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Wii sales top 70 million worldwide

Posted by Harshad

Wii sales top 70 million worldwide


Wii sales top 70 million worldwide

Posted: 09 May 2010 08:36 PM PDT

Wii sales top 70 million worldwideAccording to Nintendo's latest financials, the Wii console has topped 70 million units sold worldwide, seeing 20.53 million sales in the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2010.

The number, 70.93 million, is good for about 49 percent of the home console market, with rivals Xbox 360 and PS3 controlling 27 and 24 percent, respectively.

For the year, sales of the Wii hardware jumped in Japan to 2.38 million from 2.06 million, but sales in the Americas fell drastically from 12.93 million to 9.86 million. In the EU and other nations, sales fell from 10.96 million to 8.30 million.

Overall, software sales decreased, but "million-seller titles" jumped from 54 to 79.

Software sales fell from 204.58 million to 191.81 million, with sales only rising in Japan.

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"iTunes Live" trademark filed by Apple

Posted: 09 May 2010 08:17 PM PDT

"iTunes Live" trademark filed by AppleApple has filed trademarks today for iTunes Live, which implies that the company is getting ready to increase its current live music offerings via the iTunes platform.

So far, Apple has offered a lot of live performances pre-recorded at Apple Stores around the globe (such as NY, LA, London, Montreal, Tokyo and Munich).

TechCrunch says the trademark is filed under two classes:

- Online retail store services in the field of entertainment featuring prerecorded musical, audio and audiovisual content

- Entertainment services, namely, arranging and conducting of concerts and live musical performances


While the trademark could be nothing, chances are there are more live performances coming in the near future to the most popular music download platform in the world.

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Moto Milestone gets long-awaited Android 2.1 upgrade

Posted: 09 May 2010 07:50 PM PDT

Moto Milestone gets long-awaited Android 2.1 upgradeMotorola Milestone owners in the UK have finally gotten their long-awaited Android 2.1 update this weekend, weeks after American DROID owners got the update.

2.1, or "eclair" brings some notable features, such as Speech-to-text, live wallpapers (as seen on the Nexus One), and nine home pages for all those users who have tons of apps.

Reads the Facebook post: UK Milestone owners - At last, the 2.1 upgrade rolls out today. Thank you for your patience and we hope you enjoy enhancements such Speech to Text, live wallpapers, up to 9 home screens, and added security for exchange server users. The update is available now via PC download from Motorola Direct.

If you do not want to download the update manually, it should be available OTA over the course of this week.

Motorola recently purchased mobile OS maker Azingo, a Linux-based OS which has a Webkit-based browser, runtime, Flash runtime and full developer tools and will likely use it to bulk up its MotoBlur Android interface offering.

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First domains with non-Latin characters get activated

Posted: 09 May 2010 07:35 PM PDT

First domains with non-Latin characters get activatedEgypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have become the first three countries to get Internet addresses in non-Latin characters, being approved in Arabic this week by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Registrations for websites using the new domains will start soon, and Egypt has already given approval to three companies to use the new Arabic suffix.

"Introducing Arabic domain names is a milestone in Internet history,"says Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement. "This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt as well as boosting the number of online users and enabling Internet service providers to enter new markets by eliminating language barriers."

Until the recent decision, all websites had to end with ".com" or ".org" among other strings using Latin characters, which could get confusing for nations with no familiarity with the characters.

ICANN noted that the middle east has only about 20 percent on their populations online, on average, a far cry from the over 60 percent seen in most developed nations.

Additionally, a suffix for Russia in Cyrillic is expected to be the fourth new domain accepted soon. By the end of 2010, suffixes for Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, Palestine, Hong Kong, Thailand and Sri Lanka are also expected to be approved.

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Sony sued again over their decision to remove PS3 'OtherOS' feature

Posted: 09 May 2010 07:08 PM PDT

Sony sued again over their decision to remove PS3 'OtherOS' featureIn late April, Sony was sued in California over its recent firmware update that removed the "OtherOS" feature of the PlayStation 3, a feature that had allowed for the installation of Linux on an HDD partition.

