Aneesh Chopra will step down from his position as the United States chief technology officer. The move is expected to be imminent and, while it’s unclear what Chopra’s next step will be, Fedscoop says sources have speculated Chopra is interested in running for political office or working as the head of a major technology firm in the Washington, D.C. area. Chopra was appointed U.S. CTO in April 2009 by President Obama. Fedscoop said possible replacements for Chopra’s position include Vetera...

Motorola Mobility has filed a patent lawsuit against Apple in a Florida federal court. The phone maker is accusing Apple of infringing on six patents related to messaging, antennas, software and data filtering with its mobile devices, Reuters said. Motorola also argued that Apple’s iPhone 4S specifically infringes on one of its patents. Just two weeks ago, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Motorola’s handsets did not infringe three Apple patents. The Mannheim Regional Court i...

Phone maker ZTE recently said that it sees the United States and China as the two largest markets for smartphone sales growth. “The United States and China will be key engines driving our smartphone sales,” ZTE’s head of handset strategy Lv Qianhao, told Reuters in a recent interview, noting that the company expects its worldwide smartphone shipments to double in 2012 and to increase by 30% to 40% annually through 2015. ZTE mostly sells Android-powered smartphones but said it plans to launc...

Samsung recently announced that it has shipped more than 1 million Galaxy Note smartphones. The Galaxy Note, often considered a mix between a tablet and a smartphone due to its size, was first unveiled in September and it features a massive 5.3-inch display with a 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. Other features include a 1.4GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats. Samsung also confirmed Thursday that the Galaxy Note will be released in the United States next year...

It may seem like everyone around you owns a smartphone but that’s hardly the case on a global scale. Global smartphone penetration is just now nearing 10%, according to new research published by TomiAhonen Consulting. The firm compiled information from Netsize Guide, Informa, Google and Ipsos to grab a snapshot of smartphone penetration in 42 major countries covering 72% of global mobile phone subscriptions. Singapore has the largest recorded feature phone to smartphone migration rate (54%) followed by...

Sony Ericsson announced on Tuesday that its Xperia arc S and Xperia neo V are now available unlocked in the United States from Sony Store locations. The Xperia arc S runs Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and is equipped with a 1.4GHz processor, an 8.1-megapixel camera, a 4.2-inch “Reality” display and support for 3D and 2D sweep panorama photography. The Xperia arc S is available in white, black, blue and silver for $529.99 without a contract. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia neo V also runs Android 2.3....

Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop took the stage at Nokia World on Tuesday and unveiled the Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, the company’s first Windows Phone devices. Unfortunately, however, the Finnish phone maker said neither phone will land in the United States this year. Instead, U.S. residents will have to wait until “early 2012″ for Nokia to introduce a “portfolio of products” for the U.S. The comments don’t completely rule out the possibility that we’ll see a versi...

Spotify now has more than 250,000 subscribers in the United States, Reuters reported recently. The service also now has more than 2 million paid subscribers around the globe. The figures have not yet been confirmed by Spotify, but Reuters said CEO Daniel Ek disclosed the numbers in September. Spotify, which made its U.S. debut in July, offers users free ad-supported access to a library with millions of songs. It also offers a $4.99 monthly option with unlimited streaming and no ads, or a $9.99 subscription th...

Steve Jobs made contact with Samsung in an effort to resolve a patent argument last year, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. However, Jobs did not participate in the discussions that eventually took place and deteriorated, Apple’s patent attorney Richard Lutton explained during a hearing in an Australian court. “Samsung is an important supplier with whom we have a deep relationship” Lutton said while being questioned by a Samsung lawyer. “We wanted to give them a chance to do the right th...

Samsung announced on Tuesday that its Galaxy Tab 8.9 Android tablet will be available in the United States beginning on October 2nd. There are two models of the Galaxy Tab 8.9, a 32GB version that will cost $569 and a 16GB model priced at $469. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 measures just 8.5mm thin and runs Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface on top of Android 3.1 (Honeycomb). The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is powered by a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 T250S processor, has a 6,100 mAh battery, a 3-megapixel camera, a 2-megapixel fro...

U.S. citizens will use the mobile networks to access the Internet more than wireline networks by 2015 according to IDC’s Worldwide New Media Market Model, 1H11 report which was released on Monday. Smartphone and tablet sales are expected to be the driving catalyst for the growth of mobile Internet use, which IDC predicts will increase 16.6% between 2010 and 2015. Internet usage in Western Europe and Japan is expected to follow a similar trend. IDC suggested the total number of worldwide Internet users w...

China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest PC market during the second quarter of 2011 according to a new report from IDC. PC shipments in China totaled 18.5 million units during the second quarter, more than the 17.7 million units shipped in the United States. The research firm is projecting that Chinese PC shipments will total 85.1 million units next year, compared to just 76.6 million units shipped in the U.S. The influx of new tablet devices and advanced smartphones, such as Apple̵...

Sony announced on Tuesday that it is lowering the price of its 160GB PlayStation 3 console to $249, down from the console’s original $299 price tag. In addition, Sony will now sell the 320GB version of the PlayStation 3 for $299 instead of $349. The Japanese consumer electronics firm also dropped the price of the system in Japan and in Europe. The move is likely an effort to tackle Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, which has been the best-selling console in the United States for past seven months acco...

Nokia’s head of North American sales Chris Weber sat down in an interview Business Insider recently and explained how the Finnish company will regain its market share in the United States by writing “one of the greatest turnaround stories in history.” Weber said that Nokia will release a number of new smartphone models running Microsoft’s Windows Phone Mango operating system and will compete with Android by pricing several of them lower than the cheapest Android models. Weber reconfirm...