Mobile

A new version of Bluetooth has been revealed by the industry group behind the wireless technology, which is targeting low-energy applications in the health care, fitness, and security markets.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced the adoption of Bluetooth Core Specification version 4.0 on Thursday. The new iteration follows the speed-centric version 3.0 of the Bluetooth specification by just 10 months, but the two versions are intended for different use cases.

"With today's announcement, the race is on for product designers to be the first to market," Bluetooth SIG chief Michael Foley said in a … Read more

Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton.

Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found by its free OnlineFamily.Norton service, which helps parents monitor their kids' online searches. Though innocuous terms like Sesame Street and "New Moon"--a popular movie in the Twilight vampire series--made the cut, sex showed up fourth on the list for boys and fifth for girls, following YouTube, Google, and Facebook as the three top terms.

For boys, … Read more

Updated 3:01 p.m. PDT with information from the conference call.

On the day that Research In Motion suffered another nationwide mobile e-mail outage, it announced it beat analyst expectations in the fiscal third quarter of 2009 with strong sales of its BlackBerry smartphones.

The company's earnings were up 59 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. For the period that ended November 30, the company reported earnings of $628.4 million, or $1.10 per share, compared to $396.3 million, or 69 cents a share, for the fiscal third quarter last year.

Analysts had … Read more

Talk about unfortunate timing. Research In Motion (RIMM) has confirmed reports that Blackberry users across North America have been experiencing e-mail problems this morning. Evidently, the outage is affecting all BlackBerry users who rely on RIM's Internet-based e-mail service instead of corporate servers, regardless of carrier.

This, just hours before the company is to release its third-quarter results.

In a statement, RIM said customers "may be currently experiencing delays receiving email" but phone services and PIN-to-PIN messaging are working just fine. If offered no explanation for the service interruption, but said it engineers are doing all they … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission is taking on difficult and controversial issues as it works toward developing a comprehensive national broadband plan.

On Wednesday the agency heard from an FCC task force on the progress that it's making in writing that broadband plan, which will be presented to Congress in February.

The FCC has been tasked with developing a plan that will get broadband services to all Americans. In working to come up with a comprehensive policy, the FCC has tackled several controversial issues, most notably reforming the Universal Service Fund, reallocating wireless spectrum, and forcing more competition in the … Read more

WASHINGTON--The wireless and TV broadcasting industries faced off for the first time at a congressional subcommittee meeting on the Hill on Tuesday, setting in motion what could be a long drawn out battle over whether wireless spectrum should be reallocated and where the government will get this new spectrum.

Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry group, and Gordon Smith of the National Association of Broadcasters, were among the witnesses gathered before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet to discuss what the CTIA and the Federal Communications Commission have … Read more

Smartphones will capture 37 percent of the worldwide cell phone market by 2014, a leap from 16 percent in 2009, predicts a new report from Pyramid Research.

The report, released late last week, sees much of the growth coming from outside the U.S., notably in emerging markets. Across the globe, China is likely to outpace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market next year. Latin America will be the fastest-growing region over the next five years, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48 percent for smartphone sales, forecasts Pyramid.

"Pyramid expects China to capture the … Read more

Updated at 4:20 PST with response from T-Mobile.

After a busy weekend where it made its very unofficial debut, HTC's Nexus One entered into full legitimacy Monday with approval by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC documents also reveal that the device will support North American GSM bands (850 and 1900) and T-Mobile's 1700 3G network.

Though at least one Nexus One sighted this weekend was running on an AT&T SIM card, the support for T-Mobile's 3G would leave AT&T out of the running for the Nexus One, at least for now. … Read more

As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.

Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their … Read more