The Glider

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins attempted to refine earlier comments about the companys direction, insisting again that it can endure against Google Android and Apples iOS. - Newly minted RIM CEO Thorsten Heins gave an interview with the Crackberry blog Jan. 26, in which he attempted to refine earlier comments about the companys overall direction. Specifically, he sought to put additional spin on quotes from this week that RIM was on the “right path” with its current st...

Theres little debating that the iPhone 4S is an outstanding device. The smartphone comes with Apples Retina Display, an 8-megapixel camera and support for the virtual personal assistant Siri. Depending on a customers desire, it might just come with many of the features theyre looking for, and at a price of just $199 with a two-year contract, its a worthwhile option. However, just because the iPhone 4S is a worthwhile purchase, it doesnt mean that it should be the automatic choice of people shopping for new mobile products. There is a crowd of companies offering highly sought-after devices that, in one way or another, could be a better option for the average consumer than Apples iPhone 4S. But its not just todays products. One should also consider that in the coming months, several devices will be launching that might just make the iPhone 4S look rather obsolete by comparison. One of the best options might turn out to be Apples next smartphone release, the iPhone 5. This eWEEK slide show looks at some of the products you should take a look at before the iPhone 4S: - ...

Motorola Mobility saw an $80 million loss for the fourth quarter, largely due to costs from its impending acquisition by Google. - Owing to write-off costs from its impending acquisition by Google, Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI) Jan. 27 reported a net loss of $80 million for the fourth quarter 2011 on 27 cents earnings per share (EPS), compared to a profit of $80 million for Q4 2010. The Android phone and tablet maker's rev...

The products double the density for the Gigamon H Series family and deliver 40Gb connectivity in preparation for the next upgrade cycle. - Traffic visibility solutions specialist Gigamon announced that it has expanded its portfolio of solutions to further help enterprise managers to gain visibility of all traffic traversing their networks. The launch of two products, the GigaVue-TA1 and the GigaPort-Q02X32 H Series line-card, which com...

The study concluded that cloud-based unified communications (UC) could eliminate productivity shortfalls among SMBs. - Small businesses are increasingly becoming educated about the benefits cloud computing holds for their companies, according to a report from Fonality, a business communications company. Fonality released the results of a survey conducted by Webtorials, which measured 2012 communications goals...

An Avanade survey finds that IT administrators and business executives are embracing the dual ideas of the consumerization of IT and BYOD. The resistance to these charges is a "myth." - The idea that IT professionals and business leaders are resisting the consumerization of IT and the trend of bringing your own device (BYOD) to work is myth. On the contrary, more and more people are embracing these notions and trying to incorporate them into the workday, according to a recent s...

Google is telling Android developers to stop using the Menu button when building apps and move to the Action Bar, which was introduced with Android 3.0 Honeycomb. - Google is telling Android developers to stop using its Menu button and begin using the Action Bar that was introduced with the Android 3.0 Honeycomb release. Scott Main, lead tech writer for developer.android.com, penned a Jan. 26 blog post titled quot;Say Goodbye to the menu Button quot; to ...

Market share for tablets based on Google's Android operating system climbed to 39 percent in the fourth quarter, led by Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet. Apple's iPad led with 58 percent share. - Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle Fire helped power market share for tablets based on Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system to 39 percent market share for the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 29 percent a year ago. Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in Q4 2...

Nokia sold 1 million Windows Phone units in the fourth quarter of 2011. That may have nearly doubled Microsofts smartphone market share. - How much was Microsoft willing to pay Nokia to launch the latters Windows Phone line? The answer, according to Nokias most recent earnings report, was $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 and thats only the beginning. “Over the life of the agreement, both the platform support payments and the...

NEWS ANALYSIS: Nokia says that it has sold more than 1 million Lumia smartphones so far. This is a good start, and it raises the question of why these new models have been so popular so far. - Although Nokia has watched its handset shipments fall in the past couple of years and its financial performance slow to a crawl, the company offered up a silver lining during an earnings call with investors on Jan. 26, saying that it sold more than 1 million Lumia handsets since the devices launch...