Skyfire has announced their acquisition of Kolbysoft, the team behind the Steel Web browser on Android devices.

The Skyfire browser is available currently for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 devices and offers full Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support through cloud-based processing.

Steel is a free, popular browser available in the Android Marketplace.

Financials of the deal were not revealed.

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Confirming yesterday's reports that the company was headed directly to bankruptcy, Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro has said that the company would be liquidating and filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Says Shapiro, speaking about the lawsuit Universal Music Group filed against them in 2008: "The distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy."

Chapter 7, unlike Chapter 11 usually means the company is shutdown for good, rather than reorganized. The liquidation confirms that.

Private investors had invested $70 million in the streaming site.

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Both Sony and Microsoft have revealed the numbers behind their console online services, with both services growing significantly over the year.

Sony CEO Jack Tretton says that the free PlayStation Network (PSN) now has over 40 million users, with the service growing 155 percent in December alone.

Says Tretton: "We've also successfully established that we're not just a disc-based powerhouse, but we're also a digital powerhouse. PlayStation Network experienced huge growth last year, marking its best revenue month in December – a 155% increase in sales from the previous year. More than 40 million of you all over the world are coming to PlayStation Network to access multimedia content and to enhance your social gaming experiences."

Microsoft says Gold subscription XBL members now total 23 million. Additionally, users logged in at the same time reached an all-time high last month, hitting 2.3 million.

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After falling to under 10 percent in December, Bing has regained some ground in search engine market share, moving up to 10.9 percent. Google, the dominant market leader, fell 1 percent to 66.3 percent overall, with Yahoo remaining in second at 14.5 percent share.

Smaller rivals AOL, Ask and MyWeb combined for 5.5 percent, a small gap up from December.

The charts:

January:


December:

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Compaq has launched its new AirLife "smartbook" this week, an interesting move away from skimpy netbooks.

The AirLife includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, has 3g wireless built-in, Wi-Fi and runs the Android operating system.

Most notably, the smartbook includes a 10.1-inch, 1024x600-pixel touchscreen TFT display, allowing for multi-touch.

There is a 16GB SSD, so internal memory may become a problem fast, but the computer should also load everything lighting quick. The battery life is promised at 12 hours, with 10 days of standby.

There was no word on price or availability as of yet, but subsidized the smartbook is expected to cost under $300.

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iTunes is on its way to hitting 10 billion music downloads, and to celebrate the milestone, the company is giving away a $10,000 iTunes gift card to a lucky winner.

Check the promo here if you are interested: http://www.apple.com/itunes/10-billion-song-countdown/entryform/

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Google Chrome for Mac beta, which was first released in December, has updated today to version 5.0.307, adding extensions and bookmark sync among other features.

There are currently over 2200 extensions available in the Chrome gallery.

Users with multiple computers can now sync bookmarks as well, no matter if you have a PC, Linux or Mac machine.

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2010 started off very poorly for the video game industry, with overall revenue dropping year-on-year by 13 percent, to $1.17 billion USD.

Hardware sales dropped an astounding 21 percent year-on-year, to $353.7 million and software sales were not too much better, dropping 12 percent year-on-year to $597.9 million. Accessories were the lone bright spot, seeing growth of 2 percent to $217 million.

The Wii was the top console seller, as usual, and the Xbox 360 somewhat surprisingly took back second place from the PlayStation 3. The DS/DSi crushed the PSP in the handheld market.

Overall numbers, via GS:

US VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY - JANUARY 2010
Hardware: $353.7 million (-21%)
Software: $597.9 million (-12%)
Accessories: $217 million (2%)
Total Games: $1.17 billion (-13%)

TOP-SELLING HARDWARE - JANUARY 2010
Wii: 465,800
Nintendo DS: 422,200
Xbox 360: 332,800
PlayStation 3: 276,900
PSP: 100,100
PlayStation 2: 41,600

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Microsoft is expected to unveil Windows Mobile 7 on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, in a final attempt to stop the crushing Windows Mobile market share has taken in the past few years to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

"They seem to have lost the world's attention in smart phones," notes analyst Dan Hays, of the consulting firm PRTM.

Although less likely, Microsoft could possibly reveal a Zune HD-based phone, a long-hyped device that could be the best music playing phone on the market. "If that thing had a phone in it ... that would be a pretty darn good device," added Charles Golvin, analyst with Forrester Research, speaking of the Zune HD. "But my own judgment is that this is kind of their last chance. If Windows Mobile doesn't get it right this time around, they're probably toast."

Windows Mobile phones accounted for only 9 percent of smartphone sales in 2009, down from 13.2 in 2008, and down from over 15 percent in 2007.

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