Microsoft will lower its Zune Music Pass from $14.99 per month to $9.99 per month beginning on October 3rd alongside the service’s launch in Canada. The service will now be priced in line with Spotify and similar services. Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace is home to 14 million songs and a Zune Music Pass subscription provides unlimited streaming access to the music. Unlike other services, Zune Music Pass allows subscribers to keep 10 songs per month. Microsoft’s move is no doubt an effort to att...

Research In Motion will lay off 2,000 of its employees, or about 10% of its total workforce, as part of a cost optimization program. “The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company and it follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone,” the company said in a statement. The BlackBerry maker is also reorganizing several of its top management positio...

According to Reuters, Microsoft has asked Samsung to pay $15 for each Android smartphone it makes. The Redmond-based firm believes that its software patents cover the technology used in Samsung’s Android devices and if history is any indication, Microsoft will get its way. In April of last year, HTC signed an umbrella agreement with Microsoft in which it was allowed access to Microsoft’s patents for an undisclosed fee estimated to be $15 per device. South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper sai...

Rumor has it Dell has a new 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet up its sleeves, and a few details about it have been leaked. The Dell Streak Pro could offer a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip — standard fare for Honeycomb tablets these days, it seems — 1GB of RAM, dual-microphones, a 5-megapixel camera, and 2-megapixel camera for video chat. There may be three different models, too, including a 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB version. The hardware sounds nearly identical to what’s available in Samsung’s G...

According to a recently filed report, nearly 1 million Windows Phone handsets were sold in the month of February alone. Using the same algorithm that successfully predicted when Microsoft hit 1 million units sold, The Next Web estimates that 3.38 million Windows Phone handsets have been sold thus far — 877,000 of which occurred in February of this year. The company’s new mobile operating system, which entered a fairly saturated market place, has posted respectable sales figures since its launch ...

BGR has obtained a memo being sent around to third-party Sprint retailers that sheds a bit more light on the company’s recently announced $10 Premium Data fee. The fee will be applied on all lines that upgrade to or activate a new smartphone after January 30th. The $10 tariff will apply to all individual lines and all family plan lines — so three smartphones on a family plan using equals an extra $30 per month. The memo states that the move will allow Sprint to “offer simple and affordable unli...

In a coyly named and vaguely worded press release, U.S. wireless carrier Sprint announced that it would “increase its postpaid rates by applying a $10 per month Premium Data add-on charge to activations of smartphones beginning Jan. 30.” The company notes that smartphone users, on average, use “10 times more data than users of traditional feature phones.” As the press release reads:Sprint defines smartphones as devices with robust operating systems that deliver a rich wireless experien...

At the Le Web conference in Paris France, Facebook’s platform chief, Ethan Beard, told technology blog TechCrunch that his company’s Facebook Connect service now has 250 million users making monthly connections via third-party sites. Mr. Beard went on to note that 100 million of those users began using the Connect service within the past year and that Facebook is adding nearly 10,000 sites per day.Do any of you utilize Facebook connect to authenticate to sites other than FB? Login with your Faceb...

While its name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the LG E-Note H1000B is finally a reality. The pricey Windows tablet features a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768-pixel touchscreen, a 1.66GHz processor, a 16GB SSD and 1GB of RAM. Despite a rogue press image on LG’s H1000B page showing the tablet running Windows XP, Windows 7 is indeed LG’s OS of choice — it ships with Windows 7 Starter but Professional is just an upgrade away. The H1000B also features an SD card slot, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth and an $...

Last month, we told you about Bell Mobility’s plans to charge a $10 premium for access to the highest speeds on its HSPA+ network. This month, it looks like that report is becoming a reality. BGR has obtained a memo that indicates that Bell will launch the Novatel Wireless U547 data stick — capable of 42Mbps speeds — on November 23rd. The memo boasts that the U547 will be able to achieve real-world downlinks ranging from  7Mbps to 14Mbps in select markets; at launch, Toronto will be the...

Like the idea of the Nokia N8 but need a physical keyboard? You’re in luck, as it looks like the Finnish company’s E7 handset might be right around the corner. Via a tweet responding to a user question, Nokia has seemingly outed its E7 handset for a December 2010 release. The aforementioned tweet reads:E7 is scheduled to ship starting from Dec10. Exact availability varies country-by-country. Check your local nokia.com siteFor those that need a quick refresher, the E7 is a full-QWERTY horizontal-sl...

T-Mobile announced Monday that it will release the T-Mobile Comet on November 3rd. Manufactured by Huawei, the T-Mobile Comet will be the least expensive Android phone in T-Mobile’s lineup when it launches later this week. The Comet will be available for just $9.99 with a 2-year postpaid contract, or “less than $200″ off contract. As a sub-$200 prepaid phone running Android 2.2, the Comet is a terrific option, featuring a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen display, HSPA connectivity, Wi-Fi, microSDHC...

We’re not sure if we should blame U.S. wireless carrier Sprint for coming up with this idea, or Bell Canada for running with it. BGR has just obtained a memo that indicates Bell customers will have to fork over a $10 per month premium for access to the company’s HSPA+ wireless network. The memo seems to indicate that the first set of devices to succumb to this fate will be a “Turbo Stick” and “Turbo Hub”; the memo is vague enough (mentioning “high speed devices̶...

The Wall Street Journal has filed a report indicating that PC manufacturing giant Dell will be releasing a 7-inch tablet “in the next few weeks.” The information comes courtesy of Amit Midha, Dell’s president of Greater China. “It [the 7-inch tablet] was showed off at Oracle World by Michael last week and we’ll be launching very, very soon—within the next few weeks,” said Mr. Midha. The president confirmed that the 7-inch offering would run Google’s Android operatin...