Speaking to reporters on Thursday, LG CEO Koo Bon-Joon said it would be difficult to turn around the company’s current struggle in the handset business during the second quarter. LG reported poor handset sales during the first quarter of the year — phone sales were down 9.2% year-over-year and 14.3% quarter-over-quarter, and shipments were down 10% year-over-year. Gartner also recently noted that LG’s share of the mobile phone market dropped two percentage points to 5.6% year-over-year. LG’s CFO has said that the firm is banking on the success of its Android-powered Optimus smartphones.

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Microsoft has confirmed that its Windows Phone 7 platform on Friday suffered its second major outage this week. Early on Friday, users began reporting that they could not access Xbox LIVE services from their Windows Phone 7 devices. BGR had independently confirmed the issue on two separate devices, and now Microsoft has acknowledged the outage via its official Windows Phone support team Twitter account. “It’s a new issue that users are unable to access Xbox LIVE features at this time,” a Microsoft official posted to the Twitter account. Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace suffered an outage that prevented users from accessing the company’s mobile app store during a scheduled maintenance that was extended due to complications.

[Via winrumors]

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Moments ago, Verizon Wireless confirmed that its 4G LTE network is back online. The network went down early yesterday morning and remained out of service for more than 24-hours in some areas. We’ve confirmed a signal with our Samsung DROID Charge here in New York City as well. Verizon has yet to say whether or not it will issue any sort of rebate to customers affected by the outage.

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On Wednesday morning our inbox was flooded with complaints from readers stating that Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network was down — claims we were able to confirm with our Samsung Charge in New York City. Verizon Wireless has acknowledged the problem and is keeping its customers up-to-date via Twitter. “We’re aware of an issue with the 4G LTE connections and our network engineers are working to resolve quickly,” Verizon’s official account tweeted today. It followed up three hours later with “Investigating 4G LTE network issue; ThunderBolts making voice calls, may get slower 1xRTT data.” Verizon says it will keep its customers updated as its works to resolve the problem.

[Via PC World]

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Verizon Wireless’ speedy 4G LTE network hit another milestone on Tuesday night: its first major outage. BGR has confirmed what dozens of tipsters have been telling us all night via email — Verizon’s LTE services are currently unavailable across the country, and they have been unavailable for several hours now. We’ve confirmed the outage here in New York City with our Samsung DROID Charge and have noticed that Verizon’s 3G network also appears to be unavailable. There’s no official word from Verizon Wireless on the outage, so it’s unclear how long it will last.

UPDATE: Verizon posted the following to its official Twitter account: “We’re aware of an issue with the 4G LTE connections and our network engineers are working to resolve quickly. Investigating 4G LTE network issue; ThunderBolts making voice calls, may get slower 1xRTT data.”

Social networking site Twitter has been dealing with some serious performance issues for the past several hours. The problems seemed to begin earlier today when a handful of users reported seeing unfamiliar tweets and timelines displayed on their Twitter landing page. The issue may have something to do with the new Twitter layout, as the company has temporarily reverted back to the old site design for some users. The site has yet to issue a public statement explaining the issue(s).

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In the wake of Tuesday’s Netflix Instant outage, the company has issued a mea culpa and service credit to affected users. “We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused,” reads an email from Netflix. “If you attempted and were unable to instantly watch TV episodes or movies yesterday, click on this account specific link in the next 7 days to apply your 3% credit to your next billing statement for your Watch Instantly Unlimited plan.” The note does not explain why the service when down, rather it references “technical issues.” The full text of the letter is after the break.

Dear User,

Recently you may have had trouble instantly watching TV episodes or movies due to technical issues.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. If you attempted and were unable to instantly watch TV episodes or movies yesterday, click on this account specific link in the next 7 days to apply your 3% credit to your next billing statement for your Watch Instantly Unlimited plan. Credit can only be applied once.

Ready to start watching again? Check out our latest selection.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-866-923-0898.

