Mobile

Imagine you are Apple CEO Tim Cook. You control the single most profitable phone on the market, the iPhone. You have full control over your mobile OS -- iOS -- and the applications that run on it.

Except that's not actually true. You don't have full control over your mobile OS, because two of your default applications rely heavily on technology and data provided to you by Google, your greatest enemy. I am talking, of course, about YouTube and Google Maps, which have been part of iOS since the very first iPhone.

Removing YouTube is simple enough. Google wanted full control of the YouTube app, … Read more

Mobile is the future, and nobody wants to be left behind, because losing would mean certain death.

The iPhone accounts for a whopping $150 billion of Apple's revenues over the last five years. Google spent $12.5 billion in order to acquire Motorola. Microsoft and Nokia have finally built a flagship Windows phone (though they seriously need to fire whoever named it).

Amazon is the company everyone should be watching in this space, though. The online retailer first struck gold with the Kindle e-reader in 2007. A few years later, Amazon decided that Apple and Google needed some competition … Read more

Not long before his death, Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson, the author of Jobs' authorized biography, about his pure hatred for Google Android:

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Few things angered him more than Android, a mobile OS that he believed was copied from … Read more

YouTube will no longer come standard on the iPhone and iPad, and the Internet is jumping to conclusions as usual.

The next version of Apple's mobile OS -- iOS 6 -- will be missing the familiar YouTube app from its home screen. Instead, users will have to download a new YouTube app from the App Store. Apple claims it's simply because its five-year deal with Google has expired, while Google isn't even talking about the circumstances of YouTube's departure from Apple's devices.

Apple and Google don't exactly like each other, and Apple has been … Read more

When Google co-founder Sergey Brin demoed Google Glass, the search giant's attempt to build a next-generation wearable computer, with skydivers live streaming their descent, it became very clear that Glass wasn't some side project -- it was Google's future.

Glass won't be available to consumers until 2014, but a select group of developers will have the chance to purchase the "Explorer" edition of Glass in early 2013.

Why is Google giving Glass to developers more than a year before its consumer debut? Simple: Google wants to turn Glass into the next major developer platform.… Read more

Nintendo is one of the most iconic companies in gaming, but it faces the real possibility of oblivion if it doesn't find a way to turn its fortunes around.

In October 2007, less than a year after the release of its blockbuster Wii console, Nintendo was worth $78.50 per share. That equated to a market cap of $85 billion -- double the value of Sony at the time.

However, Nintendo's fortunes have only gone south since then. With Wii sales cooling and mobile apps the hot trend in gaming, Nintendo's stock collapsed this month to $14.… Read more

Dear Apple,

You have more than $100 billion sitting in your coffers. I know you're returning some of that money to shareholders, but you will still have tens of billions of dollars leftover for R&D.

I have a proposal for how you should spend some of that money: please invest it into new and radical battery technology. Let me explain why.

My friends and I decided to visit Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth, last Sunday. We fought Emperor Zerg and chilled with Mickey Mouse, all the while taking hundreds of photos and recording dozens of videos … Read more

Apple wants every screen in your home to be an Apple screen. The company will be taking a giant leap toward accomplishing its goal at this year's WWDC.

In just a decade, Apple has become a dominant force in computers, tablets, and mobile. It has yet to make major inroads into the biggest screen of them all: the television.

Sure, there's Apple TV, but it has been a "hobby" for the company. Last year, 2.8 million units of the device were sold, and 2.7 million units have been sold so far this year. Though … Read more

Facebook knows mobile is its Achilles' heel, but I didn't expect the company to take such aggressive actions to solve its mobile problem.

The social network admitted to the weakness earlier this month when it amended its IPO filing. "If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected," the company explained in its amended S1.

Facebook … Read more