Latest news

Sprint, who has been rumored to be preparing a bid for rival T-Mobile, is closer to doing so after meeting with banks in order to make debt arrangements.

CFO Joe Euteneuer and Treasurer Greg Block met with as many as six banks to structure the financing of the bid, which could be as high as $40 billion.

Sprint was recently acquired by Japan's third-largest carrier, SoftBank, and a merger of Sprint (third largest carrier in the U.S.) and T-Mobile (a close fourth) is likely just another inevitably in the ever consolidating industry.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice will have to approve such a deal, which is not a definite. A merger would reduce costs between the giants, and expand capacity. Sprint would also have to agree to a deal termination fee, in case regulators break up the effort. When AT&T tried to acquire T-Mobile and was blocked by regulators, they had to pay $6 billion, literally paying T-Mobile to become a much stronger rival.

Sprint is the only major carrier to continue to lose subscribers, and the only carrier to report losses nearly every quarter. T-Mobile, on the other hand, has gained millions of new subscribers in the last year after ditching contracts, dropping the price of monthly bills for unlimited options, and adding free features like international roaming.

Motorola has sent press invites for an event in London on May 13th where the company will unveil a new smartphone.

"Connect more people to the world's information and each other, and they can do great things," reads the invite. "Introducing the next smartphone from Motorola to make these connections happen. Made to last. Priced for all."

The rumored device to be introduced is the Moto E, which will be second generation of the popular Moto G, which sells for $179 and features a spec sheet normally found outside of that price range. The Moto E reportedly has a 4.3-inch screen, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage, a 5MP camera and a 1900mAh battery.

The low-end specs are enhanced by dual SIM capabilities and a digital TV tuner and near-stock Android 4.4.

Facebook has confirmed that the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset could go on sale for consumers next year.

The social networking giant purchased Oculus earlier this year for $2 billion, and the team says they will be greatly "disappointed" if there is not a consumer headset available before 2016.

Currently, there is no word on eventual pricing, and there are not enough games to justify a full launch, but developers are actively working on support for games.

While the company has two versions available for demo (Crystal Cove and DK2), supposedly the company has a secret room in their offices in LA that houses a better device, one that in "user testing it gets to a level of realism where almost all people feel that it's realistic.. Imagine everything you can see now, but it's a little bit pixelated. Eventually that [pixelation] will go away," says Andreeseen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon. Horowitz, the noted VC firm, is an investor in the company.

Dixon said that Facebook bought the company after CEO Mark Zuckerberg went into that room and tested the headset.

Last week, we reported that Microsoft had confirmed a zero-day vulnerability that put a large portion of the world's computer users at risk. The exploit affects Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 and Windows XP users are especially vulnerable since the company no longer supports the operating system.

Despite the OS being end-of-life (EOL), Microsoft has released an update for Windows XP (and everyone else).

Via Microsoft's blog post:

The security of our products is something we take incredibly seriously, so the news coverage of the last few days about a vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) has been tough for our customers and for us. We take a huge amount of pride that, among widely used browsers, IE is the safest in the world due to its secure development and ability to protect customers, even in the face of cybercriminals who want to break it.

Acer has jumped into the wearables market with its Liquid Leap smart band.

Without revealing too many details, the company says the fitness band is 17mm wide, pairs with smartphones and will come bundled in some markets with the new Acer Liquid Jade smartphone.

The company expects to launch the devices in July, but a North American release is not in the cards.

Acer says the touchscreen device can blend fitness tracking with notifications, likely having less functionality than current offerings from Samsung and others. It is also unclear what operating system will power the Leap.

Just a month after Microsoft launched their Office suite for iPad, Google has responded by releasing Google Docs and Google Sheets for iOS.

Until now, any productivity content you may have had was restricted to Google Drive or the Web browser, which were not overall great experiences. Additionally, Google's PowerPoint-equivalent Slides is "coming soon" but has not reached the App Store like its brothers.

Google has had dedicated apps for Android for some time.

Reads the release for Docs:

Create, edit & collaborate with others on documents from your iPod, iPhone, or iPad with the free Google Docs app.

With Google Docs you can:

-Create new documents or open and edit any that you started on the web or another device.
-Share documents and work together with others in the same document at the same time
-Get stuff done anytime–even without an internet connection
-Add and respond to comments
-Never worry about losing your work–everything is automatically saved as you type

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Microsoft in a case in which it was accused of antitrust practices nearly twenty years ago.

Novell, which once developed word-processing program WordPerfect, accused Microsoft of witholding key software components while building Windows 95, thus making it much harder for rivals to build software that could run smoothly on the operating system.

By doing so, WordPerfect had its development severely slowed, said Novell, causing Microsoft Word to move forward and become the dominate word processing program. Novell had claimed that Microsoft "made its own operating system less attractive to consumers in order to crush competition and protect its operating system monopoly."

The Supreme Court Justices rejected the appeal and did not make any comment.

Source:
Bloomberg

Last night, Sony released v1.70 firmware update for the PlayStation 4, adding numerous key features including HDCP disabling and the addition of ShareFactory.

Unfortunately, users have flocked to Reddit to note issues and bugs they are having with the update.

