A German regional court on Thursday issued an injunction against newly-acquired Motorola Mobility for infringing one of Microsoft’s patents, according to FOSS Patents. The manufacturer is banned from selling its Android-powered devices that infringe Microsoft’s EP1304891 patent, which covers “communicating multi-part messages between cellular devices using a standardized interface.” The sales ban, for the time being, is subject to additional confirmation. If confirmed however, it is en...

In line with earlier reports, Google on Tuesday finalized its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The $12.5 billion merger was approved by regulators in China on Monday after having been given the green light by the United States Department of Justice this past February. Chinese regulators did stipulate terms for its approval, however, namely that Google must continue to make Android open-source and freely available. Former Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha has stepped down and Google’s Dennis Woodside wi...

Motorola recently updated its Android release timeline and revealed that certain devices will remain on Android 2.3 rather than receiving an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The handsets in question are both modern and more than capable of running the latest Android operating system, however the vendor claims the latest software won’t “improve” the devices, and that’s why updates will not be released. Both the DROID 3 and DROID X2 will remain on Android 2.3, despite the f...

Following China’s recent regulatory approval, Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility is expected to close in the next two days. Motorola employees may not be celebrating, however. TechCrunch reported on Monday that layoffs will be hitting the manufacturer imminently. When Google purchased DoubleClick, the company had 1,600 employees, 40% of that which were laid off following the buyout. At the time Google’s acquisition was announced, Motorola Mobility had 19,000 employees. ...

The United States Department of Justice approved Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility this past February, but the massive deal awaited the blessing of one more major regulatory body before it could go through. This past weekend, China’s Ministry of Commerce followed the DOJ’s lead and granted Google permission to acquire the struggling vendor. China’s MOC did have a condition Google must honor if it moves forward with the deal, however: Android must remain open-sourc...

ComScore on Tuesday announced the results of a three month study on the smartphone market in the United States. The research firm found Google’s Android operating system has continued to grow, increasing its market share from 47.3% in December to 51% in March. Apple’s iOS accounted for 30.7% of all smartphone subscribers in the U.S., an increase from 29.6% in December. Research In Motion ranked third with a 12.3% share, followed by Microsoft’s Windows Phone at 3.9% and Symbian with a 1.4% s...

Motorola Mobility on Tuesday reported its financial results for the first quarter. The struggling vendor managed $3.08 billion in sales, narrowly topping Wall Street’s $3.03 billion revenue estimates as Motorola continued to work toward the finalization of Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition. Motorola’s loss of $0.28 per share, or $86 million, missed analysts’ consensus by a penny per share, however. Revenue from the company’s mobile division increased 3% as Motorola shipped 5.1...

While Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has been the star of the rumor show for the past few months — with BGR leading the pack — we now have a clear picture of the smartphone landscape for late summer and early fall this year. BGR has exclusively learned details about most, if not all of Verizon Wireless’s flagship smartphone launches for the remainder of 2012, and things are definitely looking good for Verizon subscribers in 2012. All the details follow after the break. (more…)

The International Trade Commission on Tuesday ruled in favor of Motorola Mobility in its patent infringement claim against Apple. The Cupertino-based company’s iPhone and iPad were found to be in violation of Motorola’s Wi-Fi technology patent, however they did not infringe on three other patents that Motorola asserted against the iPhone-maker. “We are pleased that the ALJ’s initial determination finds Apple to be in violation of Motorola Mobility’s intellectual property, an...

Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility currently awaits regulatory approval in China and then it will be complete. When the Internet giant proposed the buyout last summer, it confirmed that it planned to protect its Android mobile operating system with Motorola’s extensive patent portfolio. The company also ensured partners that a “firewall” would be put in place between the development of Android and Motorola’s handset division. According to a recent report, ho...

The name DROID RAZR HD has appeared in the EXIF data from a series of images uploaded to Picasa by a Motorola employee. The EXIF data shows that the handset is running Android 4.0.3 and its camera is equipped with a f/2.4 aperture camera. The photos in question were uploaded by Vic Yu, who is a software engineer and program manager at Motorola Mobility according to his Google+ and LinkedIn profiles. Last month, the first image of what was believed to be the unannounced DROID Fighter surfaced on a Chinese foru...

LG has yet to find the same success in the smartphone market that Samsung, HTC and Motorola have seen, but the company’s managing director Kwon Bong-suk told a Korean news website that LG will soon introduce a game-changing “thinking smartphone.” The executive confidently stated that the next mobile innovation doesn’t necessarily have to come from Apple, saying that LG can identify with the “universal value” that all consumers seek. Unlike its competitors, LG will refrain f...

Google CEO Larry Page stated in a blog post on Thursday that the company’s Android platform is “on fire.” The CEO boasted that there are now more than 850,000 Android devices activated each day through a network of 55 manufacturers and more than 300 carriers. Page called Android a “tremendous example of the power of partnership, and it just gets better with each version.” He went on to explain his excitement for the Motorola acquisition and “the opportunities to build grea...

Over the past three months, Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android mobile platform both continued to grow — according to comScore, they now account for a combined 80.3% of the U.S. smartphone market. The research showed that 234 million Americans aged 13 and older use mobile devices. Samsung is the most popular manufacturer with a 25.6% share of the U.S. mobile market, followed by LG with a 19.4% share and Apple with 13.5%. Motorola and HTC round out the top five with 12.8% and 6.3%, ...