Line Line Corp., the developer of popular Japanese messaging app Line that competes with WhatsApp and BBM globally, is planning to go public, according to reports Tuesday. The company has already applied for an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange at a 1 trillion yen, about $10 billion, valuation, an unnamed source told …

Christopher McManus/CNET The long-rumored Apple iWatch might actually be quite a success in its first year on store shelves, data from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty shows. Apple will price the iWatch at $300 and sell between 30 million and 60 million units in its first year on store shelves, Huberty wrote in a research report to investors on Monday. …

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 Andrew Hoyle/CNET Samsung is planning to launch a new, high-end smartphone next month that will be designed to take on the iPhone 6, according to reports out of Korea. Over the weekend, Korean publication ETNews reported that Samsung is working on a device known as the Galaxy Alpha that it plans to launch in August. Samsung wants …

Apple’s A7 processor from Samsung. Apple Apple has finally started breaking ties with Samsung and its mobile processors, according to a new report. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), a mobile chipmaker that signed a deal with Apple last year to make processors for the company, has started shipping those components, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people who claim …

Sony’s Project Morpheus Josh Miller/CNET Samsung is indeed getting into the virtual reality market, but the company has received some help from Facebook’s Oculus VR, according to a new report. Samsung is planning to unveil a virtual reality device in September at Berlin’s at IFA 2014 consumer-electronics trade show, a report from Samsung-tracking site Sammobile claims. Samsung worked with Facebook’s …

Apple Apple has lost a patent-infringement case in China over Siri, according to reports. Shanghai-based Zhizhen Internet Technology won its patent-infringement case against Apple on Monday when Beijing’s First Intermediate Court ruled that Apple’s virtual personal assistant Siri was infringing a speech-recognition patent Zhizhen holds. Zhizhen sued Apple in 2012, claiming that the company’s Siri, which is used on iPhones, …

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 Andrew Hoyle/CNET Samsung Display, a Samsung subsidiary that’s affiliated with Samsung Electronics, is having some trouble selling its mobile display technology to any other firms. Speaking at an industry event in Seoul on Wednesday, Samsung Display CEO Park Dong-geun said that while Samsung Electronics is buying its active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) technology for its mobile devices, …

A customized Normal earbud. Normal Normal, a small startup with roots in the US, has launched a new way for customers to get form-fitting earbuds that the company says sound quite good. Normal’s technology starts first on mobile devices. Customers can download the Normal app on iOS and Android and need only to snap a photo of both ears. The …

Blackphone Sarah Tew/CNET Blackphone, a privacy-obsessed smartphone developed in response to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of Americans’ phone records, started shipping Monday. The $629 phone, created as a joint venture between Silent Circle and Geeksphone, was unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February. The device’s sales pitch claims that security and privacy are put …

Sony Sony’s television division, which will be spun off Tuesday into a new subsidiary known as Sony Visual Products, will finally turn a profit this fiscal year, its chief executive believes. Although he stopped short of saying just how much of a profit the Sony television business would generate, chief Masashi Imamura told reporters in Japan on Monday that a …