COMPANIES

Three million units sold so far and counting – that’s the measure of success attached with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which later on this month will be challenged by HTC’s Droid DNA and other phablets in the months and quarters ahead.

Expectations run high for the latest Call of Duty game franchise, the Black Ops 2, according to analysts, because previous releases of the Activision pedigree had delivered hundreds of millions in revenues within 24 hours of reaching global store shelves.

The Big Apple hosted the recent U.S. launch of the latest smartphone flavour from Taiwan-based HTC, the Droid DNA, which Verizon has picked up to become its latest Android mobile device.

For the Friday, Nov 16, release of the HTC One X+, AT&T started to take pre-orders for what is considered now the captain of the HTC football team. HTC is counting on the expansion of its HTC One series through the extra affordable unit, to boost its position in the global marketplace for smartphone.

Sony, once one of the leading electronic brands in the world, has slipped in comparison to other telecom companies such as Apple and Samsung in terms of sales and popularity of products. However, the Japan-based company could still count on the strong features of its products in a bid to reassert its place in the marketplace. For 2013, Sony targets to ship 50 million Xperia smartphones, relying mainly on Xperia T and TL, which were featured in Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie.

What is there to gripe about the Google Nexus 4? It is powerful thanks to the quad-core Snapdragon processor that clocks at a peak speed of 1.4GHz and brandishes the native version of Android Jellybean.

Activision’s ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’ will hit global store shelves on Nov 13 and this early the highly-anticipated game title is projected to quickly breach the $1 billion mark, easily breaking the record sales set in 2011 by its immediate CoD predecessor.

With the speculated roll out of HTC Droid DNA, 5-inch devices such as Samsung's Galaxy Note II face a challenge in the marketplace. All eyes are in New York City if HTC and Verizon will confirm leaks of the Droid DNA, reportedly bearing some similarity to the HTC J Butterfly model announced in Japan several weeks ago.

The Surface tablet has been moving modestly so far, Microsoft said on Monday, hastening to add that the overall push for the Windows RT version of the gadget has encountered minimal glitches.

After more than two years of reign, a rival tablet appears to be gathering enough steam that tech experts seem convinced an iPad killer is now on the horizon.

After topping smartphone sales the past three quarters in effect taking away the smartphone crown from Apple, South Korean tech firm Samsung is now threatening to also dislodge the California-based company from its top spot in the tablet market.

Google’s design for the Nexus 10 is for the tablet to serve as a seminal device for Android developers, spurring them to author more apps that are specifically optimised for tablet owners.

Windows 8-powered devices are hip and cool, Microsoft would want us to believe, and to help the tech giant get this message across, to be absorbed and embraced by global consumers, it decides to employ the services of A-list celebrities.

Speed enthusiasts would be happy to know that top chipmaker Intel just launched a new processor called Itanium 9500 series which belongs to 64-bit family. According to Intel, the new processor offers up to 2.4 times performance scaling and 33 per cent faster Input and output speed versus its previous generation.

Samsung reigned supreme in the past three quarters of 2012 as the Best-Selling SmartPhone Manufacturer. IDC said the firm sold 56.3 million smartphones compared to Apple's 26.9 million units. Latest figure from Samsung showed that the company sold over 30 million Galaxy S III smartphones in the past five months. The model is Samsung's flagship unit.

The famous pizza restaurant chain, Pizza Hut, reported a website-hacking incident where customer’s names, email addresses and contact information were leaked. Despite Pizza Hut’s claims that the customer’s credit card information was not affected, the unpleasant incident should serve as a lesson for the business to keep strict protection of its personal and financial records.

Smart devices will be the norm of the future with three dominant platforms – Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows – all competing to meet the mobile computing demands of general and business consumers, a new report said.

Samsung leads the pack this time as reports emerged that rivals of the Asian tech giant have decided to counter the success of its Galaxy Note phablet, already on a second iteration that further stretched the device’s screen size, with of courses more potent specs.

Microsoft’s Surface RT has commenced hitting the road and results returned so far on numerous test drives strongly suggest that the gadget is not as confusing as thought earlier by Apple CEO Tim Cook, without of course the benefit of hand-on experience.

To indicate the growing use of Instagram among social networking sites, in the Tuesday election in the U.S., over 100,000 photos taken with the photo application was tagged with #iVoted and 150,000 with #election2012.

Since the launch of Apple's iPad Mini in 34 countries, combined sales of the device and the iPad fourth generation averaged 1 million units daily in the past three days.

While the role of Facebook and Twitter in helping elect and celebrate the Wednesday poll victory of U.S. President Barack Obama has once more been emphasised, the newbie social networking site Google+ appears quiet and out of the political equation.

The advantage enjoyed by online retailers based overseas over bricks and mortar stores insofar as Australian consumers are concerned may soon be removed. A plan by the federal government to collect the general sales tax (GST) for purchases abroad may just level the playing field for both kinds of retailers.

A stress test conducted by the Australia Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) showed that all major banks in the country passed it. APRA Chairman John Laker, in a Thursday speech in Brisbane, declared that another global economic meltdown would not result in significant losses for Aussie lenders.

These days, Chinese brand Lenovo is touted as the next big thing in the personal computer business, threatening the hold to precarious lead of familiar names like Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell and Acer.

This is the end of Suzuki's American dream. American Suzuki Motor Corp. informed that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Apple’s Chinese partner in production Foxxcon said that it is facing difficulties in keeping up with demand for iPhone 5.

Another legal setback for Apple as the tech giant was ordered Wednesday by a U.S. federal court in Texas to shell out more than $US368 million for patent infringement, stemming from the technology behind FaceTime, the video call feature that is a mainstay on Mac computers, iPhone and iPad.

The Lumia 920, according to Nokia, represents improvements from all the shortfalls found on previous Nokia handsets, potentially making the new Windows smartphone an inviting prospect for consumers planning to indulge on new tech toys come the holiday season.