A German court affirmed a preliminary ruling on Thursday that determined Samsung’s reworked tablet does not look so much like the iPad that it should be banned. The ruling comes as another blow to Apple, which is in the midst of several other lawsuits with rival smartphone and tablet makers over intellectual property. The court said that there were “clear differences” between the Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the iPad, reports Reuters. Apple and Samsung have been tangled in what seems like an endl...

NPD In-Stat recently issued a report in which the firm said it expects smartphones, tablets and notebooks — which are all included in its “mobile magnet platforms” category — to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of of 25.7% through 2015. The company also said it expects the overall mobile market to grow 8.7%. ”The technology driver of all these smart devices is the mobile technology, because it represents the largest and fastest growing segment of the entire electronics market,”...

Images of a possible next-generation ASUS Eee Pad tablet have leaked onto the Internet through Taiwanese website NCCC. The mysterious 10.1-inch slate could be a followup to the Transformer Prime — with its “TF300T” code name, the device’s pre-release moniker is somewhat in line with the original naming convention used on the Transformer (TF101) and the Transformer Prime (TF201). Aside from a couple of blurry photos, there are no specs or other details to report at this time. Hit the br...

Demand for Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has started to cool off according to one study. ChangeWave published results of a survey on Thursday, which found that just 2% of customers in January were “very likely” to buy a Kindle Fire, down from 4% in December. Respondents who were “somewhat likely” to buy the tablet fell as well, from 13% in December to 10% in January, though demand following the holidays is expected to slow. Amazon’s tablet has better satisfaction ratings than...

The Munich Regional Court in Germany on Wednesday rejected Apple’s request to ban Samsung’s local subsidiaries from selling the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet. “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection,” Judge Andreas Mueller said. In September, Samsung’s local retailer arm was banned from selling...

Amazon on Tuesday reported its earnings for the fourth quarter, during which it took in $17.4 billion in revenue. While its net sales were up 35% from the $12.95 billion reported during the fourth quarter last year, the company missed analyst estimates of $18.26 billion in revenue for the quarter. Amazon’s net income decreased 58% to $177 million during the quarter, or $0.38 per diluted share, compared with the net income of $416 million it reported during the same quarter last year. Net sales for the y...

ASUS has confirmed that the company is planning to announce a tweaked version of its tablet-smartphone hybrid at Mobile World Congress on February 27th in Barcelona, Spain, according to Modaco. The Padfone — which combines a smartphone, tablet and netbook all in one — was first unveiled at the Computex trade show in Taiwan last year by ASUS chairman Jonney Shih. The innovative device is expected to feature Ice Cream Sandwich and Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 processor. The PadFone consists of a 4.3-i...

Apple pulled ahead of HP in the fourth quarter to become the largest player in the client PC market, a new report suggested Monday. The Cupertino-based company shipped more than 15 million iPads and 5 million Mac computers last quarter, and those figures represented 17% of all PCs shipped around the world during the fourth quarter. The report, which comes from market research firm Canalys, said PC shipments grew 16% annually to reach 120 million during the quarter, and the firm’s categorization of ̶...

When it comes to tablets there is no denying the iPad’s dominance, selling more than 15 million units last quarter alone. Not everyone can afford nor do they want a high-end device, however, and that is where Amazon’s Kindle Fire comes into play. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan said on Monday that fourth-quarter Kindle Fire shipments likely reached 6 million units, placing the tablet on par with the original iPad. Rohan says it was “quite impressive” that the online retailer used...

The ZTE Optik Honeycomb-powered Android tablet is coming to Sprint for $99.99 with a two-year agreement, according to documents obtained by SprintFeed. The 7-inch Optik features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor with 16GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM. The device also contains a microSD slot and a 4,000 mAh battery, but unfortunately it is a 3G-only tablet and does not feature LTE or WiMAX connectivity. With quad-core beginning to hit the market, Sprint will almost certainly be pushing the Optik’s lo...

Asus recently confirmed on Twitter that an official tool for unlocking the bootloader on the Transformer Prime will be made available in February. The company didn’t give an exact date for when the tool would be released, but the good news is Transformer Prime owners have just a few weeks to wait until they can unlock the bootloader on the quad-core tablet. Asus originally promised that the tool would be made available after upset customers lashed out in January. An unlocked bootloader allows Android us...

IBM and HTC are working together to make Android a more attractive platform for the enterprise market. Executives from both companies recently demoed IBM software running on HTC smartphones and tablets during IBM’s Lotusphere and Connect conference, TechWeek Europe said recently. “It’s only been really relatively recently that HTC has broken into the enterprise space,” HTC’s executive director Global Enterprise and Services David Jaegar said. “We’re driving toward that magic...

A court in the Hague in has denied Apple’s request to ban the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the Netherlands. In August a Dutch judge banned Samsung’s local subsidiaries from selling the Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Galaxy S II, but the Hague court has reportedly now ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is unique enough to be sold alongside Apple’s iPad. Samsung and Apple are currently locked in a number of legal battles around the globe including in France, Japan, the United States and German...

AT&T’s two newest 4G LTE devices, the Pantech Burst Android smartphone and the Element Android tablet are now available for purchase. BGR exclusively revealed the Pantech Element ahead of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and it features an 8-inch display with a 1024 x 768-pixel resolution, 16GB of storage, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). It’s now available for $299 with a new two-year AT&T contract. The Pantech Burst smartphone is equipped with a 4-inch...