HP buys Palm | Hewlett-Packard acquires Palm for $1.2 Billion. Hewlett-Packard Co. agreed to buy Palm Inc., the money-losing handset maker that was once a Silicon Valley icon, for $1.2 billion to challenge Apple Inc. in the smartphone market.

HP has just announced that it’s acquiring Palm to the tune of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock. The deal is planned to close by July 31, which marks the end of HP’s third fiscal quarter of the year.

Palm’s common shareholders will receive $5.70 a share in cash, a 23 percent premium over the closing price, Hewlett- Packard said in a statement today. Elevation Partners LP, Palm’s biggest investor, gets $485 million for its preferred shares and warrants.

The Palm deal moves Hewlett-Packard back into contention with the world’s biggest smartphone makers, including Nokia Oyj, Apple and Research In Motion Ltd. Hewlett-Packard’s current iPaq device hasn’t kept up with competitors.

BlackBerry Bold 9650 coming to Sprint this May 2010. RIM and Sprint on Monday announced the BlackBerry Bold 9650, a follow-up to the popular BlackBerry Tour, which adds Wi-Fi and ditches the troublesome trackball for an optical trackpad.

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 also includes Wi-Fi, which was missing from the Tour. Like the Tour, the Bold 9650 is a world phone that supports Sprint’s 3G CDMA network as well as foreign GSM and HSPA networks. It has GPS, Bluetooth, and a 3.2-megapixel camera, just like its predecessor. Sprint says the Bold 9650 will be available on May 23 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is basically a revamped version of the Tour 9630, with RIM’s new trackpad in place of its problematic trackpad, Wi-Fi support and slightly beefed-up processor.

Sprint is also expected to release a “camera-less” version of the Bold 9650 for organizations with strict security policies that ban digital cameras from certain premises. The Bold 9650 announcement at RIM’s 2010 Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) more than a month ago.

iPhone OS 3.1.3 Update Released and ready for Download via iTunes. Apple has released an update for the iPhone 3Gs OS, bringing the current version of the SDK to 3.1.3.

The shift is no big surprise — analysts have been expecting the iPhone to begin losing its stronghold to Android for some time now. According to Apple, the iPhone OS 3.1.3 update contains important bug fixes and security patches.

Apple has fixed five critical flaws in the OS software for the iPhone and iPod Touch, with the newly-released iPhone OS 3.1.3 update.

CoreAudio (CVE-2010-0036)—Due to a buffer overflow, playing a malicious MP4 audio file could lead to unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

ImageIO (CVE-2009-2285)—A buffer underflow in ImageIO could allow a malicious TIFF image to crash the system or execute arbitrary code.

Recovery Mode (CVE-2010-0038)—Due to an error in handling certain USB control messages, a person with physical access to the device could access its data.

WebKit (CVE-2009-3384)—There are multiple vulnerabilities in WebKit’s handling of FTP directory listings. A malicious FTP server could cause information disclosure, unexpected application termination, or execution of arbitrary code.

WebKit (CVE-2009-2841)—An error in the processing of HTML 5 Media Elements could lead to undesired requests to remote servers.

via PCWorld

Blackberry Outage December 22, 2009 during starts of Holidays Season. According to Jamie Ernst, spokeswoman for Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the smart phones, a technical glitch apparently caused a massive nationwide outage of Internet service on the devices.

NBC Los Angeles reports that RIM has explained they’re aware of the outage and are working to fix it, but did not give a timetable. The front page of the Blackberry website has no message about the problem.

RIM’s Blackberry Outage December 22 due to Winter Solstice? The Globe and Mail are reporting a nationwide Blackberry outage. Blackberry outage December 22 has affected whole of United States of America . RIM’s BlackBerry service outage seems to have affected a large number of its users across the US. It is estimated that several thousand people are not able to login on the internet due to the outage.

Research in Motion has admitted that the services in many areas are affect. RIM’s Blackberry Outage possible reason for this is the number of people using their Blackberry phones while traveling in this terrible winter weather blanketing the East Coast and causing air travel delays.

Samsung Bada UI Preview, Pictures, Photos, ScreenShots and Video. The new Samsung Bada UI OS is a definite looker and you can really tell it’s based on Samsung’s current non-smartphone TouchWiz UI.

RIMM : RIM’s Blackberry recently have a massive Email Outage. Research In Motion (RIMM) shares are sharply higher in late trading on stronger-than-expected results for its fiscal third quarter ended November 28, and guidance that exceeded Street expectations.reported that its third-quarter net income increased to US$628.37 million or US$1.10 per share from US$396.30 million or US$0.69 per share last year.

On average, 44 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report profit of US$1.04 per share for the quarter. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude special items

For the quarter, RIMM posted revenue of $3.92 billion and profits of $1.10 a share; the Street had been looking for $3.78 billion and $1.04. The company added 4.4 million net new BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter, and shipped about 10.1 million devices. Gross margin in the quarter was 42.7%.

For FY Q4, the company sees revenue of $4.2 billion to $4.4 billion, with EPS of $1.23 to $1.31 a share, ahead of the Street consensus at $4.1 billion and $1.12. The company expects to add 4.4 million to 4.7 million net new subs in the quarter. RIMM expects gross margin for the quarter to improve to 43.5%.

Blackberry Outage Today in North America, When will service be back to normal? The maker of BlackBerry devices says its customers in North America are experiencing delays receiving e-mail.
The company, Research In Motion Ltd., said Thursday it has technicians working on the problem.

The company says users are still able to make phone calls, browse the Internet and send and receive text messages.
The last time RIM’s BlackBerry service had a major outage was in February 2008, when an upgrade to the wireless system apparently caused a three-hour service disruption that affected millions of people.

[via AP]

Blackberry Outage : I can’t Send and Received Email. The maker of BlackBerry devices says its customers in North America are experiencing delays receiving e-mail.
The company, Research In Motion Ltd., said Thursday it has technicians working on the problem.

The company says users are still able to make phone calls, browse the Internet and send and receive text messages.
The last time RIM’s BlackBerry service had a major outage was in February 2008, when an upgrade to the wireless system apparently caused a three-hour service disruption that affected millions of people.

[via AP]

Biggest Blackberry Email Outage Ever : There is a Blackberry outage across America. If you can’t access your Blackberry Internet Service and RIM, you might be one of the users affected by the Blackberry outage across North and South America

The problem was seen mainly in North and South America all over. Users were facing difficulties in Internet only, though other services were almost OK.

Thousands of BlackBerry users across North and South America were left in the dark Thursday as the company reported a widespread email outage.
A spokeswoman with Research in Motion said the outage only affects emails sent and received on personal BlackBerry accounts. The majority of users on corporate plans should not have any interruption in service.