Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touts the Messenger app, now rolling out to anyone with a phone number. James Martin/CNET Soon, Facebook Messenger might be known simply as “Messenger.” That’s because the world’s largest social network announced on Wednesday that users in select countries can access the popular mobile app even if they don’t have a …

SAN FRANCISCO — Eventually, mobile will be everything, according to PayPal President David Marcus. That might have been a bold statement a year or even six months ago. But based on traffic and ad revenue figures experienced by some other tech giants lately (see Yahoo and Facebook, for starters), perhaps it’s just stating the obvious at this point. During a …

All of us have resolutions and things we’d like to work better at in 2014, but there are few who have as tough a road ahead as BlackBerry’s latest chief executive officer, John Chen. Getting the ball rolling early on a Monday morning when many in the tech world are still on vacation if not slowly meandering back into the …

Here’s some buzzkill news to get your day started (at least for those of us on the West Coast). Market intelligence firm IHS iSuppli has published a new report suggesting it is unlikely that Google will deploy Fiber on a nationwide level. The natural first reaction might be annoyance with this, but when you think about the cost, scope and …

There are a number of different predictions floating around about how many Internet-connected devices there will be worldwide within the next few years. But regardless of those numbers, we can all be sure that mobile Internet data traffic is going to explode exponentially as well. Cisco Systems has chimed in with its latest predictions through 2017 in regard to mobile …

SAN FRANCISCO — Nokia has put its mapping unit front and center with the introduction of its Here cloud-based location brand and platform, which was unveiled during a media event here this morning. “Maps and location experiences should inspire us to sense our world,” said Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop, adding that the Helsinki-based corporation is now working on …

Tablets are “reinventing” Americans’ relationship with print publications, according to a new report from digital-business analytics firm ComScore. Based on new figures, more and more tablet owners in the United States are using their tablets to read digital periodicals on a daily basis. For example, ComScore cited that approximately 1 in 10 tablet owners read digital magazines and/or newspapers on …

Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open-source version of WebOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door. Today’s release includes two environments for developers. The first is the desktop build, which is said to provide “the ideal development environment” for designing the WebOS user experience with more features and integrating other open-source technologies on …

Google Wallet is likely on a more mainstream path to wider adoption with U.S. consumers as the system is moving to the cloud, meaning it should be able to accept all major credit and debit cards. Specifically, the new cloud-based version of the Google Wallet app supports all credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Robin …

The number of U.S. mobile phone subscribers switching from feature phones to smartphones is almost at the halfway mark, according to a new report from ComScore. Roughly 110 million Americans owned a smartphone device as of April 2012, an increase of 44 percent from the previous year. Specifically, 47.5 percent of feature phone owners switched to a smartphone when buying …