Daily Tech Briefing: April 3, 2014

On April 25, T-Mobile’s license to sell BlackBerry smartphones will expire, and according to a recent announcement from BlackBerry CEO John Chen, the company does not plan on renewing that license. Chen explained that while Blackberry has maintained a positive relationship with T-Mobile over the years, he said “our strategies are not complementary and we must act in the best interest of our BlackBerry customers.”

There was some controversy in February when T-Mobile released ads directed at BlackBerry users stating “Now is the time to upgrade to iPhone 5S.” While T-Mobile has made efforts to make amends with BlackBerry since, this recent decision suggests it may not have been enough.

Microsoft on April 2 announced its Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 Release Candidate, a follow-up to last year’s November release of its Visual Studio 2013, a collection of tools and services for creating apps. This announcement was made at the Build 2014 conference in San Francisco, and explained that Update 2 will include Windows Phone tools and support for universal Windows application development.

Apple will soon begin production on the iPhone 6, and there has been a lot of speculation regarding what features this new phone will have. Now, the Website GforGames claims they have pictures sent from someone at Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, of purported Phone 6 designs.

According to GforGames, Apple has been debating whether to make the phone much thinner than previous models and allow the camera lens to protrude out the back, or to have a thicker phone to incorporate the lens into it. The leaked photos seem to suggest that Apple will be trying out the former.

Finally, Intel announced it will be starting a $100 million fund and creating an innovation center in China, in an effort to fuel the development of smart systems like smartphones and wearable devices that will be powered by Intel processors. Also, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich debuted a new device at the Intel Developer Forum in China on April 2 that’s aimed at& the Internet of things.