One Reddit user reported a black screen bug upon disabling HDCP. After disabling HDCP and launching SHAREfactory, the user wrote: "After playing around with a BF4 clip for a few minutes, and being quite impressed I realized I couldn't hear any sound. So I backed out, went to Amazon to quickly play some TV to check that sound was working (quicker than loading a game, or so I thought) and went straight to a black screen. Despite numerous reboots, I've since been unable to connect directly from PS4–>HDMI–>TV. I just get the black screen."

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation and longtime movie industry veteran, had a few interesting proposals for the future of movies.

Katzenberg says in the future, you will be able to pay for movies according to the size of the screen you want to watch them on. After a quick run in theaters, the exec says you will be able to purchase the movie or rent, depending on the display size. Says Katzenberg: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99," for example.

Extended movie theater runs will no longer be necessary if the new model is adapted. "I think the model will change and you won't pay for the window of availability. A movie will come out and you will have 17 days, that's exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies," he explains.

As far as the future of the industry is concerned, the CEO admits that "movies are not a growth business" and that the whole industry will need to "reinvent the enterprise of movies" over the next decade.

Source:
Variety

Last month, Microsoft unveiled their suite of Office applications for iPads. The popular apps saw 12 million downloads in their first week.

Today, the software giant updated the apps, adding the ability to print along with some other improvements. Microsoft says printing was the top requested feature since launch.

Says Microsoft: "Your top request is here! You can now print Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to an AirPrintTM printer. In Word for iPad, you can choose to print a document with or without markup. In Excel, print a selected range, a single worksheet or an entire spreadsheet. Of course, you can select the pages or slides you want to print."

Additionally, the company has added "SmartGuides" in PowerPoint to help align pictures, shapes, text and more within the slide. The update also fixes some bugs and improves overall performance.

Hulu has announced that they will be opening up some content to free users via mobile devices.

Normally, you need to be a Hulu Plus subscriber at $8 per month to have access to Hulu on your mobile devices or TV. Otherwise, the shows and movies are available for free on desktops.

CEO Mike Hopkins says the free episodes will begin over the summer and will first be available to Android users, followed quickly by iOS with the release of a new iPhone app. Currently, free users can only access some clips via mobile devices but no full-length content.

The executive also noted that Hulu is still in negotiations with cable providers to integrate the service into their cable boxes, similar to what Netflix has done overseas and recently here in the U.S. with some small providers.

Finally, Hopkins boasted about Hulu Plus' growth, stating: "Hulu Plus is now accessible on more than 400 million internet-connected devices in the United States, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Chromecast, and most recently, Amazon's new set-top box, Amazon Fire TV. After redesigning our living room devices such as Roku and Wii-U, we saw average-minutes-viewed increase by over 30%. And out of our tens of millions of viewers, there are 3000 unique ways Hulu viewers access content on Hulu and Hulu Plus (for example, I watch on my iPad and Apple TV)."

According to multiple reports, Google has an "Android Silver" program in the pipeline, one that will replace their own Nexus devices.

OEMs invited to the Silver program will build reference devices (like the Nexus 5 and Google Play Edition devices) and the partnerships will be incentive-driven.

Reportedly, the incentives include indirect payments through marketing and in-store displays with trained Google employees. To be part of the program the devices must be as close to stock as possible, or potentially if there are apps pre-installed, that they can be uninstalled easily.

For consumers, this means that Android updates will come a lot quicker than current methods, where some smartphones and tablets needs months if not years to receive the latest Android operating system update. Additionally, Google is said to be spearheading hardware advancements, as well, including better water proofing, better voice recognition and improved display resolutions.

Sprint has officially announced a partnership with Spotify for its Framily plan customers, as leaked two weeks ago.

The carrier is offering six free months of Spotify for its Framily plan customers, followed by a $7.99 monthly price (compared to $9.99) if your plan has one to five lines attached. If you have over 5 lines, the price is $4.99, a nice fifty percent discount.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek noted the obvious, calling the partnership the "biggest deal we've ever made." The executive confirmed that Sprint customers will get the deal starting on May 9th.

Spotify has 8 million subscribers around the globe, and Sprint has 54 million subscribers, making it the third largest carrier in the nation.

Harper Lee, author behind the literary classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," has finally made the book available digitally through legitimate channels.

"I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries," Lee said on the eve of her 88th birthday. "This is Mockingbird for a new generation."

The classic book, written in 1960, follows the relationships of a Southern white attorney as he defends a black man accused of rape in the 1930s. The book is one of the top selling of all time, having moved over 30 million copies in English alone. The book is now available in over 40 languages.

Both an ebook and digital audio companion will be released on July 8th.

Source:
CNN

LG's upcoming G Watch smartwatch has finally been given a release date and price, at least for the European markets.

The watch will be the first to the commercial market using Google's Android Wear operating system for wearables when it hits in June. The watch has been priced at €199 for Europe, with an expected $199 price tag for the U.S., as well.

LG's new endeavor features a rectangular face, a 1.65-inch screen and 4GB internal storage.

Among the specs and features we know about is the fact that the device will have an "always-on" screen, will be dust and water proof and will be available in both black and champagne gold.

Android Wear, introduced by Google earlier this year, is built around the Google Now user interface and includes access to Google Maps and built-in voice controls.