The smartphone and tablet buying rush over the holidays spilled over into a corresponding deluge of app downloads, with the total weekly number exceeding one billion for the first time.

Two more advances for Facebook in its ongoing quest to make its service ever more sticky and useful for its 800 million-plus base of subscribers: the company has officially started to roll out its Timeline feature, and it looks like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) has moved one step closer to getting…

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) is on the road to profitability in Canada, but costs for its global roll-out are set to turn the company loss-making next year. So, after its next launches in the new year, Netflix will freeze international expansion.

It looks like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is once again rewriting the books on what it is that makes a smartphone sell. Those who thought that the iPhone 4S would be something of a disappointment—it looks just like its predecessor, and many had been anticipating something more dramatic—may have to eat…

After years of effort and speculation, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pieced together nearly 40 broadcast services from around the world to boost the on-demand programming available through Xbox Live. It took a shift in strategy to make room for broadcasters like the BBC, the trend toward authentication to bring on…

There’s no question that apps have become a global phenomenon in the mobile world—and who doesn’t want to catapult a cute red bird onto some logs to kill a pig? But not all apps are as wildly successful as Angry Birds. So just as importantly, when it comes to what…

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) thrives on scale for its business model. But when it comes to launching new products, the company has often taken a cautious—and, some might argue, slow—approach in rolling them out worldwide. That was the case with the Kindle, which took nearly two years to make its way…

As promised, the streaming side of Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) has made its way south. The service went live in Brazil today with Netflix Brasil (announced here in Portuguese), with plans to roll out across Latin America and the Caribbean over the next week. By Sept. 12, Netflix expects to have…

It’s taken a little while, but it looks like RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) might have finally woken up and smelled the coffee in the social media world and started to leverage some of the power it’s already established through one of its most viral products, BlackBerry Messenger.

Bit by bit, we are starting to get a better idea of what Nokia (NYSE: NOK) plans to do to reassert itself in the mobile phone market in the months ahead. In the past few days, we’ve learned of an operator partnership with China Mobile; a new focus at a…

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has all but cornered the market for tablets in the U.S., say researchers at Forrester, who predict that its iPad will take 80 percent of all tablet sales this year in North America. But that’s not entirely the case in Europe, it seems.

CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) are expanding their relationship with a new deal that goes both north and south of the U.S. border—and illustrates how idiosyncratic some of these licensing moves can be thanks to existing deals, rights limitations and strategy. The two-year agreement is nearly all about…

Facebook Credits today got another vote from the media industry as a currency for paid digital content: the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, announced that from this Wednesday it would start to offer episodes of its popular Doctor Who television series on Facebook, some before they have even been released…

The streamlining at Nokia (NYSE: NOK) continues apace. Today it was announced that the Finnish company has sold its North American messaging business to Synchronica, a specialist in that field, for $25 million in cash. The deal includes operator-branded instant messaging and email services for 10 operators in the market—including…

An American commercial patent research company says it plans to seek out “prior art” to invalidate a patent being used by MacroSolve to sue Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Android and BlackBerry app developers, and has invited developers to join in the search, the Guardian can reveal.

We still don’t have the official, bigger picture of what Google (NSDQ: GOOG) intends to do in its music strategy, and whether it will have what it takes to make an effective inroad into the legitimate digital music market dominated by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), but now we have what appears…

As Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) kicks off its “marketing leadership summit” the company has some good news and some not so good news: AdAge is reporting that Mich Mathews, a two-decade veteran of the company, is preparing to leave this summer. Separately, Microsoft execs offered details about the complete integration between…

PE firm Apax Partners, which already has a big presence in classifieds in the U.K. through its holdings in Trader Media Group and the Yell Group, has bought up top Canadian classifieds firm Trader Corp. from Canadian directory publisher Yellow Media for $745 million in cash (U.S. $760 million). The…

Despite the big stories about the iPad 2 selling out in the U.S., and the question marks over how events in Japan might affect consumer electronics supplies, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is going ahead with its scheduled launch of the iPad 2 outside the U.S.