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According to sources, Samsung would consider building Windows Phones again if Microsoft were to settle their outstanding royalties legal battle against Android products.

"Samsung has run pilot programs on the stability of Windows 8.1 software on devices. It is interested in promoting Windows mobiles. If the companies settle their litigation, then Samsung will manufacture handsets powered by the Microsoft-developed mobile platform. The timing could be the third quarter of this year at the earliest," reads the report.

The company halted all development on Windows Phones as they discovered quickly there were not enough being sold to make it profitable for them.

In recent times, however, Samsung has tried to break their dependency on Google's Android platform. The company has built their smartwatches on their own Tizen operating system, and have been planning a smartphone with the operating system, as well.

Thanks to changes in exchange rates and local rates, Apple has raised the minimum app prices for the App Store in Canada and most of Europe.

The new minimum prices are $1.19 CAD (Canadian dollars), .79 euro or .99 British pounds.

Apple said the price change is in effect for "all territories in the European Union as well as in Canada and Norway, decrease in Iceland, and change in Russia."

The EU recently passed a new law that adds a 6.5 percent "digital tax" on apps, ebooks, movie downloads and MP3s, so the increase was widely expected. In Canada and Russia, the local currencies have depreciated significantly against the US Dollar, so changes in those nations were expected, as well.

Apple made similar changes last year in Australia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey as currencies fluctuated.

The future of The Pirate Bay is anything but certain. After last month's raid the website – or atleast it's functionality – has been down. Now Google has decided to move on and select the new number one.

The site is rumored to make a comeback soon. If that happens after the countdown on the official website runs down to zero remains to be seen.

Whatever the fate of the website will be Google's web search has decided that with "pirate bay" search it is no longer the most relevant website, TorrentFreak notes.

Google search reveals a new number one holder which is "Old Pirate Bay", a cloned website by the popular torrent site isoHunt. Other searches including Bing and Bing-powered Yahoo still rely on the official thepiratebay.se as the most relevant result.

Which one of the sites seems more relevant to you, the functional or the official website?

Google's share of the U.S. search market fell to 75.2 percent for the month of December, down to its lowest share since 2009.

Yahoo appears to have gained most of what Google lost, moving to 10.4 percent share, its highest share in the last six years, as well.

In stark change happened almost immediately after Mozilla replaced Google with Yahoo as the default search engine for their Firefox browser. "The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on U.S. search," StatCounter Chief Executive Officer Aodhan Cullen said. "The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google."

The research firm also noted that Firefox is used by about 12 percent of Internet users in the U.S.

Source:
BBG

Nintendo has announced today that it is ending operations in Brazil, with the gaming company discontinuing software and hardware sales in the South American nation.

The company said extremely high tariffs on importation and exportation of goods made it fiscally irresponsible to continue to invest or sell products in the country.

Brazil uses high tariffs, usually higher than 20 percent (and over 50 percent for consoles), to encourage foreign companies to build in Brazil and to protect its own manufacturing jobs.

"Brazil is an important market for Nintendo and home to many passionate fans," Nintendo of America Latin America general manager Bill van Zyll said. "But unfortunately, challenges in the local business environment have made our current distribution model unsustainable in the country."

Is there a chance Nintendo returns in the future?

"Working together with the Juegos de Video Latinoamérica, we will monitor the evolution of the business environment and evaluate the best way to serve our Brazilian fans in the future," said van Zyll. "We will continue to monitor the environment in the country so that we can evaluate future opportunities."

Google's latest Android update, 5.0 Lollipop, was installed on just 0.1 percent of active Android devices as of January 5th, a shockingly low number even for a new update.

The search giant unveiled the OS in mid-October, and it shipped with the Nexus 9 and the Nexus 6 in November. Other Nexus devices received the update by the end of November.

Android KitKat 4.4, is now up to 39.1 percent share of the fragmented market while Jelly Bean 4.1.x-4.3.x still has the lion's share at 46 percent.

Older devices continue to shock, with Android 2.2-4.0.x still controlling 15.9 percent share despite those operating systems being released in 2010 and 2011.

Source:
Google

Earlier this week, satellite provider Dish decide to start on the road to kill conventional TV as we know it introducing "Sling TV."

The new "Sling TV" service will cost $20 per month, be available online and on mobile, and include 10 popular channels: TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2.

While in theory, the practically ala carte service is great for cord cutters, especially given the access to ESPN and big-time sports programming, but under the hood there are quite a few caveats, as well. Only one person can watch Sling TV at any given time. You will need a streaming device and the Sling TV app to get the TV on your big screen. Roku will support it out of the box, Apple TV will not. Local broadcasting is missing such as NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC.

At $20, the service is still expensive especially since most cord cutters will be paying $7.99 for Hulu, $7.99 for Netflix and whatever price the standalone HBO Go will cost, but the Sling TV is a right first step to unbundling expensive TV packages with hundreds of channels you don't care about.

Here is an early demo of the service in action:

Marvel has confirmed the release date for their Netflix exclusive 'Daredevil' series: April 10th.

All thirteen hour-long episodes will be available on day one, in all countries where Netflix is streaming.

From Marvel's own description: "Marvel's Daredevil" follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the super hero Daredevil in modern day Hell's Kitchen, New York City.

The series stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson with Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk.

Netflix's original content deal with Marvel is one of its largest and likely one of its most important given the demographics that Marvel and Disney command.

