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After a week of speculation, AT&T has officially announced a $48.5 billion acquisition of satellite TV giant DirecTV.

"This is a unique opportunity that will redefine the video entertainment industry and create a company able to offer new bundles and deliver content to consumers across multiple screens – mobile devices, TVs, laptops, cars and even airplanes," said AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson.

AT&T will pay $95 per share for DirecTV. DirecTV Chief Executive Mike White added, "This compelling and complementary combination will bring significant benefits to all consumers, shareholders and DirecTV employees."

The boards of both companies approved the deal over the weekend. The deal will face significant regulator scrutiny and is not expected to close for a year.

Both companies are extremely profitable and generate tons of cash. The synergies of both should lead to savings in the future, as well.

Facebook's $19 billion acquisition WhatsApp has disappeared from the Windows Phone Store, with the app now showing up as "no longer published."

The popular messaging company, which has over 500 million users, has not posted any comment since the app went offline for Windows Phone users.

There is speculation that the Windows Phone 8.1 version was just so buggy that it was taken down by the company while being updated to make sure the customer experience is not poor.

Facebook is still waiting final FCC approval for the deal, which was $19 billion at the time of signing but Facebook's stock has fallen significantly since then.

Earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed it was considering added support for external hard drives for the Xbox One.

Now, thanks to a new photo, it appears that day may be coming soon.

Coming via an Xbox One developer, an updated dashboard shows off the external drive support, including how much free space is still available (in this case 586 GB). The developer only says "Soon...." so expect the update in the coming months.

The move will be welcomed by millions of Xbox One owners that had to rely on the console's non-removable 500GB internal drive.

According to the latest NPD figures, the Sony PlayStation 4 was the best selling console for the fourth month in a row, easily beating out the Xbox One.

"Life to date, sales of PS4 and Xbox One hardware have more than doubled the combined sales of PS3 and 360 hardware through their first six months of sales," NPD analyst Liam Callahan added.

Overall console sales jumped 120 percent YoY from April 2013, and hardware saw a 76 percent revenue boost from last year. Hardware grew to $192.8 million while software fell 10 percent to $227.9 million.

Microsoft confirmed it shipped 115,000 Xbox One for the month, and Sony did not reveal an exact number.

Sony has shipped over 7 million PS4 since launch, while Microsoft has shipped just over 5 million. Microsoft is looking to boost sales by dropping Kinect as a mandatory bundle with the console, and selling the device with the motion control accessory for $399, the same price as the PS4. The company has also dropped the need for an Xbox Live Gold subscription if just using entertainment apps like Netflix.

At the request of Swedish authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have allegedly seized data from a Canadian-based torrent tracker.

The tracker, Sparvar, was hosted by the Montreal-based Netelligent. The site mainly hosted Swedish files and had over 10,000 users.

Netelligent's CIO Mohamed Salamé says the company was served with a legal document demanding the data. "We made a copy of the data with the client's consent," said Salamé.

The seizure appears to have followed complaints filed by the anti-piracy group Rights Alliance. The group took down another popular Swedish torrent site two years ago, Swepiracy.

Canada has long been a hotbed of piracy, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), with the country being a place to "facilitate and enable massive unauthorized downloading of pirated versions of feature films, TV shows, recorded music, entertainment software, and other copyright materials."

According to multiple reports and first reported by Buzzfeed, AT&T will announce their acquisition of satellite TV giant DirecTV on Monday.

The deal will be close to $50 billion, valuing DTV shares at about $94, a nice premium from Friday's closing price of $86 and a huge premium over the $77 price the shares were trading around when the first reports came out about negotiations.

AT&T is the U.S.' second largest wireless carrier and the company also offers TV and broadband services.

The deal will help AT&T offer wireless, broadband, TV and land line and be a one-stop shop for over 100 million consumers. AT&T has 10.4 million U-Verse Internet (fiber) customers but that number is likely to double in the coming year.

HTC has unveiled the mid-range One Mini 2 this week, a phone that the company calls "selfie-friendly."

The device is a less powerful version of the new One (M8), with a smaller 4.5-inch 720p display.

Under the hood is a quad-core Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. Rather than the "Ultrapixel" camera of the M8, the phone has a 13MP sensor and a 5MP camera on the front, making it arguably one of the best devices for "selfies."

The phone keeps the front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers of its more expensive brother and the latest Android along with HTC's Sense 6 user interface.

A model built for Europe is set for release next month, with the U.S. to follow later in the year.

The major record labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music have all taken $3 million stakes in the popular music identification app Shazam Entertainment.

Shazam is valued near $500 million so the stakes are relatively small. All the shares are said to have been purchased from a single investor.

The service, which allows you to identify music that is playing anywhere or TV shows that are on TV from your phone, also has partnerships with iTunes, YouTube, Spotify and social media sites so users can purchase the tracks they find almost instantly, or share it on Facebook or Twitter for others to listen.

Shazam is also said to be in talks with Apple to license their song-ID tech for integration in iOS 8.

The company has over 450 million users worldwide and 90 million monthly active users.

Samsung has boasted that sales of the new Galaxy S5 are outpacing those of its predecessor, the Galaxy S4.

J.K. Shin, Samsung's mobile boss, recently said sales topped 11 million since launch, beating out the 10 million first month sales of the S4.

