AT&T ended 2011 on a down note, posting a massive, $6.7 billion loss in the fourth quarter due largely to a change in how it accounts for its employee pension benefits and the breakup fee it was required to pay after scrapping its bid to buy T-Mobile USA. The Dallas telecommunications giant posted a fourth-quarter …

If indie bands can dress like Fleetwood Mac circa 1975, and women in New York City can sport leg warmers like “Flashdance” extras, why can’t Samsung bring back the stylus pen for tablets and smartphones? It seems like the company just might try to revive this old trend, much like those indie rockers and fashionable hipsters of New York City …

After Apple’s historic holiday quarter, Wall Street analysts (for the most part) are champing at the bit to raise predictions for AAPL, citing overwhelmingly strong iPhone and iPad sales last year and high expectations for new product releases this year. Screenshot by Joe Aimonetti According to a report by The Apple Blog, several analysts think Apple is still on the …

Change is never easy. Just ask Nokia, which today posted its third consecutive quarter of hefty losses, despite strong sales of its new Windows Phone portfolio. In the fourth quarter, the Finnish handset maker said it lost 1.07 billion euros, or $1.4 billion. During the same period a year ago, the company posted a 745 euro profit. Overall handset sales …

Fingers crossed for the Samsung Galaxy S3? Stand by to be disappointed: reports suggest it’s not turning up in the next month as expected. The S3, the expected follow-up to the hugely popular Samsung Galaxy S2, won’t be among the swathe of new phones announced in February at Mobile World Congress, the traditional launchpad of the year’s new mobiles, according …

Motorola Mobility swung to a fourth-quarter loss thanks largely to expenses related to the pending takeover by Google. The mobile devices and set-top box maker reported a loss of $80 million, or 27 cents a share, mirroring a year-earlier profit of $80 million, or 27 cents a share. Revenue rose slightly to $3.44 billion. Excluding its merger-related costs, charges taken …

As smartphone shipments continued to surge throughout 2011, Apple reclaimed its chief position as the No. 1 smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Numbers are rounded Strategy Analytics Throughout various countries, using dozens of operators, the iPhone family overtook Samsung with 24 percent of the market share in the fourth quarter. During this time, …

commentary The birth of the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx‘s extra-large battery may have been unintended, but it shouldn’t have been. Motorola’s stars aligned, CNET learned, when an engineer began experimenting with a thicker, but more muscular battery than what’s in the original Droid Razr. Moto’s CEO Sanjay Jha loved it, Verizon came around, and as a result, the Droid Razr …

90 per cent of iPhone buyers rejected a bargain, instead seduced by the iPhone 4S — despite the fact it’s so similar to the previous model. Which leads us to ask: are we blindly addicted to the latest, shiniest thing even when it’s not the sensible option? A new study by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners breaks down iPhone sales, and …

Prada, sweetie! The LG Prada Phone toe-to-heels down the mobile runway and into phone shops tomorrow. The Android-powered high-fashion phone hits the high street, going on sale at Phones4U stores and online, for delivery before the end of the month. It’s been a while since LG’s had a hit phone — could the officially named Prada Phone by LG 3.0 …

When the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime launched in late 2011, the hope was that it would be the first tablet to have and hold Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), the latest version of the Android OS. While the tablet eventually launched with Honeycomb, no other tablet has yet to be released running ICS (although, the Xoom has received an update …

Clearly, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson had some things to get off of his chest. Stephenson made a rare appearance during the company’s quarterly financial conference call today, using part of his time to blast the Federal Communications Commission, which he accused of “picking winners and losers” in how it regulates and approves deals. “The rules are so fluid, you can …

You know the old saying: necessity is the mother of invention. The necessity? film two sides of a conversation with one iPhone. The invention: the Love Box video mixer, a wood contraption that looks like it was born in shop class. The result: documentary filmmakers were able to record a real-time conversation between two people, one on either side of …

According to app store analytics researcher Distimo, developers who put their iPhone and iPad apps on sale in Apple’s App Store see a significant jump in revenue, as do Android developers using the Android Market. For the report, Distimo examined 100 of the top apps in Apple’s App Store (for iPhone and iPad) as well as the top 100 for …

The hotly anticipated arrival of the Nokia Lumia 800 wasn’t enough to prevent the Finnish phone-flinger losing a whopping €1bn at the end of last year. Nokia’s Q4 results, announced today, reveal that the new Lumia Windows Phones arrived too late to turn around an £800m loss during the last three months of 2011, although Nokia says it has sold …