Samsung Electronics Co. sold more than 300,000 units of smartphones running on long-term evolution networks, the high-speed wireless data service, in about one month of their debut, according to industry data released Friday. Since sales began on Oct. 27, Samsung’s Galaxy S2 LTE smartphone accounted for around half of South Korea’s burgeoning LTE phone market that is estimated at 600,000 units, ...

Facebook has allied with Taiwan's HTC to build a customized smartphone powered by Google's Android mobile operating system, according to technology blog All Things Digital. The project, code named "Buffy," is aimed at making a handset tailored for the California-based social networking platform, according to the blog, which is owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The device...

A Microsoft Corp. senior executive met South Korea‘s telecommunications regulator on Thursday to discuss ways to expand ties with South Korea by collaborating on new businesses that may include building a data center, government officials said. Jean Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft’s international business, met Choi See-joong, chairman of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), in Se...

The Korea Communications Commission granted KT Corp. permission to end its feature phone service beginning on Dec. 8 on Wednesday. The state telecom regulator said KT will have two weeks to inform its existing 159,000 feature phone users by at least two different methods -- including mail -- that they will need to change to smartphones running on third generation (3G) networks or choose other mo...

ZTE Corp., China’s second-largest phone-equipment maker, plans to invest 2 billion yuan ($314 million) in a facility to support China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd.’s e-book service. The Internet center in Changsha will be expanded over the next three years to more than 1,000 workers from 300 now, ZTE Vice President Yu Yifang said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News Tuesday. The center will support the WoRe...

Global production of active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays is forecast to more than double in 2012 from this year, driven by smartphone and mobile demand, a market report said Tuesday. According to the report by IHS iSuppli, global shipments of AMOLED displays will jump 110 percent from this year and hit 154.7 million units in 2012. The market research firm estimated this...

HTC Corp.’s loss in a patent infringement case against Apple Inc. casts doubt on its decision to spend $300 million to buy S3 Graphics Co. to boost its chances of a licensing deal to end the dispute. The U.S. International Trade Commission said yesterday that S3 Graphics’s patent rights weren’t violated by Apple, rejecting a request for an order that could have limited imports of some Mac comput...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, which started shipping this week, costs $201.70 to make, a research firm said Friday. That's $2.70 more than Amazon charges for it. The analysis by IHS indicates that Amazon is, at least initially, selling the tablet at a loss that it hopes to cover through sales of books and movies for the device. The manufacturing cost of a new gadget usua...

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest supplier of TVs and liquid crystal display panels, said Friday that it has begun to receive orders in 23 countries for its multitouch table displays, as the company has recently been trying to woo corporate customers. Jointly developed with Microsoft Corp., the 40-inch display “SUR40,” a big-size table with a multitouch screen, can be installed in air...

Amazon, which began shipping a tablet computer this week, may be eyeing the smartphone market. Citigroup said in a research note published on Thursday that it believes the Seattle-based online retail giant plans to launch a smartphone next year. "Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi's Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone wi...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Google unveiled its much-anticipated digital music store Wednesday, opening a new front in its battle with Apple to provide services over mobile devices. For the first time, Google Inc. will sell songs on the Android Market, its online store for apps, movies and books. The service is available over the next few days to customers in the U.S., but it aims to roll it out eventua...

Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday that it will begin sales of a modified version of its Galaxy Tab tablet computer in Germany next week, as it seeks to bypass a sales ban asserted by Apple Inc. in the European country. The revised Galaxy Tab 10.1 for the German market has been renamed the Galaxy Tab 10.1N and has two design modifications from the original version, the company‘s spokesman in ...

Hynix Semiconductor Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, on Thursday welcomed a U.S. jury’s decision to reject Rambus Inc.’s antitrust allegation against the Korean chipmaker. On Wednesday, a San Francisco jury ruled that Hynix and Micron Technology Inc., a U.S. chipmaker, did not engage in joint illegal actions to prevent Rambus from expanding in the semiconductor market. “We wel...

NEW YORK (AP) _ Facebook said Wednesday that it has stopped most of the spam that has flooded many users' pages with pictures showing graphic sex and violence. The social-networking company urged its 800 million-plus users to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked. That includes reporting suspicious links on friends' pages and not clicking on links that offer deals that are ...