Samsung took home almost all of the profits generated in the Android smartphone world last quarter, according to a report today from Strategy Analytics. For the first quarter, global Android smartphone profits totaled $5.3 billion. Samsung captured a hefty 95 percent, or $5.1 billion, of that amount. Strategy Analytics senior analyst Woody Oh pinned Samsung’s …

ORLANDO, Fla. — Here at BlackBerry Live 2013, BB10 devices weren’t in short supply though vendors hawking compelling consumer apps were few and far in between. That’s a shame too since much of the news from the conference this year centered on new applications and software services coming to the BlackBerry 10 platform. These include the professional music app Moog, …

AT&T seems perfectly willing to let Google blaze the trail when it comes to fiber-optic deployment. Google has said it plans to deploy its fiber network in select neighborhoods in Austin, Texas. AT&T said it would also like to build a fiber network — under the same kinds of terms and conditions. “We will probably piggyback on the rules and …

Prepaid smartphone sales are starting to become more popular, according to new data from market researcher NPD Group. NPD released on Wednesday a study that found 32 percent of all smartphone purchases came from prepaid devices during the first quarter. During the same period in 2012, that figure stood at 21 percent. Although “postpaid” devices, which are subsidized but can …

SAN FRANCISCO — At this year’s Google I/O developer’s conference, a promise was made: Chrome on Android will start feeling more like Chrome on the desktop. This is as it should be. I’ve never understood why Chrome and Android function as separate environments. They’re two sides of the same coin; Chrome handles superior cloud-computing and Web use, and Android handles …

In a shock move, Google has revealed a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 that’s running pure Android, just like one of Google’s own Nexus gadgets. The officially confirmed device, which is yet to be officially named but was dubbed ‘Google Edition’ in an earlier rumour, is a dream device for many Android fans, as it offers the high-end hardware …

Tests suggest that when new 4G services launch this summer, they won’t have as much of an effect on Freeview TV signals as previously thought. 4G signals zap high-speed Internet into your phone on a frequency perilously close to the frequency used to send Freeview to your telly, leading to concern that 4G would interfere with Freeview. But in the …

PayPal is taking a major leap into the payment-processing space: it’s eliminating fees for businesses that sign up for its service. The news was announced on Tuesday by PayPal president David Marcus, who said that any business that dumps its old point-of-sale (POS) services in favor of PayPal Here — the company’s mobile-payment-processing service — or another POS offering that …

Google TV, the ambitious living room operating system often maligned as slow to update, difficult to use, and less focused than alternatives like Roku or standard Smart TV suites, will finally get a major operating system upgrade later this year. LG announced today at Google I/O that its Google TVs will get the update to Android version 4.2.2, aka Jelly …

4K is finally getting more affourdable, as Sony brings its Ultra HD X9 range of TVs to the UK for £4,000. Four grand’s a heck of a lot for most people to blow on a gogglebox, but it’s dramatically cheaper than next-gen tellies have been so far. Samsung’s 4K effort, the S9, recently went on sale in Selfridges for a …