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Nokia has released their financial earnings report for the first quarter, posting a huge €613 million net loss.

During the quarter, the company completed its €15.6 billion acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent and also had significant goodwill impairment charges and restructuring costs.

"I am pleased that we were able to deliver solid profitability in what is typically a seasonally weak quarter, and at a time when the risk of integration-related disruption was high," said Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri. "While our revenue decline was disappointing, the shortfall was largely driven by Mobile Networks, where the challenging environment is not a surprise."

In the coming years, Nokia will reduce costs with some layoffs and more cost-cutting measures expected to save the company €900 million moving forward. "The headcount reductions are expected to take place between now and the end of 2018, consistent with Nokia's synergy target timeline," said Nokia. "Reductions will come largely in areas where there are overlaps ... As part of the program, Nokia also continues to target savings in real estate, services, procurement, supply chain, and manufacturing."

According to sources, Japanese carrier SoftBank is looking to sell their stake in Finnish gaming giant Supercell after seeing significant interest in the company.

It appears the potential buyers are based in China, but it is unknown who may be interested.

Supercell, known for massive hits like Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Clash Royale, is 73 percent owned by SoftBank. SoftBank is alleged to have paid near $3 billion for the stake, and the full company is expected to net a $5 billion valuation in an outright sale. The other 27 percent of the company is still owned by management and employees.

SoftBank has struggled to use Supercell's popularity to break into the notoriously hard Japanese market and Supercell has even called the country "the toughest market in the world."

For the time being, any discussions are preliminary and the sources say SoftBank may choose to not move the company.

Africa's largest company, Naspers, has expanded its streaming service ShowMax to 36 new sub-Saharan African countries in an effort to challenge the global leader Netflix.

The service began last August and has since expanded to 65 countries. Netflix is in 130 countries, including African nations, and has over 70 million subscribers. Naspers is Africa's largest pay-TV provider and the company has been actively looking to take customers in Africa before Netflix does.

"We've adapted our apps to address the needs of consumers in Africa, introducing features like downloads for viewing TV shows and movies when not connected," Barron Ernst, ShowMax chief product officer, added. "In the first four months of 2016 we pretty much doubled the number of active subscribers, and that's despite the entrance of Netflix into Africa."

Despite their foothold in the continent, Naspers has the same issue as all other streaming providers; limited Internet coverage, speeds, and bandwidth for the majority of the population.

According to sources, Google could be a facing a massive multi-billion fine in the EU in the coming weeks over their alleged abusive search monopoly in Europe.

The fine would be the conclusion of a seven-year investigation and could be as high as $3.4 billion USD (€3 billion). If true, the fine would be almost triple the largest the European Commission has levied to date, 2014's €1.1 billion fine against Intel.

Google had been accused of promoting its own price comparison service in general search results while pushing down the visibility of rivals. The EC has also been investigating alleged search abuses within Android, and the potential for monopoly abuses in search markets like travel.

It also appears that the EC feels Google used stalling tactics during the investigation and also made changes to algorithms during the investigation that made it harder for rivals to compete.

Google entered the VR market two years ago with Google Cardboard (pictured). At the time it was a low risk investment into virtual reality, one that it expressed the interest towards a possibly a tremendous opportunity in the future. Now it seems that Google is ready to gear up for a proper go at VR.

According to information Android Police managed to find from Google Play Developer Console, Google is indeed going to release an actual virtual reality device. Google Cardboard is, after all, just a box that fits a smartphone. It is a simplistic version of what Samsung is promoting with its newest flagship, Galaxy S7.

There's really three types of VR devices at the moment: the Gear VR type that require a phone or a tablet, the ones that have displays but require a PC for processing such as Oculus Rift, and the entirely standalone devices that run the software and have displays to display it.

Some rumors have it that Google is going to release VR goggles that are in the latter category. This would also mean that it would not rival Oculus or HTC Vive in terms of pure processing power but would be more portable.

Apple has been revealed to have invested a small chunk of its $130 billion bankroll on a transportation company that is one of the main rivals of Uber. Didi Chuxing is essentially the Chinese version of Uber, and it provides transportation to 11 million people daily.

Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi) was looking for a billion dollars worth of investment and had to look no further than Apple. The smartphone based transportation service offers cab rides, personal drivers, and premium cars in what is one of the fastest growing market for apps and technology.

Founded in 2012, the company has already gathered a few billions of investments but Apple's latest addition is the largest single investment. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the investment is strategic and helps them understand "the critical Chinese market."

Apple is said to be developing an electric car, which seems to be the obvious reason for a such a huge investment. Also the pressure from Chinese regulators has increased on Apple, says Reuters. The investment will possibly aid both situations.

The app that stroke gold with vintage camera filters years ago has decided to renew its look and feel both in and outside the app. Outside it means replacing the logo with a flatter one, inside the changes update the UI.

The logo has abandoned the skeuomorphic design and adopted the colorful and flat-faced look known from iOS. The change seems to be more or less the same what Apple did in iOS 7 back in 2013.

Even though the logo is a breath of fresh air with bright colors, that does not carry out to the new UI. User interface consists only of shades of grey, black and white. According to the company this is to draw attention to the user generated content, which is, after all, the point of the service.

The Instagram related apps, namely Boomerang, Hyperlapse, and Layout, got the same logo update.

As you can imagine, the web went insane over the changes. Especially the change in logo seems to have baffled a lot of people. The narrative is that a recognizable logo has been switched for one that iPhone has 13 in a dozen.

In the end, however, all Instagram wants is for people to use the app more.

One of the most frequently requested "features" among WhatsApp users has been an official Windows desktop client. Now, the messaging app reaching almost billion users each month, has finally released official Windows and Mac OS X desktop clients.

Until now, desktop users have had to cope with WhatsApp's web client in order to use the app through their computers, but after the official desktop client, web app is no longer needed. Desktop client, like the web service, requires the app to be installed on user's phone and to be synchronized with the phone, as the encryption authentication is tightly linked to the user's phone and phone number.

So far, the desktop client doesn't support VoIP calls and provides just the same feature set as the web client does.

You can download the Windows version from our download section:

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi has unveiled the MiMax, a 6.44-inch behemoth that is only 7.5mm thick.

The MiMax has a Snapdragon 650 processor, 4GB RAM and a massive 4850mAh battery. Additionally, the phone has dual 16MP/5MP cameras and a fingerprint sensor, while running on the company's own MIUI8 Android variant.

Xiaomi has priced the phone at 1499 to 1999 yuan ($229 to $306) based on internal storage.

The phone will be available on May 17th in China.

Wallapop and LetGo, two startups that provide easy ways for consumers to post their items for sale offline, are preparing to merge to better take on eBay, Craigslist and Facebook's Marketplace.

You have probably seen the ads for both companies, which promise the easiest ways to sell your used items anywhere, and the two companies have raised over $100 million together from investors.

Craiglist specifically has been very slow to innovate, especially with mobile, allowing startups to take marketshare relatively quickly. Both companies have over 15 million downloads for their mobile apps but it is unclear how many remain active users.

Amazon has announced Amazon Video Direct today, a service that will allow independent content creators to upload videos and get paid for it.

The service will compete with YouTube, and content creators will be able to pick how they get paid. Options include advertising revenue, royalties based on popularity, or through direct purchases or rentals on Amazon. They will also be able to collect royalties by making the content available to just Prime subscribers. Prime is Amazon's $99-per-year service that gives subscribers free 2-day shipping, free music and free streaming video through Amazon Instant.

Every month, Amazon will also give out $1 million total to the top 100 titles. "Amazon will distribute to creators a monthly bonus from the one million dollar monthly fund, based on the Top 100 AVD titles in Prime Video, in addition to any other revenue earned. Video creators and providers who use AVD to make their titles available in Prime Video will automatically be enrolled. The AVD Stars program launches today and the one million dollar monthly fund will make its first bonus distributions based on streaming activity from June 1st to June 30th," says the company.

