mobile phone

China Unicom to launch its own smartphone line later this month. The new line of mobile devices are meant to rival Apple’s iPhone as well as Android handsets, as reported by the company spokeswoman.

A new smartphone called Wophone runs a proprietary operating system, announced by the company in March. Being the second largest mobile carrier in China, China Unicom has 180 million users. It faces strict competition in an app store business from Apple and Android vendors.

According to a survey conducted by Retrevo 34% of iPhone owners believe they have a 4G enabled smartphone because of “4” in the iPhone 4 name. Supposedly they are get deceived by the previous models 3G and 3GS.

Meantime, 42% of Blackberry users also believe their phones are 4G, but that is impossible. On the other hand, 61% of iPhone owners disregard if their phones are 4G enabled and they will buy the following iPhone model irrespective of the feature. Blackberry and Android users are also interested in the new iPhone, regardless of 4G speeds.

A brokerage advised on Tuesday that Research In Motion should split itself into two separate businesses to open way for innovation and robust growth.

RBC Capital Markets made its note some hours before RIM's annual shareholder meeting at its hometown of Waterloo, Ontario.

Its share price -- down more than 50 percent this year -- has led to calls for management change and suggestions RIM could become a takeover target.

According to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project more and more American users have smartphones. However, a significant 40% of them still prefer simple mobile phones to make calls and do text messaging with no need in an app store or Angry Birds.

The survey found that over 35% of adult Americans use some models of smartphone including an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7, or WebOS device.

Scammers are trying to capitalize on the widespread reports about cancer threats posed by the use of the cell phones.

The Federal Trade Commission decided to step in and help consumers evade being scammed into buying products that supposedly "shield" users from cell phone emissions.

Starbucks announced the addition of more payment options for its customers. The company is launching Starbucks for Android™ app providing more consumers access to the fastest way to pay and other features to manage their Starbucks Card on-the-go.

Besides, Safeway, Inc., one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains, plans to rollout mobile payment in July at nearly 1,000 Starbucks in Safeway supermarkets across the United States, including the company’s Vons, Pavilions, Dominick’s, Randalls, Tom Thumb and Genuardi’s stores.

At an event in New York a mobile phone maker Motorola unveiled its new flagman 4G compatible device, Motorola Photon, also known as Droid X2.

Motorola Photon 4G features NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip with 1 GHz, a 4.3” 540x960 screen and 8 megapixel front camera with 720p video recording. Besides, the device is equipped with 16 GB built-in storage, 1 GB RAM and a SD slot for up to 32 GB cards.

A European data protection panel ruled this week that information on the location of users should be classed as private, reports the Financial Times. It means that companies such as Apple and Google are facing tighter regulation the Europe.

The panel that advises the European Commission made its proposals that could be written into Europe's revised Data Protection Directive this year, the FT said. These proposals are a first step to formulating a law on mobile phone location data.

Microsoft plans to purchase Nokia’s mobile division - smartphones, feature phones, plain-vanilla phones – for $30bn and the deal is expected to complete this year as "both companies are very much in a hurry," as speculated by a prominent blogger Eldar Murtazin, the publisher of Mobile-Review.

While Murtazin didn’t specify the amount of $30bn in his blog post the figure was cited by SoftSailor, which doesn't point to their specific source.

South Korean company Samsung Electronics filed its own lawsuit against Apple accusing the Cupertino giant of infringing 10 patents. Earlier Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung claiming the Samsung's Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad.

Being one of the most rapidly growing smartphone makers Samsung poses a fierce competition for Apple in the tablet market. Galaxy series tablets produced by Samsung are built on Google's Android operating system, which directly competes with Apple's mobile software.

Another report from Nielsen revealed that Android has surpassed Apple iOS in terms of desirability. It means that now more smartphone users are seeking to have Android than iPhone.

Thus, the report shows that 31% of mobile users polled within the period from January to March 2011 wanted Android device which is 26% up from the same period a year ago. On the other hand, 30% of respondents said they wanted Apple, which is 33% down from the previous year.

On Monday CNET reported that the mobile operating system of Microsoft also tracks users’ location data and sends it back to the company’s servers. Unlike the Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, Windows Phone does not store location details on the device.

Microsoft has said in the Help and how-to subsection under the Windows Phone paragraph that when location services for Windows phones are switched on, the devices transmit a unique ID along with nearby wireless networks, their signal strength, and GPS-extracted location to the company's servers.

An ecommerce giant eBay plans to purchase Where, a company that provides local advertising to mobile phones.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed by eBay but it said that it expects to close it in the second quarter of 2011. The purchase would not affect the results of the earlier forecast, said the company in a blog post announcement.

eBay believes the deal would enhance its ability to connect retailers and shoppers.

Samsung Electronics is sued by Apple Inc on allegations that the Korean company violated Apple’s patents and that its Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung emerged as the strongest competitor to Apple unlike other rivals who produce tablets too. Samsung’s Galaxy products are built on Google Android OS but Apple’s lawsuit targets Galaxy's design features.

John Jackson, an analyst with CCS Insight, said Samsung is essentially Apple's only real tablet competitor at this stage.

Nortel Networks, a former leader in wired and wireless network technology, may be retaken from Google by Research In Motion. RIM is reported to attempt to top Google Inc's $900 million bid for Nortel Networks Corp.'s wireless technology patents, says Bloomberg citing source familiar with the case.

In January 2009 Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection. It owns about 6,000 patents and patent applications for wireless, data and optical networking, voice, Internet, semiconductors and other technologies.