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Chip manufacturer Renesas Mobile has unveiled the MP5232, a processor that will allow vendors to build LTE (Long Term Evolution)smartphones with a price tag between $150 and $300, the company said Wednesday. The big advantage of the 1.5GHz dual-core processor is that it is a single-chip product that can do both 3G and LTE, eliminating the need to use separate chipsets for the two technologies. A more integrated device results in a cheaper product that takes up less space and uses less power,... 

Intel has revealed some additional information on the 2012 mobile strategy to its partners and it even shared some pricing guidelines for mobile products. According to a slide entitled Mobile Landscape in 2012, Intel wants to sell mobile phones powered by its CPUs for as little as $199 to $299. This is where Intel sees a market opportunity for its phones and the prices are surprisingly low. It also places netbooks in the same price range $199 to $299 while Intel based tablets should float... 

Apple “takes working conditions very seriously”, the firm’s CEO Tim Cook said at a conference yesterday. Cook was speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference, according to Mac Rumours. He said the company is committed to making sure working conditions are up to standard, and that Apple’s top priority will be to eliminate underage workers. He added, “If we find a supplier that intentionally hires underage labor, it’s a firing offence.” Cook said, “Apple takes working conditions... 

Apple will debut a new iPad some time in early March, and will start selling it the following week, according to reports and industry analyst expectations. The March debut of the iPad 3, as some have called it, was first reported today by AllThingsD, the blog owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the blog said Apple will host a launch event the first week of March, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a regular venue... 

Chrome for Android will not run Flash Player, the popular software that Apple has famously banned, Adobe confirmed Wednesday. The acknowledgment was no surprise: Last November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers. In other words, Google missed the Flash boat by several months. “Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content,” said Bill Howard, a group product manager on... 

The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday. Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol... 

Amid widespread concern about its new privacy policies, Google is now facing additional criticism over a deal to offer users Amazon gift certificates if they open their Web movements to the company in a program called Screenwise. Google says the program launched “near the beginning of the year,” but the company’s low-key offer was disclosed Tuesday night on the blog Search Engine Land. Google is asking users to add an extension to the Chrome browser that will share their Web-browsing activity... 

Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected. Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected. Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street... 

Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s top television maker, has seen TV sales firming up so far this year and plans to launch cheaper TVs, as demand for lower-end models increase, the head of its TV business said on Wednesday. Demand for lower-end TVs has been increasing in recent months as major South Korean retailers such as E-Mart Co introduced flat-screen models that are as much as 40 percent cheaper through alliances with small local manufacturers. “As long as there’s demand, we’re... 

German researchers claim to have cracked the algorithm that secures satellite phone transmissions. Benedikt Driessen and Ralf Hund from Ruhr University have reverse engineered the GMR-1 and GMR-2 voice ciphers used in a lot of satellite systems. These are used by, among others, government agencies and the military. Bjoern Rupp, CEO at GSMK Cryptophone said, “This breakthrough has major implications for the military, civilians engaged on overseas operations, or indeed anyone using satellite...