Launch content includes partners like Conde Nast Entertainment, HowStuffWorks, Samuel Goldwyn Films, The Guardian, Mashable, Mattel, StyleHaul, Kin Community, Jash, Business Insider, Machinima, TYT Network, Baby Einstein, CJ Entertainment America, Xive TV, Synergetic Distribution, Kino Nation, Journeyman Pictures, and Pro Guitar Lessons, added Amazon.

Following the Wii U's failure to make waves with consumers, EA appears to be hesitant when it comes to Nintendo's next console, the NX.

EA has said it will be happy to bring games to the NX, but only "if it makes sense" to do so.

Patrick Soderlund, EA Studios VP, says that the company's devs have been in "constant communication" with Nintendo, but the gaming giant has yet to really give third-party publishers much to go on until the NX is officially unveiled later this year.

"We're in constant communication with them and when they come to market something - and if it makes sense for us - we'll be there," Soderlund noted. "I personally and the company are huge fans of Nintendo, they're the reason why I started making games."

EA stopped porting games to the last-generation Wii U, citing major development complications and specs that weren't competitive. There are hopes that the Nintendo NX will not follow in its predecessor's footsteps and most early reports seem to agree.

According to Hold Security founder Alex Holden, there are over 270 million stolen usernames and passwords trading in Russia's criminal networks.

Many of the stolen account credentials are from users of Russia's popular Mail.ru email service, with more millions coming from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo users, as well.

Holden, who helped uncover data breaches at Target and Adobe in recent years, said the latest discovery came after a young Russian hacker began bragging in underground forums that he had 1.17 billion stolen credentials. After removing duplicates, that number ended up being 272 million, including 57 million Mail.ru accounts. That number is massive given the fact that Mail.ru only has 64 million active users.

40 million of the combos were from Yahoo Mail accounts, 33 million were from Microsoft Hotmail accounts and 24 million were Gmail. Millions of others came from corporate emails.

"This information is potent. It is floating around in the underground and this person has shown he's willing to give the data away to people who are nice to him," said Holden. "These credentials can be abused multiple times."

The hacker asked for just $1 for all the records and ended up giving Holden the entire dataset for free in exchange for favorable posts in multiple hacker forums.

Released last summer Apple Music was expected to become a success that quickly rivaled and possibly even surpassed Spotify as the leading streaming service for music. Due to failures mainly in UI design the service has had troubles rising to the occasion even with exclusives like Taylor Swift.

Apple is expected to revamp the messy user interface completely though. The overhaul is said to be unveiled at the WWDC in June, but that is not the only measure Apple is taking in order to catch up to Spotify.

Now Apple has revealed a new, cheaper tier that is solely meant for student. College students around the US as well as in countries like the UK, Germany, and Australia will be able to get Apple Music subscription for half the price. This amounts to $5.99 (depending on the market).

However, Spotify has its own Premium subscription for students for $4.99 and obviously something that Apple does not – a free ad-supported tier.

So the question remains will this get people on board the service that has been accused of randomly deleting songs and ruining the experience with a garbled and confusing user interface. Things could well change, though, if on June 13th bulk of the problems disappear.

Even if not all products out of Redmond have captured the market (yes, I'm looking at you Windows Phone), you have to give it to Microsoft Research for being one of the most innovative R&D departments in the country. Be it HoloLens or the AI features now used in Cortana, every one loves a glimpse at the future of computing.

One those futuristic glimpses might as well be in the video below. Microsoft Research has released a video on YouTube in which it demonstrates a new type of predictive touch display which it calls Pre-Touch.

The display on what looks like a Lumia looking prototype recognizes when a hand or a finger is coming close to the display, and even measures the pressure when squeezed.

Like you can see on the video this enables all kinds of handy tricks with the user interface. Knowing where the users hands are before the touch makes it possible to cater for a specific need, for example one handed use always on the right side of the phone.

As this video comes from Microsoft Research and not a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress, it'll probably still be a while before we see this in our own handsets. Maybe that will happen when Microsoft allegedly transforms its smartphone business under Surface brand.