The exec says the sales should lead to higher margins for the quarter and higher market share after Samsung lost some share the last couple of quarters. "It's been a month since we began selling the S5, and out of the gate, sales are much stronger than the Galaxy S4," Shin added. Sales were strongest in the U.S., Germany and Australia.

This is certainly a good sign for Samsung, which saw its first drop in profit for its mobile business since 2011 in the previous quarter. Margins also have fallen to 19.8 percent, compared to over 30 percent at Apple.

The Galaxy S5 is available in 125 nations and with nearly every major carrier.

According to Comcast executive David Cohen, the U.S.' largest cable and Internet provider is looking to make bandwidth caps mandatory for every customer within the next five years.

Within the time frame, Cohen says he expects the company to move completely to the controversial "usage-based model."

"I would also predict that the vast majority of our customers would never be caught in the buying the additional buckets of usage, that we will always want to say the basic level of usage at a sufficiently high level that the vast majority of our customers are not implicated by the usage-based billing plan," Cohen added. "I don't think that's the model that we are heading toward, but five years ago I don't know that I would have heard of something called an iPad. So, very difficult to make predictions."

Comcast started testing a 250GB bandwidth cap in a few pilot cities in 2011, but it did not go over too smoothly with the greater population. The company is still testing in certain cities, but with larger 300 or 600GB caps. In some places, Comcast offers a ridiculous 5GB 'flexible' data account where subscribers get a credit back to their accounts for every month they stay under the amount, and pay overages if they can't.

Minnesota has become the first state to enact the so-called smartphone 'kill switch' in which all new phones must be sold with the ability to be remotely shut down in the event they are stolen.

The law will take full effect in July of next year, but politicians hope the wireless industry will take advantage sooner.

Democratic Rep. Joe Atkins, an advocate of the law, says the new measure will be "a vaccine" for the "epidemic" of mobile phone thefts. With the kill switch, phone owners can disable the phone permanently and wipe the data just by calling their carrier.

"Thus taking away the worth," continued Atkins. "When you take away the worth, you take away the incentive. These thieves that are stealing these things no longer have the incentive to steal 'em."

There are similar bills making their way through California, New York and Illinois' legislature. There a Federal law pending, as well.

In addition to the rule, the Minnesota bill bans retailers from paying cash for used mobile devices, and merchants must document all device info, require the seller to provide their ID and attest to the phone being their property.

AT&T has announced the official launch of their voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) calling service, which will begin rolling out to certain markets next week.

The rollout begins on May 23rd, and will start in notable metros like Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Reads the carrier's post: "Beginning May 23, AT&T is introducing High Definition (HD) Voice on an all-IP, Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) network in select markets. At AT&T, you won't have to choose between faster data speeds and crystal clear conversations. HD Voice customers can simultaneously talk while surfing the Web at 4G LTE speeds, all on the nation's most reliable 4G LTE network – it's the best of both worlds."

There are a number of devices that can use the service, and its improved call quality, including the latest Galaxy devices. iOS 8 is said to be including support for VoLTE, which would make the iPhone 5, 5S, 5C and upcoming 6 capable of using it.

Adobe's Creative Cloud, which includes access to Photoshop, Acrobat, Lightroom, InDesign and other popular applications for paying monthly subscribers, was down for almost 24 hours this week, causing outrage among thousands of users who need the software for work.

Users in the U.S., Europe and Asia were all affected, starting on May 14th.

Early on, Adobe identified issues with Adobe Login, and put out a statement and tweet that they were working on restoring access. Would-be customers were unable to purchase subscriptions, as well.

Adobe announced last year that its Creative Suite of applications would be moving to the cloud, with apps and files saved locally, but with customers needing to login to their accounts to be able to use the software.

The company apologized for the huge outage, which is caused by "a failure during database maintenance activity."

Reads the blog post:

The next instalment of the legendary saga of Master Chief will land in Xbox One in the form of Halo 5: Guardians, it has been revealed.

343 Industries General Manager Bonnie Ross revealed Halo 5: Guardians today in a piece she wrote about bringing Halo to Xbox One. In the past, Halo has pushed forward Xbox and 343 has been working to ensure that Halo will return on Xbox One and will showcase its capabilities.

"Making a 'Halo; game that runs at 60 frames per second, on dedicated servers, with the scope, features and scale we've been dreaming of for more than a decade, is non-trivial," wrote Ross.

"It's a task that we, at 343 Industries, are taking very seriously to ensure we deliver the 'Halo' game that fans deserve, and a game that is built from the ground up for Xbox One."

You don't need to rush out and buy an Xbox One now to be prepared however, as Halo 5: Guardians is not slated to launch until the fall of 2015. According to Ross, 343 will work hard to get it right, using everything learning from the development of Halo 4, while admitting that Halo 5 will be a much bigger effort than it.

Next year will also witness the Halo television series that counts Steven Spielberg among its creators.

Rockstar Games has announced that its upcoming next-gen game is planned for release in the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2015.

Parent company Take-Two made the revelation during their quarterly earnings report.

Outside of that time frame, the company did not reveal anything about the game, or even whether it will be a sequel to one of their franchises or a whole new IP.

Rockstar has not had a new project announced since Grand Theft Auto V's launch in September of last year.

GTA V, which has sold 33 million copies for PS3 and Xbox 360, is not available for the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles. There have been rumors that a sequel to Red Dead Redemption is likely the next in line for the gaming studio.

Source:
CVG