Latest news

According to a new article, Apple will unveil iMessage for Android next week at WWDC.

While unconfirmed, a move to bring the encrypted messaging service to the world's most-used mobile OS would make good business sense for the tech giant. There are millions of Android users that would prefer to use the emojis and other features of iMessage in a group chat with friends and family with iPhones.

Apple recently launched Apple Music for Android, making it clear the company is willing to expand their ecosystem when the bottom line demands it.

For now, take the report as rumor but we will learn more for sure next week at the company's WWDC keynote.

Twitter has notified over 33 million account holders that their accounts are at risk following a database leak not related to the micro-blogging company.

The data dump was part of a much larger release that included millions of MySpace and LinkedIn usernames and passwords and tens of millions of logins for Russian-language sites.

Twitter, for their part, says there is "no indication that we have been compromised," suggesting the names and passwords were stolen from other sites but users used the same details across multiple sites.

There have been some prominent takeovers in the last few days due to the leak. Attackers took over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter account, Twitter co-founder Evan William's account and the account of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, among others.

Apple has revealed even more evidence that the longstanding OS X name will soon be MacOS, as the company tries to keep the brand naming in line with the rest of their products.

The tech giant is likely to unveil the change next week at WWDC 2016, alongside updates to iOS, watchOS and tvOS.

Supporting documentation released yesterday show the macOS name (for the third time now in an official doc), this time in relation to the changes in revenue split for subscription-based apps.

Apple quickly replaced macOS with OS X in the docs but not before it had been screened.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Andrew House has confirmed the rumored "PlayStation 4 UHD" is indeed coming; but not at E3.

The mid-generation upgrade, codenamed "Neo," will be capable of 4K video output as previously rumored, in addition to a more powerful GPU.

Neo won't launch at E3, but it is expected before the end of 2016. House did also say that the console will cost over $350 in the U.S. when it launches.

Even though Sailfish OS creator Jolla has had its fair share of challenges in the past two years (including a failed tablet and a near bankruptcy) it appears that its operating system lives on.

Russian phone maker Plural has released its new Oysters SF phone powered by Sailfish, thanks to a partnership with Jolla.

Here are the full specs:

5-inch 720p display
MediaTek MT6753 ARM Cortex-A53 octa-core processor
2GB of RAM
16GB of storage
13-megapixel rear camera
5-megapixel front-facing camera
microSD slot
3,000 mAh battery

Regardless, the smartphone world has been and will always be a two-horse race.

Microsoft has announced the open beta of Minecraft: Education Edition, which it hopes to get into schools by the end of the third quarter.

The software giant hopes teachers will access the beta to create lesson plans that will engage students using the block world, for example recreating scenarios from books or historical landmarks.

For the most part, Education Edition is identical to the standard game, but it includes an "in-game camera" for screenshots, in-game chalkboards for letting teachers write and place text, and a "Classroom Mode," for teachers that will "grant resources to students, view where everyone is on a map, send chat messages, and teleport people to specific places, which will be useful should students run off or get lost."

The beta is free until September and then licensing will be anywhere from $1 to $5 per year, per student for schools.

Uber has been fined €800,000 ($907,000) in France over its cheap UberPop service, a service that was banned in 2014.

UberPop connected app users with non-professional drivers that did not have taxi/limo requirements, causing an uproar from the taxi unions. Two Uber executives were even arrested for "operating an illegal business" as a court deliberated on the legality of the service.

The unions won in 2014, but an appeals court overturned and the case went to France's highest court which upheld the ban.

Comically, the taxi unions were seeking 100 million euro in damages but will get less than 1 million.

Tinder has discontinued use of the popular dating app for anyone under the age of 18.

Until now, the app had allowed everyone above the age of 13 to use the app, but all minors could only be matched with other minors.

Says Tinder: "On a platform that has facilitated over 11 billion connections, we have the responsibility of constantly assessing our different user experiences. Consistent with this responsibility, we have decided to discontinue service for under 18 users. We believe this is the best policy moving forward. This change will take effect next week."

The company said only 3 percent of users were under 18 years of age.

According to multiple reports, Samsung is looking into releasing two new smartphones that will have bendable screens in 2017.

Using OLED screens, one of the devices could even fold in half (like a clam shell design) and will have a "5-inch screen when used as a handset, that unfurls into a display that's as large as 8 inches, similar to a tablet."

