However, Samsung edged out the company by a small margin for the entire year. Samsung sold 36 million smartphones in Q4 and 95 million in 2011, followed by Apple with 93 million devices. Apple was able to grow its phone sales by 96 percent in 2011, while Samsung achieved a 278 percent jump.

Nokia fell into third place as smartphone shipments declined by 23 percent to 77 million units. Sony Ericsson was fourth with 20 million and Motorola fifth with 19 million smartphones. IHS said that it was not able shipment numbers from other suppliers, including HTC and LG, which have not reported their numbers yet.

“Apple’s introduction of the 4S in the fourth quarter unleashed tremendous pent-up demand for the iPhone as consumers awaited the arrival of the latest model,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst, wireless communications at IHS. “This caused the company’s smartphone shipments to surge, allowing it to retake market leadership by a slight margin. However, Apple and Samsung continue to run neck and neck in global smartphone shipments, setting up a tight battle for leadership that will continue throughout 2012.”

It’s been over fifteen years since MasterCard, Visa and Europay developed EMV technology to make your credit cards more secure, but it has yet to really catch on here in the US. However, MasterCard has created a master plan to help usher in the EMV era and sound the death knell for the magnetic strip. Why? The EMV infrastructure is far more fraud-resistant because each transaction is authenticated dynamically using cryptographic algorithms and a user-specific PIN. That’s why MasterCard plans to help build out the EMV POS infrastructure by April of next year and have its secure e-payment system functioning at ATMs, online and with its myriad mobile payment options as well. For now, the nuts and bolts of how the credit card firm plans to bring its plan to fruition are few, but more details will be forthcoming.

SOURCE via MasterCard

Samsung’s European legal woes don’t look to be abating anytime soon, as the EU today formally launched an investigation into the Korean manufacturers’ competitive practices. At issue are, not surprisingly, a collection of patents that Samsung has used to launch a series of lawsuits against rival companies. The manufacturer maintains that these patents are essential to complying with European mobile standards, but the EU says Samsung may be in violation of a promise it made more than ten years ago. Back in 1998, the firm said it would license these essential telephonic patents to competing manufacturers, under the terms outlined in FRAND. The Commission explained the obligation and its potential ramifications in the following statement:

The Commission will investigate, in particular, whether in doing so (seeking injunctions on patent infringements in 2011) Samsung has failed to honor its irrevocable commitment given in 1998 to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to license any standard essential patents relating to European mobile telephony standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The Commission will examine whether such behavior amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.

No word yet on how long the investigation may take, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated going forward.

SOURCE via Reuters

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA to its friends, is coming under fire in the EU from those who fear it will lead to online censorship. But it has received particular attention from the public of Poland and that has been reflected by some of the nation’s politicians.

ACTA is a far-reaching agreement. It’s designed to harmonize international standards on protecting the rights of those who produce music, movies, and god knows what else, and part of that includes tackling online piracy. Those who oppose it worry that the EU authorities will start blocking internet content.

Not everyone in the Polish government opposes ACTA, of course, but officials from the Palikot’s Movement do, and they decided to make it known by holding the famed Anonymous/Guy Fawkes masks to their faces in Parliament. Don’t you wish some US politicians took this kind of approach?

Microsoft’s patent-licensing ways continue, going after manufacturers of Android devices with wild abandon and, more often than not, wrangling them into (surely expensive) agreements. Latest to take the bait is LG and, interestingly, this one covers both Android and Google’s little laptop operating system: Chrome OS. With this agreement Microsoft now covers 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the US, which is a quite startling figure. And, of course, one could interpolate from this that LG must have designs on making a Chromebook at some point in the not too distant future.

SOURCE via Slashgear

You know the economy is really going to bloody hell when ATMs start to pay bank customers with dead rodents, which is exactly what happened to this guy on the right. He got his cash and the dead Mickey on the left.

His name is Gholam Hafezi and he was visiting his daughter in Ersboda, Umeå, in the north of Sweden. He wanted to take out 700 Swedish Kronor from this ATM located inside a Coop Forum, one of the shops of a famous Swedish supermarket chain: “I got my 700 kronor but I never got the receipt. At the same time, I saw a cord that was jamming the ATM slot.”

Yes, you know where this is going. But Hafezi didn’t at the time. He thought somebody may be trying to do something illegal, so he tried to pull the cord. He then realized it was a mouse tail.

He ran to the supermarket’s customer service people and asked for help. They told him that the ATM was not their responsibility but the guys in charge of the shopping carts offered their help. One of them was finally able to take out the whole mouse: “he took out the mouse. His head was intact although a little bit bloody. Then I got my receipt.”

Poor Mickey, RIP.

What happens when you reply to an email in which the entire German Parliament is looped in? You send that mail server into complete and utter chaos which, i would assume, brings der legislative machine to a screeching halt.

Reuters says that a staffer by the name of Babbette sent an email to a list containing 4032 people, which in turn spawned replies from other people on the list which really just messed everything thing up.

A spokeswoman of the Bundestag confirmed that there had been a flood of emails in response to the errant email and that it was possible, as German media reported, that emails in the parliament were delayed by up to a half an hour due to the high volume.

Furthermore, they should promote the person who took the initiative to reply “I’d like to take this opportunity to say hello to my mother.”

SOURCE via MSNBC

Three patents pertaining to memory chip design that were used to successfully sue HP and Nvidia—dubbed the Barth Patents—are among Rambus’ most valuable IP. Excuse me, they were among Rambus’ most valuable until the US patent office invalidated them.

According to court documents, the US Patent and Trademark Office invalidated the last of the Barth patents this past Tuesday—the other two were struck down in September. Rambus had employed the trio to sue a number of companies, including STMicroelectronics, Broadcom, and MediaTek over the last few years. Rambus’ aggressive litigation for infringement netted it hefty licensing fees from the court settlements. This decision, however, should open the door for the companies to reclaim at least a portion of their settlement sums.

SOURCE via Reuters

Nielsen crunched Q4 numbers today, and the results will likely have Apple analysts jumping up and down. The findings, focused on those who’ve purchased a smartphone within the previous three months, indicate a huge spike — from 25 percent in October to 45 percent in December — in iPhone purchases since October as an obvious result of the launch of the 4S. Conversely, the number of recent Android buyers fell by 14 percent in the same period. Of course, these numbers are directly affected by Apple’s latest product launch and by no means should be any indicator that Apple is poised to win the battle against its bitter rival, as iOS continues to trail Android by over 16 percent in market share. Looking at the war for the third spot, RIM’s US market share declined by 2.9 percent from Q3 to Q4, falling to 14.9 percent — not a surprise, since it only captured the hearts of six percent of recent buyers this quarter — and Windows Phone slightly increased from 1.2 to 1.3 percent.

SOURCE via Nielsen

Less than a week after announcing it would double customers broadband speeds nationwide, Virgin Media suffered a nationwide blackout that sent the network dark for most of Tuesday evening. At 5:00, the service dropped after router hardware decided it couldn’t go on streaming the same episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show to the nation. The company admitted to the fault and service was restored by 8:00pm. Had it been smarter, it could have gotten away with passing the whole thing off as a SOPA protest, but we admire Virgin’s honesty — even if it did lead to the brilliant comment on Twitter pictured above.

SOURCE via BBC UK