–The Netflix Team

Our inbox is littered with tips from frustrated Netflix users attempting to stream videos from the site’s service. Reports state that Netflix’s Instant service, in all its forms, has been down for the last several hours. If you were planning to have a nice evening in with your main-squeeze and a slightly dated movie, this certainly would put a damper on those plans. Anyone out there experiencing this?

Like clockwork, Apple’s online store has been brought down as the team in Cupertino prepares the new pages tablet fans around the world having been waiting for. The Apple Store went down shortly after 10:00AM ET, and we don’t expect it to come back up until shortly after 1:00PM when Apple finally lets the cat out of the bag — not that’s it has really been in the bag for the past few months. Stay tuned to BGR for all the latest iPad 2 news as it breaks.

A late night burglary at a Vodafone technical facility in the UK has affected the service of “several hundred thousand” users. Via its forums, the company explained:

We had a break in last night at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment. This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, sms and internet services. We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can. There has been no impact on the privacy of customers’ data.

In a subsequent FAQ post, Vodafone confirms that the vandalized site was in Basingstoke, the event occurred between 1:00AM and 2:00AM GMT, and that “specialist network equipment and IT hardware was stolen.”

The company expects its services to be fully restored by this afternoon. Any of UK readers experience this outage?

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A device isn’t really released until the gang over at ifixit have torn it limb from limb, am I right? Today’s victim: the Motorola XOOM tablet. After several hours and 57 screws, the ifixit team have given the XOOM an 8 out of 10 rating on ease of repair (10 being the easiest). The site notes that the “LCD and front panel glass are not fused together” — making for easy glass-break repairs — and that “individual components are separately attached to the motherboard, allowing each component to be replaced on an individual basis.” Ifixit does caution that due to the fact that there are over fifty screws, repairs, while easy, do require quite a bit of labor. Hit the read link to have a look for yourself…and try not to drop your XOOM!

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It looks like Apple is working behind the scenes to update its online web-store. The Cupertino company is expected to unleash updates to its 13-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch MacBook Pro models. Speculated improvements include faster Intel Core i3 and i7 processors, an Intel Light Peak (Thunderbolt) high-speed I/O port, an “HD” Facetime webcam, and an SDXC card slot. We’ll know soon enough… sit tight.

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Reuters is reporting that mobile giant Nokia will stop offering its free music downloads service — Ovi Music — to new handset purchasers. The service, which initially launched in 2008, has received a luke warm reception due to the restrictive DRM used by Nokia, more competitive music service options, and lack of carrier support. Customers who currently have a free music subscription will be able to use the service until their subscription runs out. Universal, EMI, Warner, and Sony had partnered with Nokia to bring the service to over 27 countries.

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If you watched the Apple keynote yesterday, you got to see a promo video for the new MacBook Air featuring Apple design chief, Jony Ive, waxing-poetic about the inner-beauty of the new, lightweight laptop. If you think Mr. Ives could be a little biased — or have some sort of odd trust issue towards middle-aged men with charming accents — you can get a look at the Air‘s innards for yourself. As is customary, the crew over at iFixit have given the new electronic gizmo the teardown treatment. Hit the read link to have a look for yourself.

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Today, Microsoft announced that chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, would be stepping down from his CSA role as he transitions towards retirement. In a company-wide memo, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote:

He [Ray] will remain with the company as he transitions the teams and ongoing strategic projects within his organization – bringing the great innovations and great innovators he’s assembled into the groups driving our business. Following the natural transition time with his teams but before he retires from Microsoft, Ray will be focusing his efforts in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments. We have tremendous opportunities in the entertainment space overall, and I’m excited about what we can accomplish. Beyond that, Ray has no plans at this time. While he’ll continue to report to me during the transition, the CSA role was unique and I won’t refill the role after Ray’s departure. We have a strong planning process, strong technical leaders in each business group and strong innovation heading to the market.

The rest of the memo gives thanks to Mr. Ozzie for his service and leadership at Microsoft; especially his work in cloud computing. Hit the read link to see the full memo.

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