ZTE and Huawei both entered the ranks of the world's top 10 mobile phone manufacturers last year. ZTE, ranked fourth, saw its global market share rise from 2.3% in 2009 to 3.7% last year, while third-ranked LG Electronics' global market share slipped from 10.1% to 8.4%.

Nokia is targeting those feature phone users who haven't yet made the move to a smartphone with the new Nokia Astound. It will be available April 6 through T-Mobile USA for $79.99 after rebate and with a two-year service agreement and qualifying voice and data plan.

The do-it-yourself retail giant plans to use the QR codes both outside their stores in print and online as well as on shelves within stores.

AT&T has said it will buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $39 billion that would make it the largest cellphone company in the US. The deal would reduce the number of wireless carriers with national coverage from four to three, and is sure to face close regulatory scrutiny.

A report from Strategy Analytics shows that Apple dominated the smartphone revenue stakes for 2010, followed by Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM).

A spike in radiation levels at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has forced workers to suspend their operation, a government spokesman says.

Shares and other risky assets from the Australian dollar to commodities such as copper and oil slumped on Tuesday while safe-haven assets like US Treasuries rallied as Japan's nuclear crisis worsened.

Brent crude fell by almost US$3, reaching a two-week low near US$111 on investor pessimism that economic growth will slow in the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, while easing unrest in the Middle East threw the focus back onto ample oil supplies.

The devastation in Japan is set to worsen the negative short-term sentiment gripping a vulnerable US stock market, with companies exposed to Japan and the nuclear energy sector likely to take the biggest hits.

A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan which was damaged in Friday's earthquake, but officials said it had resisted the blast.

Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average plunged 1.7% in Tokyo, extending declines after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck northeast of the capital.

But the app selling experience, especially for MLB and other premium publishers, is still much better at Apple's iOS App Store than Google's Android Market.

The tech sector is well represented on this year's list, which overall includes 1,210 people who together control US$4.5 trillion in wealth. The highest-ranked Taiwanese tech execs are the husband-and-wife team of Cher Wang and Wenchi Chen.

In the short term, this deal certainly favors Nokia. The company will still be spending money on Symbian development-the company is expecting to ship 150 million of the handsets in the next couple of years-but will be able to scale back this expenditure, as its operating system development costs are increasingly pushed onto Redmond. This, plus the cash infusion, gives the company instant savings.

For downloading data, the Verizon iPhone is slower than the AT&T iPhone, and it's also slower than most other Verizon smartphones, according to a study published Monday.

Korean carrier SK Telecom announced earlier this week that it will launch Apple's CDMA iPhone 4 on March 16, making it the first international network to carry the handset.

If true, this report confirms the February statement of Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who said Microsoft has paid Nokia an "incredible" amount of money for the smartphone deal.

Qualcomm expects to see a decline in its operating margins for its chipset business in the coming year as smartphone growth drives more competitive pricing.

The solution is really simple. What if they aim at a different target? What if Apple and Google aim at the youth marketplace, and Nokia and Microsoft aim at the older adult space? This has not been tried yet.

Any payouts or incentives to continue MeeGo development emphasize that Nokia's eggs are not all in Microsoft's basket when it comes to smartphones-or other devices, for that matter. MeeGo is an open-source platform that can power handsets, tablets, and netbooks, which may be why Nokia isn't letting go of MeeGo just yet.

I fear our business is dividing in a way that that threatens the continued employment of those of us who make games," said Satoru Iwata during a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "Is maintaining high value games a top priority, or not?"

Here's what we definitely know: Apple is holding an event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. As is Apple's ever-present policy of secrecy at all costs, that's pretty much all we know for sure.

The Motorola Droid Pro is a fair approximation of a BlackBerry handset, minus the inferior keyboard and the fact that it doesn't come close to matching Research In Motion's security measures.