is a developer evangelist for Twilio. "The group that's using it is extremely active and vocal," and includes uber-early adopters such as the all-Glass, all-the-time Robert Scoble and LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur.

"I certainly … Read more

Intel's new mobile chip to boast up to 8 processor cores

Intel needs to make waves in mobile computing. That's exactly what the first overhaul of the Atom chip design intends to do.

The new Silvermont Atom micro-architecture -- the first major architectural change since Atom debuted in 2008 -- delivers a "significant reduction in power [consumption] and a significant increase in performance," Dadi Perlmutter, an Intel executive vice president, said in a conference call Monday.

Perlmutter was quick to point out that the two -- performance and power efficiency -- are not incompatible. A slide (below) showed Silvermont Atom performing at twice the level of the previous … Read more

Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only

In a major shift for its business and its customers, Adobe Systems on Monday announced it no longer will sell its Creative Suite software as it moves instead to the $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans.

"We have no current plans to release another perpetual release of the CS tools and suites. Creative Cloud is going to be our sole focus moving forward," said Scott Morris, senior director of product marketing for Creative Cloud.

When Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription last year, executives weren't sure how long it would offer it alongside the traditional perpetual-license … Read more

Taiwan university sues Apple over patent infringement -- again

Apple has been sued by a Taiwan-based university for the second time.

The company on Friday was hit with a lawsuit by the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan related to a patent the university owns on video compression technology. The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, claims that Apple's use of video compression technology in its FaceTime video-chatting feature, as well as QuickTime, violates the university's patent.

The university last year hit Apple with a patent-infringement lawsuit over the company's use of Siri and voice-to-text functionality. … Read more

EU warns Motorola in patent spat with Apple

The European Commission has sent Motorola, a division of Google, a formal list of complaints over how it conducts its patent litigation and subsequent enforcement.

The EU said in a statement today that Motorola had been informed of its allegations -- what is known as a formal "statement of objections" -- claiming that the smartphone maker had abused its market position by seeking and enforcing a patent-related injunction against Apple.

The iPhone and iPad maker was told by a court in Germany that it must stop using a networking patent relating to GPRS technology. But Motorola … Read more

Tablets, touch-screen laptops to energize the PC market

Tablets and touch-screen notebooks will give a helping hand to the PC industry in the coming years, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

Shipments of mobile PCs are forecast to reach 762.7 million globally by 2017, up from 367.6 million last year, according to an NPD report released Monday. Most of that growth will come about as tablets replace traditional notebooks as the dominant device and as touch screens wend their way to more notebooks.

For the purposes of its report, NPD DisplaySearch classifies a tablet as another type of PC rather than as a separate, unrelated device.

"The … Read more

Apple rockets toward top of Fortune 500

Apple has shot up to sixth place in the Fortune 500, Fortune announced today.

The iPhone maker's strong showing in the Fortune 500 is a dramatic rise from its 17th-place ranking in 2012. In sixth place, Apple is the highest-ranking technology company in a list topped by Walmart. Major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron, along with Berkshire Hathaway, separate Apple from the top spot.

Another notable mention -- Facebook has for the first time made the Fortune 500. The company was previously ranked 598, but this year, it was able to take the 482nd spot in Fortune'… Read more

First Retina iPad Mini is on track, DisplaySearch reports

Update at 11:15 p.m. PT: The iPad Mini will get a refresh in the third calendar quarter with a Retina display, NPD DisplaySearch predicted late Sunday.

This is an update to information that DisplaySearch provided earlier Sunday.

"We see two refreshes coming. One [with a Retina display] in the second half of this year, then one in Q1 [first quarter] of 2014," analyst Richard Shim told CNET late Sunday night.

"The Q1 [2014] device will have a Retina display plus an updated processor," Shim added.

Earlier Sunday night, NPD stated that the first iPad … Read more