Amazon

Amazon said that it will be using its ever increasing revenue to expand into areas such as Web content and cloud computing rather than boost its margins.

This week the Internet retailing giant reported a surge in its quarterly revenue gained on sales of Kindle e-book reader and other electronics, forecasting better than expected profits for the third quarter.

While Amazon saw big gains from growth in e-commerce its margins remained narrow as a result of heavy spending on distribution, technology and digital content.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Books and Kobo have removed their links to web-based stores from the applications for the iPhones and iPads. In fact, Google Books has removed the whole application itself.

The booksellers removed their links in line with an edict issued earlier this year by Apple that demands all apps offering content for sale or subscription to do so through the App Store, and not through external links to the seller's web store. Moreover, following its usual money making policy Apple require a 30% commission from all such sales.

A US judge prompted this week that Apple Inc would face some hardships in its move to prevent Amazon.com from using Apple's App Store trademark.

The Cupertino giant launched a lawsuit against Amazon on allegations it has improperly used Apple's App Store name to solicit software developers throughout the United States.

However, at a hearing in an Oakland federal court on Wednesday, District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said she would reread some of the supporting papers in the case, according to an individual who was at the hearing.

Latest rumors in the media sources say that instead of one tablet Amazon is planning to launch an “entire family” of Android devices for the upcoming holiday season in America.

Android and Me blog speculate that the online retailer will introduce devices in several form factors, including smartphones and possibly a Google TV set-top-box.

Digitimes also reports that Quanta and Samsung will be the company’s hardware partners.

Amazon.co.uk posted new pages for the phones it plans to sell soon. The images depict the two Facebook-branded smartphones from HTC. The handsets are expected to go on sale starting June 26.

HTC-Facebook smartphones come SIM card free and with a dedicated Facebook button. The £250 ChaCha looks like a BlackBerry phone with a fixed Qwerty keyboard and a 2.6in, 480 x 320 screen. Besides, it features HSPA 3G and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. as well as 5Mp camera on the back.

HTC says that the ChaCha's 1250mAh battery is good for up to 450 minutes' ChatChat.

Once again that question of ecommerce taxation arose due to the proposal to be made by Senator Dick Durbin intends. A Democratic aide plans to introduce a bill on Internet sales tax sometime this month.

"Why should out-of-state companies that sell their products online have an unfair advantage over Main Street bricks-and-mortar businesses?" Durbin said in a speech in Collinsville, Ill., in February. "Out-of-state companies that aren't paying their fair share of taxes are sticking Illinois residents and businesses with the tab."

Amazon has unveiled a new online service to allow users to securely store and access their music via smartphones or PCs.

The move is a part of a broader trend seen today in the technology sector where all companies try to deliver better entertainment features online.

With Amazon Cloud Service users can securely store music on the company’s servers instead of local hard drives.

Amazon said early on Tuesday the new service would allow customers to play music on any Android, Windows and Apple devices.

eBay Inc has made a takeover offering to an ecommerce service provider GSI Commerce, a deal that may rival Amazon.com Inc. The online auction company wants to purchase GSI for a price of $1.96 billion.

This week eBay offered GSI shareholders $29.25 per share in cash, a premium of 50.9 percent from the stock's closing price on Friday.

"It's one of the few fulfillment operations that could rival Amazon," BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. "Amazon is fulfilling its third-party sellers more and more. eBay is all third-party sellers."

Amazon.com is being sued by Apple for infringing a trademark by illegally using App Store name for its mobile software marketplace. Bloomberg reported that Apple filed suit on March 18 seeking to prevent Amazon from using the app store name and to win unspecified damages.

US major website operators like Amazon and Twitter were called upon to switch to more secure protocol than HTTP to thwart identity theft and many other security breaches in such places as coffee shops. The monition was made by the US Senator Charles Schumer at a news conference held at a Manhattan coffee shop.

He said that growing WiFi access at such shops, restaurants and other businesses was helping hackers gain user information like credit card numbers and account passwords.

Fresh stats from ABI Research revealed that in the third quarter of 2010 4.5 million tablets were shipped. The research agency’s Netbooks, MIDs, Media Tablets, and Mobile CE Market Data report shows that 93% of these tablets were Apple iPads.

Senior ABI Research practice director Jeff Orr notes that "Over time, Apple's first-to-market iPad advantage will inevitably erode to some extent."

Meantime the first half of 2010 was slow for netbooks, as relatively few new products were introduced.

According to the latest rumors Amazon is planning a service that will rival Netflix. A holder of a premium account with Amazon posted some screenshots that show that at just $79 per year users can watch movies and shows.

The watch instantly section claims to offer “unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows”, which resembles Netflix’s current offering very much. The resolution advertised was only 480p, but presumably this too might change in time.

Over 40 search warrants in the United States were executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of their investigation into cyber attacks made allegedly by a group called “Anonymous” who supported WikiLeaks whistleblower website.

The Distributed Denial of Service attacks targeted major US companies and entities. The search warrants in the United States coincided with the arrest of five people by British police in connection with the alleged attacks.

Amazon expects to sell 8 million Kindle devices this year which is 60% more than predicted by analysts according to Bloomberg Businessweek report. In comparison, Apple has sold only 7.6 million iPads from April to September.

The figures cited by Amazon cannot be checked because the company does not officially present any sales numbers for the reader.

Amazon, eBay and Google are making purchases in a move to boost their sales with the help of new market niches. The Internet giants are investing in local services to cater local shoppers and stores.

Thus, the world’s largest online retailer Amazon plans to $175 million in online coupon company LivingSocial, while e-commerce giant eBay is buying Milo.com, which lets users see if items they seek are available on local store shelves.