Consumer Electronics

It was surely only the purest coincidence that Verizon, Motorola and Google introduced the Droid X smartphone the day before Apple's iPhone 4 shipped. And certainly, the companies' ability to get actual shipping units into reviewers' hands before most of them could see Apple's latest had not a whiff of calculation. Perish the thought.  read more »

The folks on Capitol Hill are the latest to take an interest in Apple. According to a report in the Washington Post, Representatives Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who co-chair the House's privacy caucus, have issued questions to Apple CEO Steve Jobs over Apple's policy on collecting private information.  read more »

Rwanda has become the second country in East Africa to eliminate Value Added Tax on mobile handsets, in its latest effort to increase uptake of telecommunications services.  read more »

Google's officially opened the gates and invited all of America into Google Voice, its customizable phone management service.  read more »

After applications recently started disappearing from the Android Market, Google continued to have reliability issues with the online store as developers over the weekend experienced issues with erroneous download counts.  read more »

Apple's iPad finally launches in the UK today, ending a four-month wait for those who have been looking to get their hands on the tablet PC since its official unveiling in January.  read more »

Research In Motion (RIM) is too busy with its existing partners in China to partner with China Unicom, according to the company's top executive in China.  read more »

Yahoo Mail and Messenger will power Nokia's mobile mail and chat services starting later this year, the companies said during a press conference on Monday.  read more »

All gloves are off between Google and Apple, after the search giant unveiled a host of products to compete with the Cupertino company. Following Google TV and Flash on Android, Google will also take on Apple's iTunes through the acquisition of music streaming service Simplify Media, and a music store in the Android Market.  read more »

Apple on Tuesday released the third beta version of iPhone OS 4, only to temporarily rescind it due to an apparent problem with the installation process for the accompanying software development kit.  read more »