The “Apple is worth more than” meme has gotten plenty of play over the past year, but a new measure of Apple’s success emerged on Monday that is as simple as it is monumental: a single share of Apple stock now costs more than an iPad. As of the open of the market on Monday, Apple’s stock rose just above $499 — the entry-level price of Apple’s iPad 2 — undoubtedly on its way to $500 and beyond. The Cupertino-based firm that once teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and was sav...

AT&T is increasing the fee charged when subscribers upgrade to new handsets on contract beginning this Sunday. BGR has been informed by multiple readers via email that AT&T has sent them notices regarding the increased fee, which had previously been $18. ”Because the overall costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased, effective Sunday, February 12, 2012, AT&T will change its upgrade fee from $18 to $36,” AT&T said in a note to dealers obtained by BGR. An AT&am...

Global tablet sales reached 67 million units in 2011 and are expected to grow 38.8% annually to 248.6 million by the end of 2015, according to a new market report from Transparency Market Research. Led by Apple’s iPad, tablet sales increased 275.5% in 2011 from 17.8 million units sold in 2010. Smartphone sales in 2011 hit 468.9 million units, a 66.7% increase over 2010 sales of 282 million units, and sales are expected to reach 1.05 billion in 2015 with Asia accounting for 39.5% of the market. Smartpho...

Google is preparing to launch a new cloud storage service that will compete directly with popular start up Dropbox and similar services. The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday evening reported that Google is almost ready to announce the new service, which will be called Google Drive. Similar to Dropbox, which creates a virtual drive containing files that are mirrored on a user’s local hard drive and on cloud servers, Google Drive will allow users to store photos, videos, documents and other files in the c...

When new CEO Thorsten Henis took the reins at Research In Motion, he immediately pointed to the smartphone vendor’s marketing strategy as an area the company needed to focus on if it hoped to regain share in key markets like the United States. The wheels on RIM’s recent marketing efforts had already been set in motion, however, and early reports suggest that the increased volume of familiar BlackBerry ads aren’t having the impact RIM was hoping for. Read on for more. (more…)

Apple and Samsung are in the midst of a patent-fueled war with no end in site, but the pair has also inadvertently joined forces to make it increasingly difficult for other vendors to continue making smartphones. New estimates suggest Apple and Samsung combined to take in a staggering 95% of smartphone industry profits in the fourth quarter of 2011. The figures paint an even bleaker picture for the rest of the players in the smartphone business than earlier estimates; UBS analyst Maynard Um said last week th...

Google’s bid to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion is set to gain regulatory approval as soon as next week, multiple reports claim. Google announced last summer that it intended to purchase the struggling smartphone and set-top box maker for $40 per share, and CEO Larry Page explained that Motorola’s patent portfolio was a key draw for the company. Google’s Android partners had fallen under attack from patent predators such as Apple and Microsoft, and the ability to spread Motorola&...

Sprint announced on Wednesday that it expects to activate its upcoming 4G LTE network in Baltimore and in Kansas City. The carrier has already said that it will flip the switch on its first 4G LTE networks in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio by mid-2012. The carrier’s first LTE devices will include Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, the LG Viper 4G LTE and the Sierra Wireless Tri-Network mobile hotspot. Sprint said it also expects to improve the 3G coverage in each of the aforementioned markets. Sp...

Nokia plans to eliminate 4,000 jobs as part of a major cost-cutting effort that will see much of its manufacturing shift to Asia. The cuts will be made across three Nokia plants — 2,300 workers will be shed in Komarom, Hungary, 700 will lose their jobs in Reynosa, Mexico and 1,000 more in Salo, Finland will be laid off. Each of the three plants will continue to operate at reduced capacities, and the move is part of a larger effort to cut costs following the €1 billion loss Nokia reported last quarter. &...

T-Mobile announced on Tuesday the company’s Valentine’s Day sale on all 4G smartphones and tablets. “T-Mobile has a commitment to make the 4G experience affordable and accessible to everyone, so this sweet deal on smartphones and tablets is our Valentine’s gift to consumers,” said T-Mobile’s senior vice president of marketing, John Clelland. “No matter where loved ones live, T-Mobile wants to bring them closer with unlimited talking, photo sharing, video chatting, texting, and mo...

LG is preparing to unveil a mid-range Windows Phone code-named “Miracle” at this year’s Mobile World Congress trade show, according to PocketNow. The Mango-powered handset will feature a 4-inch WVGA display, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8GB of storage, a 5-megapixel rear camera capable of shooting 720p video and a VGA front-facing camera. Perhaps the most interesting detail is the smartphone’s purported NFC capabilities, although it is unclear how this feature will be implemented in a ...

Impressive data points from Apple’s record-setting holiday quarter continue to trickle out, and new estimates suggest that the company accounted for a staggering share of mobile profits in the fourth quarter of 2011. Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt wrote in a research note on Tuesday that Apple took in approximately 50% of all mobile industry revenues last quarter. Even more impressive, the analyst says Apple’s high-margin iPhone lineup accounted for more than 80% of all mobile phone profits. ...

Apple has argued on multiple occasions that Samsung builds mobile products that ”blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success.” Courts seem to disagree for the most part, with only a pair of injunctions having been issued despite dozens of complaints Apple has filed around the world. There are some areas where Samsung does seem to take pages out of Apple’s playbook, however — Samsung’s new anti-iPhone ad strategy is somewhat reminiscent o...

The record sales managed by both Apple and Samsung during the holiday quarter last year sent smartphone market growth soaring in late 2011. Market research firm IDC on Monday released data from a new report that suggests smartphone shipments grew 54.7% in the fourth quarter last year. Driven by Apple’s iPhone 4S and Samsung’s Galaxy S II handsets, vendors shipped 157.8 million smartphones globally last quarter according to IDC. ”By the end of the quarter, one out of every three mobiles phon...