Smartphones

Smartphone shipments will finally outshine those of feature phones this year, says research firm IDC.

Smartphones are expected to carve off a 52.2 percent slice of all mobile phones shipped in 2013, leaving feature phones with a 47.8 percent share, IDC said Tuesday. Smartphone shipments are projected to hit 958.8 million this year, a 32.7 percent jump from the 722.5 million units shipped in 2012.

The gap between shipments of smartphones and feature phones will continue to expand, IDC said, as demand for mobile data increases in both developed and developing countries. Emerging markets will … Read more

Close your eyes and imagine money. Lots and lots of money. Stacks and stacks and bags and briefcases full of... oh, you get the picture.

Now, imagine you were to possess such vast sums of cash. What would you do with it? Update your antiquated wardrobe? Purchase a new home or 5? Bid on a space date with Leo DiCaprio? Write a check for a $15 million black-diamond iPhone? Yes, there is such a thing; you can find out more about it in the gallery below.

Over the weeks to come, we'll take a look at some of the most ultra-luxurious tech out there, starting with a few seriously blinged-out smartphones and tablets. Some of the grandiose gadgets you'll see in this week's collection might make you roll your eyes, while others might inspire you to pick up a few hundred extra hours at work. … Read more

Apple apparently still has its eye on NFC, at least as described in a freshly won patent.

Awarded Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, an Apple patent called "System and method for simplified data transfer" describes a way of automatically transferring data from one device to another.

Both devices would be configured to copy data from one to the other. The first device may be set up to save and transfer data associated with specific apps. Powering up the second device would automatically tell the first device to transfer the data. The devices outlined in … Read more

So why is Intel having so much trouble competing in the smartphone market? Blame it on LTE.

Intel Executive Vice President of Sales Tom Kilroy said this week at the Computex trade show in Taiwan that his company's troubles in the U.S. have everything to do with its processors' lack of LTE support.

"Absence of LTE is the reason," Kilroy said, according to Engadget, which attended the event. "We can't get ranged by U.S. carriers without LTE, so once we have multi-mode LTE coming to market later this year, we have an opportunity … Read more

Apple could see more than 600 million users by the end of 2013, up from 500 million currently, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Hubert.

The 600 million figure assumes that 40 percent of Apple's device sales will be to new customers. If the forecast holds true, Apple stands to generate a healthy amount of revenue and free cash flow per account.

Following growth of an estimated 55 percent in 2012, Apple's current tally of 500 million users ranks second only to the number of people on Facebook. Each of those accounts spent on average $329 last year, … Read more

Microsoft's Windows Phone will account for 12.7 percent of all global smartphone shipments in another four years, Canalys said in a forecast released Tuesday.

The growth from just 2.4 percent in 2012 means that Windows Phone will capture third place among all smartphone platforms in 2017, just behind Apple's iOS. To obtain that growth, Microsoft will require an assist not just from Nokia but from Chinese vendors such as Lenovo, Huawei, and ZTE, according to Canalys.

"Nokia is the most active vendor in the Microsoft camp and it continues to make steady progress with its … Read more

Foxconn and Mozilla announced a partnership Monday under which the Chinese electronics manufacturer will build not just Firefox phones, as others have announced, but tablets, too.

The rumored partnership was confirmed as Mozilla and Foxconn announced their tie-up at the Computex show in Taiwan. By including software in its devices, Foxconn gets to sell a more complete and therefore potentially valuable product to those companies that actually will attach their brands to the hardware.

"We believe that the integration of software and hardware development will offer greater benefits to our customers and consumers," said Young Liu, the general … Read more

After months of rumored buzz about a Droid variant of HTC's One flagship phone for Verizon, Big Red announced on Monday that it'll soon sell the same One as rival providers. Without providing any specifics, the carrier only acknowledges that the flagship handset is on the horizon.

"We don't have anything to add beyond the tweet that said we were offering the HTC One on our network by end of the summer," Verizon said to CNET in an e-mail.

Even without the benefit of differentiating Droid branding, Verizon's HTC One is very late to … Read more

Meet Acer's newest phablet, the Liquid S1. Just announced at Computex 2013, an annual tech conference in Taipei, the handset features a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM, and a large 5.7-inch HD display (1,280 x 720 pixels).

Upside The success of the Galaxy Note seems to have prompted more smartphone makers to introduce larger screens for their mobile devices. The Galaxy S3's 4.8-inch display, for example, got bumped up to 5 inches with the Galaxy S4.

Recently, Samsung launched the 5.8- and 6.3-inch Galaxy Mega devices for Asia. So if you like … Read more