Mobile Phones

BetaNews: Google thoroughly rocked the smartphone world on Monday morning by announcing it will be acquiring Android phone maker Motorola Mobility for approximately $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility has existed as a standalone entity for just 8 months, and has produced some of the most successful Android smartphones such as the first Droidwith Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, though, Motorola Mobility holds one of the most valuable wireless patent portfolios in the business, and this acquisition serves as a follow up to the Nortel Patent auction where Google placed bids, but lost out to a consortium of bidders that included Apple, EMC, Microsoft, Ericsson, Research in Motion, and Sony. ...

Google began offering free turn-by-turn navigation with Android 2.0 in late 2009, and Nokia announced at the beginning of 2010 that Ovi Maps navigation would be free on all its future handsets. Today Microsoft announced that it is following suit with free turn-by-turn navigation for Windows 6.x and up phones, powered by Bing Maps. When getting directions with Bing, there will now be a “Navigate” button which starts the turn-by-turn voice navigation. The voice navigation feature was developed by the Microsoft Tellme team. ...

It’s no secret that Sony Ericsson has been struggling for the last couple of years. It hasn’t reported a profitable quarter since 2008 and 2009 has been especially tough for the company, which ended Q1 with a 293 million euro ($397 million) net income loss. This morning, however, Sony Ericsson posted a 21 million euro ($28 million) profit for Q1 2010. On the downside, it also shipped 10.5 million handsets — 4 million fewer than the number shipped in Q1 2009 and 4.1 million fewer than the number shipped in Q4 2009. ...