Microsoft is reportedly planning to take on Apple TV and Google TV with a new subscription service that will be delivered through the company's popular Xbox 360 game console.
A new survey by German market research firm GfK Group indicates that most smartphone users feel little loyalty to their device outside of Apple's iPhone, which commands more than twice the fidelity of Android devices or smartphones in general.
Reports from a variety of analysts predict a huge swell in tablet computer sales next year ranging from 35 to 100 million units in total, with Apple's iPad accounting for the largest number sold by far.
Rounding out today's Black Friday deals are savings on the first five HP printers to support Apple's wireless printing technology, discounts of up to $51 on Apple's Time Capsule backup appliance, hundreds of dollars in savings on popular digital SLR and point-and-shoot cameras, as well as sales on Wii, XBox, and PlayStation consoles and games.
The second-largest computer manufacturer in the world, Acer, is hedging its bets in the fight for tablet supremacy, with plans to take on the iPad with a 7-inch Android tablet, and two 10.1-inch devices — one running Microsoft Windows.
After announcing that demand for its HP Slate had "exceeded expectations," it has now leaked out that HP only planned to build 5,000 and ended up having to retool to build a total of 9,000 of them.
Microsoft has once again taken on Apple and the Mac platform in a new advertisement which touts the ability of a Windows 7 laptop to play Blu-ray discs, while a MacBook cannot.
Monday's U.S. launch of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 was mixed, with some stores selling out and others selling just a handful of units. Apple has released another Mac OS X 10.6.5 beta, and Adobe's CTO defended Flash battery performance, claiming that the test was flawed and that Apple is inciting "negative campaigning" against Flash.
Microsoft confirmed Friday that CEO Steve Ballmer intends to sell almost one-fifth of his stake in the software giant, starting with sales this week that total $1.3 billion, while a new report claims Apple tried to license the technology used in Microsoft's new motion-tracking Kinect peripheral.
Two of America's largest banks are actively testing Apple's iPhone as a replacement of their existing RIM BlackBerry devices for corporate email.
Apple has stopped bundling Adobe Flash on new Macs, ostensibly so users could obtain the latest, secure version themselves, but vastly increased battery life seems to be another leading reason.
Google's Android platform has narrowly overtaken the Apple iPad in terms of total developer support for mobile devices, though the iPhone remains the most popular software destination, according to a new report.
A preview version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 browser engine passed more elements of a web standards test than a random selection of other browsers in the Worldwide Web Consortium's "vastly incomplete" HTML5 test suite, creating a news story that W3C members decried as "incorrect information" based on a "rather buggy test results page."
Internet video host Brightcove, among the first to begin supporting iPhone-compatible H.264 video and HTML5, is now moving to support Apple's open HTTP Live Streaming format as well, hammering another nail into the coffin of Adobe Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight.
Apple's iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2010, taking 26.2 percent of the market, but the wide variety of handsets running Google's Android represented a commanding 43.6 percent.
While Apple's success with its mobile iOS platform is credited with invoking the proliferation of HTML5 video at the expense of Adobe's Flash, it's also causing a major shift in strategy for Microsoft's Silverlight.
This summer Apple only approached Microsoft in revenues, but in the fall quarter, the iPhone maker has handily beat its partner and rival after reporting a new record of $20.34 billion in revenues compared to Microsoft's $16.20 billion for the fall quarter.
In fiscal 2010, Apple ramped up its ad spending growth ten times higher than in previous years, but the company's revenues growth still dropped the overall ratio of its earnings that it spends on advertising.
When Microsoft acquired Bungie, creator of the "Halo" franchise, to develop the flagship game for its first Xbox gaming console, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs reportedly made an angry phone call to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.
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Slash Lane
Daniel Eran Dilger
AppleInsider Staff
Sam Oliver
Josh Ong
Neil Hughes
