Motorola Mobility, the consumer devices subsidiary that’s being formally spun off from the rest of Motorola, announced today that it’s acquired a start-up called Zecter, which makes software for cloud storage and file-sharing. It’ll work the technology from Zecter’s products, ZumoDrive and ZumoCast, into its MotoBlur service so that subscribers can access and sync files …

Taiwan-based news outlet DigiTimes cited “industry sources” Friday in a report that claims cell phone manufacturer HTC will ship 60 million handsets in 2011, triple 2010’s number. It’s unclear as to whether this refers solely to smartphones or whether this also involves yet-to-be-released tablet devices. As one of the biggest hardware manufacturers producing Android phones (from the successful Droid line …

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in New York to unveil the new Windows Phone 7 series today. Click here for part 1 of CNET’s one-on-one interview with him.” credit=”Jason DeCrow” alt=”” creditUrl=”” targetUrl=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20019259-56.html”/> Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s characterization of the new Windows Phone 7 OS as “always delightful and wonderfully mine” may go down in tech marketing-speak history. But what …

NEW YORK–If Apple CEO Steve Jobs has spent the past few years pitching the iPhone as the ultimate, universal mobile device, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s answer with his company’s Windows Phone 7 OS, is the opposite. There is, Ballmer subtly implied at today’s formal unveiling of Windows Phone 7 here, no such thing as one phone for everyone–but there can …

A federal case which alleged wireless carrier T-Mobile had blocked text messages from a service that claimed a medical marijuana dispensary as one of its clients, was settled outside of the court this week according to a report in Wired.com. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleged that T-Mobile had blocked …

Employee reductions have once again hit Verizon Communications’ earnings. The telecommunications giant reported Friday a loss of 7 cents per share related in part to $2.3 billion in pre-tax costs related to “incentive” packages for what it dubbed 11,000 “voluntary workforce reductions” this year. Excluding those costs, second-quarter profits were 58 cents per share, beating Wall Street’s estimates of 56 …

CBS has purchased Last.fm, a social-networking site devoted to music. What it plans to do with the site, however, isn’t clear yet. With the $280 million deal, announced Wednesday, CBS has acquired a popular social-media technology: the music “scrobbling” engine developed by Last.fm that analyzes what its members listen to. Based on scrobbling results, Last.fm offers recommendations for members’ playlists, …

EMI Group will soon sell digital music with better sound quality and no digital rights management restrictions through Apple’s iTunes Store. EMI’s entire digital music catalog will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London. Beatles tunes under EMI’s control, however, are not part of the plan. …

The EMI Group record label has licensed its music catalog of more than 1,000 artists to Qtrax, a legal peer-to-peer network owned by Brilliant Technologies. Qtrax, which has yet to be released, also has licensing agreements with several other music corporations, such as BMI and the Association of Independent Music. Legal P2P networks have become more commonplace in the wake …

EMI Group, as part of a larger effort to support peer-to-peer networks that allow the sharing of licensed music files, has agreed to share its digital library with P2P start-up Mashboxx. The record label, whose 1,000-plus artists include Janet Jackson, Gorillaz, the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, is not the first to license its content for use on Mashboxx. According to …