The announcement comes just weeks after HTC warned that its revenues could fall by much more the 8% in this quarter compared to the third quarter.

Apple is well ahead of rivals in building brand loyalty among its users in a mobile market where the key brands are rushing to build as large a foothold as possible, a study by research firm GfK showed.

Microprocessor vendor Advanced Micro Devices has decided to cancel APUs that Globalfoundries was set to make for it on 28nm process technology, according to online reports. Instead AMD will start afresh using the 28nm gate-last HKMG manufacturing process technology from alternative foundry TSMC, the reports said.

Subject to approval, the final day of trading of Nokia shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is estimated to be during the first half of 2012.

Seagate alleged that Western Digital and a former Seagate employee misappropriated confidential information and trade secrets.

"This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least..."

Nokia is to move its head office to London as part of the turnaround of the struggling Finnish firm.

Nokia is planning to launch a Windows-running tablet during the summer of 2012, the head of Nokia France said in an interview with a French newspaper.

Apple's move to standardize on Qualcomm baseband chips will be helpful in bringing LTE to the iPhone and iPad in 2012 thanks to Qualcomm's next-generation mobile device modem chips. The company announced recently that updated chips with integrated LTE and 3G support will offer greater power efficiency for mobile devices, a sticking point that has so far kept Apple from offering compatibility with high-speed LTE networks.