Nicholas Kolakowski

Nokia plans to release its first Windows Phone smartphones close to the end of 2011. It’s a huge bet for the Finnish phone maker, which abandoned its homegrown operating systems in favor of Microsoft’s platform. Failure to seize the minds of consumers and businesses will mean further market-share declines, and a greatly reduced chance of […]

Tablet shipments will outpace those of e-readers by 2012, according to a new analyst report. Research firm In-Stat’s survey of 1,000 U.S. respondents found that some 38 percent owned a tablet, versus 26 percent who packed an e-reader. Moreover, it estimated global e-reader shipments at 40 million by 2015, a significant number that will nonetheless […]

Apple could be back in black, at least when it comes to the MacBook Air. “Over the past week, we’ve received several anonymous tips claiming that at least some models of the next-generation MacBook Air will be available with a black finish,” read a June 20 posting on the Apple-centric blog MacRumors. “The most specific […]

The U.S. Department of Justice has approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. Now the fun part begins. Once the deal is closed, Skype will become a Microsoft division headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates, with its services meshed with a variety of Microsoft products such as the Lync unified communications platform, Outlook, and Xbox […]

More features of Windows 8 have apparently seeped out, courtesy of an early build that leaked onto the Web. “A new build of Windows 8, build 7989, has surfaced,” the blog Redmond Pie reported June 18. “Slowly but surely, it’s finding its way onto file-sharing sites, and some Windows enthusiasts have already dug deep into […]

When Microsoft released Windows 7 in October 2009, the software giant had two very particular goals in mind (aside, of course, from selling a whole lot of copies of its flagship software). The first was to remove the lingering stigma of Windows Vista, which never managed to overcome its early reputation as an unwieldy and […]

Research In Motion and Nokia are competitors in the smartphone space. But when it comes to long-term strategy, it’s increasingly clear the two embattled companies are very much in the same boat. Both have faced a tumbling stock price, executive shakeups and analyst negativity about their future prospects. RIM earned $4.9 billion in revenue for […]

Microsoft’s relatively quiet week saw a significant Patch Tuesday and a new phase of life for its popular Kinect hands-free game controller. June’s Patch Tuesday tackled some 24 bugs across 16 bulletins. It wasn’t quite as big as April’s session, but certainly covered a lot of ground: in addition to patching Windows, bulletins targeted vulnerabilities […]

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is expanding its lawsuit against Samsung, now targeting the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet as yet another product it says violates its intellectual property rights. “The original complaint already accused Samsung of -slavishly copying’ Apple’s designs,” Florian Mueller, a self-described intellectual property activist, wrote in a June 17 breakdown on his Foss […]

Consumer Reports has rated Barnes & Noble’s touch-powered, grayscale Nook higher than Amazon’s Kindle device. “That marks the first time since the Kindle launched that Amazon’s e-book reader hasn’t been the top-scoring model in our Ratings,” Consumer Reports’ Paul Reynolds wrote in a June 17 posting on its Website. “It also continues the steady improvement […]

Facebook is reportedly prepping an official application for the iPad. According to a July 16 article in The New York Times, itself quoting unnamed “people briefed on Facebook’s plans,” the social network is prepping a free application for release in the coming year. The software has been under development for the past year. “One person […]

Facebook could be prepping an HTML5-based platform for mobile apps, something that could end up directly challenging Apple’s App Store. “The initial target is both surprising and awesome: mobile Safari,” TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, who claims to have seen the project firsthand, wrote in a June 15 posting. “Facebook will never admit this, but those familiar […]