This week, two more class action lawsuits have been filed against the company, one in Georgia and the other in California.

Both cases claim that Sony has made features consumers paid for "inoperable" with the release of firmware version 3.21. The firmware update is "voluntary," but those that do not cannot sign into the PlayStation Network, or play their games online.

Both suits also state that Sony did not properly disclose that they reserved the right to remove built-in features, and that any removal of the "OtherOS" feature was not disclosed in the PS3 TOS, or SSLA (System Software License Agreement).

The second suit specifically says plaintiffs "lost money by purchasing a PS3 without receiving the benefit of their bargain because the product is not what it was claimed to be - a game console that would provide both the Other OS feature and gaming functions."

The class action suits include anyone who purchased the PS3 console between November 17th, 2006 and March 27th, 2010.

IGN has the full PDFs of the filings, here: Todd Densmore v. Sony and Antal Herz v. Sony

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Video Daily: Android now running on iPhone 3G

Posted: 09 May 2010 06:43 PM PDT

Video Daily: Android now running on iPhone 3GLate last month iPhone Dev Team member "planetbeing" posted a video showing off a huge accomplishment, the Android OS running on a first-gen iPhone.

This week, "planetbeing" has released a new video, with Android running on the iPhone 3G, giving a lot more iPhone owners the chance to try dual-booting multiple operating systems.

The hacker uses OpeniBoot to boot either the iPhone OS or Android, but he does admit that rebooting is slow "because the NAND and FTL (flash translation layer) drivers aren't optimized yet."

While Wi-Fi, SMS, MMS and other apps work perfectly with Android, the phone loses its "phone" capabilities as audio still does not work through the port. "Planetbeing" says that is currently being worked on, as it is obviously one of the most important parts of having a phone, the ability to make phone calls.

Says the hacker, via DailyTech: "With their help (other developers) I'm sure we'll be able to bring the system to production quality before too long."

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Rumor: HP to release 'Hurricane' tablet with WebOS in Q3

Posted: 09 May 2010 06:18 PM PDT

Rumor: HP to release 'Hurricane' tablet with WebOS in Q3One week after computer maker HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion in cash, we reported that the company was removing Windows 7 from its much-hyped Slate tablet, instead choosing to use a WebOS variant.

This weekend, "industry insiders" have noted that a WebOS-based tablet dubbed the HP Hurricane is set for release in the Q3 2010.

Says one analyst of the Slate, Paul Mueller, via The Examiner: "It is a really interesting device, but runs as slow as a turtle. I think they could have had something with a faster processor, but that would have led to less battery life than the Slate already had."

Mueller can't wait to see how the Hurricane will work though: "If rumors of this tablet are true, this can be a killer device--webOS is an outstanding operating system for a tablet."

The Slate, in its original state, would have run on Windows 7, would have been $549 at its cheapest, and had an 8.9-inch 1024x600 multi-touch screen. Additionally, the tablet had a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor, 1GB RAM, SDHC slot (with support up to 128GB), two cameras, a USB port, a SIM card slot, and five-hour battery life.

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iPad headed to Japan later this month

Posted: 09 May 2010 05:54 PM PDT

iPad headed to Japan later this monthApple and Japanese carrier Softbank have made a deal today that will bring the popular iPad tablet to Japan starting May 28th.

Softbank is third-largest mobile carrier in the nation, and the company says it will begin taking pre-orders on Monday.

The basic Wi-Fi/16GB model will cost 48960 yen which is about $535 USD.

Softbank has been selling the Apple iPhone since 2008, and hopes the Apple products will help it win subscribers against the nation's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo.

Apple announced this weekend that the iPad was going international, headed to nine new nations including Japan.

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on its launch day, and recently announced 1 million unit sales. Additionally, 15 million apps have already been downloaded from the iPad App Store, as well as almost 2 million e-books from the iBookStore.

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