Corporate and legal

San Francisco appears poised to become the first city in the U.S. to require a cell phone makers to publicly display how much radiation their products emit.

On Tuesday, the city's board of supervisors voted 10-1 in favor of a new law that requires handset makers to post in stores their products' specific absorption rate (SAR), which is a measure of the amount of radio waves absorbed by the user's body. (See also: CNET's Quick Guide: Cell phone radiation levels)

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the measure into law.

There's no … Read more

Nokia expects market conditions to impact its annual and second-quarter financial results, forcing the company to trim its sales outlook.

The handset maker said Wednesday it now anticipates second-quarter sales for its mobile devices and services division will be at the lower end of, or slightly below, its previous forecast of 6.7 billion euros to 7.2 billion euros ($8.2 billion to $8.8 billion). Samsung attributed the revised forecast to lower-than-expected average selling prices and volumes for its mobile phones.

Operating margins for the second quarter will also be at the low end of, or below, the … Read more

IBM wants to be the behind-the-scenes software provider of the mobile phone market, the company said Wednesday as it discussed its mobile enterprise strategy and opened a new software research and development center in Massachusetts.

The facility based in Littleton, Mass., is Big Blue's largest campus in North America devoted to software development with roughly 3,400 employees. The new campus will focus on developing software and applications for the mobile phone market. Unlike other large technology companies that have taken the mobile market by storm, such as Apple and Google, IBM isn't developing a smartphone operating system … Read more

Samsung will release its Galaxy Tab tablet no later than the third quarter of this year, revealed J.K. Shin, president of the company's mobile communications division, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday.

Based on the few specs and a photo leaked earlier this month, the Galaxy Tab will sport a high-resolution 7-inch display, making it more compact than Apple's iPad with its 9.7-inch screen. Blog site Samsung Hub (not affiliated with Samsung) said the 7-inch model will hit the market in August, and that two others may follow: an 8-inch version in … Read more

With the launch of the iPhone 4 just two weeks away, potential consumers are wondering if AT&T's wireless network is up to the task of handling what is expected to be another record-breaking launch for the latest version of the popular iPhone.

The company says it's ready. But AT&T keeps giving its critics--and its own customers--reasons to doubt that it's on top of its game. On Tuesday, the AT&T and Apple Web sites were overwhelmed by customers trying to pre-order the new iPhone 4. Customers saw error messages when accessing the … Read more

Lime Wire managers have plans to transform the nation's largest file-sharing network into a legal music service, company representatives told CNET.

"It will have unrestricted downloading and streaming," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "It will be easy-to-use and easy to pay for. It will allow consumers to better discover music through advanced search tools, find more recommendations, and have access to millions of songs on-demand."

The only thing that might be missing from a new LimeWire music store is, well, music--or at least tracks from the four largest record companies. At this point, the … Read more

Boosted by growing consumer demand for advanced TVs, Samsung carved out a leading share of the U.S. LCD TV market in the first quarter, according to data released Monday by iSuppli.

For the quarter, the South Korean company shipped 1.1 million LCD TVs. Though that number was down 33 percent from the fourth quarter, Samsung still beat out the overall industry, which saw its shipments drop by 35.8 percent. This difference helped Samsung inch its market share up to 18 percent from 17.3 percent in the previous quarter.

The overall decline in LCD TV shipments is … Read more

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said Tuesday that consumer traffic at its stores is lumpy, with customers splurging for splashy tech launches and then pulling back.

At the same time, Sprint's HTC 4G Evo apparently is shaping up to be big.

Dunn, speaking on an earnings conference call following disappointing fiscal first-quarter results, said the "4G HTC Evo is the best-selling device in Best Buy Mobile." Dunn added that "Android platform sales are outstanding."

The comments come amid a big miss for Best Buy. The company reported fiscal first-quarter earnings of $155 million, or 36 … Read more

IBM has signed a deal to acquire Coremetrics, a privately held Web analytics company.

With the move, IBM enters the Web analytics fray. Coremetrics focuses on everything from social media to marketing optimization to cross-channel retail sales tracking. Coremetrics counts Bank of America, Enterprise, Kraft, Virgin Atlantic, Costco, and QVC among its customers.

According to IBM, Coremetrics will give the company the ability to better track consumer interactions via the software as a service model.

Read more of "IBM acquires Coremetrics, adds Web analytics" at ZDNet's Between the Lines.