Neil Young's super Hi-Fi music player and Kickstarter blockbuster "Pono" is now available for $399.

Last year, Pono closed its campaign at $6.2 million raised, good for the third best campaign on the crowdfunding site, ever.

The company just launched the Pono music store this morning, allowing consumers to purchase high-quality audio files that will cost you more than the average iTunes or Google Play download but flat out sound better. Creator Neil Young wants consumers to know that music sounds better than your streaming services and digital downloads: "I didn't listen to music for the last 15 years because I hated the way it sounded and it made me pissed off and I couldn't enjoy it any more," he said at CES. "I could only hear what was missing."

Unfortunately, at $399 and with more expensive song downloads, the player promises to be a hit only among a niche crowd. Young doesn't seem to care: "I'm a musician. I want people to hear my art. A lot of people feel the same way," Young said. "In my mind, this is a success already because it lives."

The device has two output jacks, one for headphones and a stereo mini-plug analog output for home audio. The Pono Music store offers music in FLAC with quality ranging from CD lossless quality recordings: 1411 kbps (44.1 kHz/16 bit) FLAC files all the way to Ultra-high resolution recordings: 9216 kbps (192 kHz/24 bit) FLAC files.

After a two year absence in the world's most populous nation, Lenovo will be bringing back Motorola smartphones to China.

Lenovo acquired Motorola's handset business from Google last year in an effort to boost their mobile offerings around the world.

The flagship Moto X will go on sale in February, followed by the Moto X Pro and Moto G in the Q2.

"It's been about two years since we actively launched products in China," said Motorola today. "Lenovo has been clear for some time that bringing Motorola back to China was going to be a priority. It's something we've been working very hard on since the close of the acquisition."

Lenovo completed their acquisition in October for nearly $3 billion.

According to a new source, LG is looking to bring a WebOS-based smartwatch to market early next year.

"We're going to slowly try to build an (software) ecosystem around areas we can have more control over," said the source, speaking at CES. The company currently has a few smartwatches available running on Google's Android Wear platform.

The phone will be able to make phone calls without being synced to a smartphone, added the source, suggesting a built-in cell radio is in the works.

WebOS, the mobile operating system made popular in 2009 by Palm before it went bankrupt, was then sold to HP who could not figure out how to monetize it and eventually sold to LG last year. LG now uses the OS as a backbone for its smart TVs and home appliances. The TVs have been successful, with LG selling over 1 million in just the first half of 2014.

Music execs and now billionaires Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine have been sued by former business partner Noel Lee, who claims the two used a "sham" transaction to reduce his stake before selling the company to Apple this year for $3 billion.

Lee is the founder of Monster, the "premium" audio and video cable company that originally helped co-design Beats headphones.

The plaintiff says he "lost millions" after the two music execs took full control of Beats after selling a majority of the company to HTC in 2012 and also that Dre had "little involvement" in creating the headphones that bear his name. When the company was sold to HTC in 2012, both Iovine and Dre made about $100 million each, and at the same time diluted Lee's share of the company from 5 percent to 1.25 percent.

Lee then sold his stake for $5.5 million in 2013. Had he still had his 5% stake, Lee says he would have made $150 million from the Apple acquisition.

In the suit, Lee claims that Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine "made millions off the work of Monster and Lee, while the plaintiffs lost millions."

Source:
BBC

Blu, the U.S.-based smartphone maker that sells millions of devices in developing nations every year but is still unknown in America is back with another new Android phone with some features that can't be beat.

The latest, Vivo Air, will sell for just $199 unlocked and is 5.1mm thin and just 3.5 ounces heavy, giving it the title of thinnest and lightest device out there.

Blu says the phone is made of a aluminum magnesium alloy and it has a design similar to the latest iPhones. Android 4.4 powers the phone with 5.0 available later in the year.

Under the hood is a MediaTek MT6592 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a Mali GPU, all of which likely provide mid-range performance. Users have 16GB of internal storage. The display is a 720p, 4.8-inch screen and the Vivo Air has dual 5MP/8MP cameras. There is no LTE support.

iPhone, Nexus and Galaxy Note owners will certainly not be swayed, but for $199 off-contract, there is a chance Blu could start gaining some recognition.

Dell really came to play this CES, unveiling their new XPS 13 notebook with an edge-to-edge display and other great ultrabook specs.

Starting at $800, the new XPS 13 has the 13.3-inch 1080p display, a 5th-gen Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, two USB 3.0 ports, a Mini DisplayPort, an SD slot, Windows 8.1 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The battery life is stated at 11 hours. Adding $150 gets you Windows 8.1 Pro and a Core i5, while another $100 gets you a Core i7 and 8GB RAM. The notebooks have a backlit keyboard and weigh just 2.6 pounds.

In addition, you can upgrade the display to 3200x1800 and the SSD to 512 GB, but that will take your price above $1400, no longer in the value category.

According to new reports, the Apple Watch is expected to hit stores and start shipping by the end of March, with employees beginning training in mid-February.

Employees will head out to Cupertino, California and Austin, Texas from February 9th to February 16th and then return to train other employees at local stores.

Apple unveiled the long-awaited smartwatch back in September, but could not give an exact timeframe for its release.

There will be three models of the Watch released, "Standard," "Sport" and "Edition." The sport edition is said to be the cheapest, at $349 while the "Edition" model is rumored to be stainless steel and include a sapphire crystal watch face for $499.

Read more about the Apple Watch here at Afterdawn.