More Smartphones Were Shipped in Q1 2013 Than Feature Phones, An Industry First According to IDC  —  The worldwide mobile phone market grew 4% year over year in the seasonally slow first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) as smartphones outshipped feature phones for the first time.

Digg Owner Betaworks Buys Instapaper To Go Big On Social Reading And Discovery  —  Last summer, New York-based hybrid investor / incubator / holding company thing Betaworks acquired social news site Digg and relaunched it soon after, hoping to bring back some of its mojo in the process.

Court Denies Motorola the Billions It Wanted From Microsoft for Standards-Essential Patents  —  A federal court in Seattle issued a ruling Thursday that could help settle the question of just how much a company can expect to reap from standards-essential patents.  —  Source: Microsoft

Yahoo's Chairman Is Out Because Marissa Mayer Was Not His First Choice For CEO  —  Yahoo just announced that chairman Fred Amoroso will step down in June.  —  We've communicated with three Yahoo sources since the news broke.  —  Given what they told us, we think this why Amoroso is out:

End WWDC  —  Not long ago, when Apple's WWDC conference dates were announced, a slow trickle of registrations would occur as developers consulted with spouses, bosses, and co-workers to determine, in their own sweet time, whether or not they would attend.  There was never any rush, because the conference never sold out.

Apple's 10-Year-Old iTunes Loses Ground to Streaming  —  A decade ago, the newly started iTunes Store gave away a song called Over My Head (Cable Car) by an obscure Denver rock group called The Fray.  That was, explains lead guitarist Joe King, the band's big break.

Galaxy S4 Display Technology Shoot-Out  —  Samsung Galaxy S III - Samsung Galaxy S4 - Apple iPhone 5 Introduction The Samsung Galaxy S Smartphones are by far the most popular Android Smartphones and are flagship products for Samsung to show off its latest and greatest OLED display technology.

Exclusive: Yahoo's Marissa Mayer Officially Joins Jawbone Board  —  As I had reported last fall that she might, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has officially joined the board of Jawbone, the high-profile wireless gadget maker whose nifty products include Jawbone wireless headsets …

Lumia 521 for T-Mobile arrives early at HSN on April 27th for $149.95, general availability on May 22nd  —  Wanting to get first dibs on the Lumia 521 for T-Mobile?  If so, it looks that you may need to tune into HSN on April 27th, because — strange as it sounds — the television network …

Twitter Testing New Local Discovery Features — And It's About Time  —  Twitter may be the best way to figure out what's happening around the world right now.  But it sure ain't great at telling me what's going on in my world — that is, what's happening down the block from me.  —  That may change.

Google Brings Its New And Improved File Viewer For MS Office Documents To Chrome Beta  —  If you regularly need to open Microsoft Office documents in the browser, Google now offers you a new Chrome extension that renders Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly in the browser.

Amazon v the Amazon: internet retailer in domain name battle  —  Brazil and Peru governments say company should not profit from an address that refers to an important geographical area  —  When you see the word “Amazon”, what's the first thing that springs to mind - the world's biggest forest …

AT&T finally brings its Digital Life home automation service to 15 markets  —  AT&T has been showing off and talking about its Digital Life home automation service for the better part of a year now, but after missing its March launch target, it's finally making the service available in 15 markets this week.

Facebook Buys Parse To Offer Mobile Development Tools As Its First Paid B2B Service  —  Facebook has just acquired Parse, marking its entry into a whole new business category: paid tools and services for developing mobile apps.  —  The company is buying the mobile-backend-as-a-service startup …

New improvements to Twitter for Mac  —  Today we're announcing a few improvements to Twitter for Mac: Photos: It's easier than ever to share photos.  Simply click the camera icon in the lower-left corner of the Tweet compose box, and choose a photo to share.  If you prefer, you can still drag and drop photos from the desktop.

Samsung to block access to app store in Iran  —  You are here  —  Home » Tehran » Samsung to block access to app store in Iran  —  Potential customers try out Samsung mobile phone and tablet computer, in a store, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 25, 2013.

Pinterest Tweaks Its New Look, Improves Search And Brings Features Like Pinned From And Mentions Back  —  While Pinterest is still rolling out its brand new look to users, it decided to listen to some feedback along the way and make some tweaks.  —  Since the site relies heavily, or completely …

Margin Call 2  —  I expected Apple's margins to improve last quarter.  They didn't and so the question I needed to answer is why.  Here is a history of Apple's gross margin and operating margin as reported since late 2005:  —  For a company selling hardware these are extraordinarily high margins.

Amazon beats Wall Street estimates with $0.18 EPS, sales at $16.07B in Q1 2013, a 22% growth YoY  —  Amazon announced its first quarter financial performance and it has $16.07 billion in net income and earnings per share of $0.18.  Its sales were up 22 percent from last year.

Microsoft to release ‘Switch to Windows Phone’ Android app [Update]  —  Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, manager of the Windows Phone team, touts the platform's apps at an October event.  —  Microsoft is hoping to take a bite out of Google's Android platform by releasing a “Switch to Windows Phone” …