The sources claim that Samsung has resolved any issues with making the bendable screens durable, but is now working on an interface that makes sense for such a device.

Many expect the devices to be unveiled at next year's MWC in Spain, scheduled for the first week of February.

Earlier, we reported that Apple was making major changes to its App Store policies, and it appears that Google is matching and exceeding those changes for the Google Play Store.

Google will also move to a 85/15 split in favor of developers for subscriptions, but developers will not have to wait a year to get paid. Google's new policy has the split working immediately, unlike Apple where the customer must stay subscribed for over a year for the developer to get the better pay structure.

Another change that has been ongoing is the fact that Google lets developers handle payments themselves, while Apple still forces everyone to use the Apple iTunes billing system.

According to Apple's Phil Schiller, major changes are coming to the App Store, including big changes to how subscriptions work for developers.

Schiller says app subscriptions are now open to all product categories, giving developers more options to earn revenue. For example, a productivity company could offer a bundle of their popular apps for $19.99 per year, rather than charging an upfront fee for each app. Apple is also opening up tiered pricing options for app subscriptions.

In addition, Apple is dropping the amount they take on subscription fees, from the current 30 percent to 15 percent, but only if the customer stays subscribed for longer than a year. This has been a huge point of pain for big developers like Netflix, who had to charge more for their services via Apple because Apple was taking a 30 percent cut.

Finally, Apple is adding ads to App Store search results, and Apple is opening the ad space to developers, only. "We've thought about how to carefully do it in a way that, first and foremost, customers will be happy with," Schiller says. The auction system will "fair to developers, and fair for indie developers, too," developers that may not have as much in ad budget as, say, Supercell.

Media conglomerate Vivendi SA has bought out the founding family of Gameloft, increasing their majority stake in the French mobile gaming company.

The Guillemot family owned nearly 22 percent of the company while Vivendi controlled 56 percent of Gameloft's voting rights before the acquisition. Somewhat strangely, the company says they sold their shares "with regret" and the "family maintains that Vivendi's hostile approach goes against the best interest of Gameloft, both for its activity and for its teams."

Vivendi valued the company at about $800 million USD. Gameloft, which has hit games using their own IP and IP of other companies, had sales of about $300 million last year.

The Guillemot family also controls Ubisoft, of which Vivendi now has a 17.7 percent stake, with many in the industry expecting another hostile bid for the large gaming publisher. Ubisoft, however, has a $4.5 billion value, multiple times that of Gameloft's.

Yahoo is set to begin auctioning off a portfolio of 3000 patents that are expected to bring in over a billion dollars for the struggling web pioneer.

A few of the patents date as far back as 1996 (when Yahoo IPOd) and will include original search technology.

The company has set a mid-June deadline for preliminary bids, but it is unclear which companies are interested in the catalog of patents at this time. The patents mainly cover search, e-commerce and online advertising and one patent specifically is expected to be worth a significant amount given the fact that Google licensed it in perpetuity for $300 million.

"This represents a unique opportunity for companies operating in the internet industry to acquire some of the most pioneering and foundational patents related to web search and advertising," said Yahoo.

Yahoo is currently up for sale, with Verizon the top bidder for other core assets at a price of around $3 billion.

Microsoft has announced that they will not be adding a TV DVR feature to the Xbox One, despite announcing it last August.

"After careful consideration, we've decided to put development of DVR for Over-the-Air TV on hold to focus our attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming experiences across Xbox One and Windows 10," said Microsoft. "We're always listening to fan feedback and we look forward to bringing more requested experiences on Xbox One, Windows 10 and Xbox Live this year."

The announcement last year had promised a launch of the feature in 2016, including the ability to DVR OTA TV using digital TV tuners that Microsoft released in NA and the EU.

For now, it will be exciting to see what gaming-related features will be announced at E3.

It took 8 months, but Android Marshmallow has finally hit its first adoption milestone, reaching 10 percent share of the operating system.

Android 5.x Lollipop remains the most popular, with 35.4 percent share, followed by the nearly three-year-old Android 4.4 KitKat at 31.6 percent. Perhaps more shockingly is Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean which still has 18.9 percent share despite originally launching in 2012.

At its current rate, it is expected that Marshmallow will at least overtake Jelly Bean by the end of the year, as more and more smartphone OEMs update their devices to the latest OS.