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Research In Motion has ended a patent battle with Dolby and agreed to license advanced audio technologies from the company, the companies announced yesterday.

Dolby in June filed suit against RIM in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, as well as in the Mannheim District Court in Germany, claiming the BlackBerry maker was violating patents it holds on "highly efficient digital audio compression technologies which allow manufacturers and consumers to provide and enjoy high quality audio while using extremely limited amounts of transmission and/or storage space for such audio."

In its lawsuit, Dolby said that &… Read more

The BlackBerry PlayBook got a hefty discount at one major reseller though it hardly compares to the fire-sale pricing seen recently for Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad.

Best Buy today started offering the 64GB PlayBook at $550, $150 off the original price of the $700.

That hardly compares to the $100 offer for the 16GB HP TouchPad. Nevertheless, the PlayBook is not a defunct platform like the TouchPad and $550 is a low price for a 64GB tablet. 64GB models from Apple, for example, are more than $800.

Features include BlackBerry's Tablet Operating System based on QNX, Wi-Fi connectivity, 7-inch HD capacitive screen with multi-touch, 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of system memory, 1GHz dual-core processor, forward and rear cameras, and Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports.

Best Buy is also offering the 16GB PlayBook for $449, $50 off the regular price of $499.

But stiff 7-inch tablet competition is on the way. The Lenovo 7-inch IdeaPad A1 with Android 2.3 will be offered at $200 and $250 for 8GB and 16GB models respectively. (Currently, the release date for the A1 is unclear.) And existing 7-inch competition includes the original Samsung Galaxy Tab, a model released last year, which is priced at $279 at Best Buy.

Overall, the PlayBook is competing in an increasingly crowded tablet market. Apple's iPad dominates the tablet space, making it very difficult for any rival to gain a big toehold. And then there's the non-Apple market with tablets from Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba, Acer, Asus, and others--all based on Google's Android operating system. Not to mention the WebOS-based TouchPad, which is due for a final production run in the coming weeks at $100 and $150 for the 16GB and 32GB models respectively. … Read more

Hit by weakening sales, Research In Motion plans to add Android support to next year's lineup of new BlackBerry smartphones, Bloomberg reported yesterday.

Citing information from "three people familiar with the plan," Bloomberg said that the new Android-compatible phones will run the company's QNX software and debut in early 2012. A story earlier this month from the blog Boy Genius Report said that RIM will launch its first QNX-powered BlackBerry, code-named Colt, during the first quarter of 2012.

The move toward Android support is designed to enhance the appeal of BlackBerrys and shake up sales, which have taken a dive due to tight competition from the iPhone and Android devices.

A ComScore report from September of last year showed RIM with a leading 39 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market. A more recent ComScore report, released last month, found RIM now in third place behind Google and Apple with just 24 percent of the market.… Read more

The tablet market continues to be summed up like this: the iPad and everything else. And everything else doesn't amount to much.

That's according to a recent survey conducted by Robert W. Baird. The study found that out of more than 1,100 potential tablet purchasers, an overwhelming 94.5 percent cited the iPad as a device of interest. Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad was the second most-cited device, garnering just 10.3 percent of the people surveyed, while Research in Motion's PlayBook was a laggard.

The study suggests that despite a number of new entrants jumping into the … Read more

Google buys Motorola Mobility! Once we figure out that it's not actually a joke, we grabbed News.com senior writer Maggie Reardon to help break it all down for us. Upshot: patents, patents, and more patents, and a war with its hardware partners. And also, a sea change in the entire industry. So, no big deal. Also, Anonymous rides to war with San Francisco's subway system over free speech, and we're with Anonymous. And did Apple's amazing Photoshop skills kill Galaxy Tab sales in Europe? The plot thickens.

Mac OS X Lion finally shows up on a USB stick, the FCC reviews San Francisco BART's decision to shut down cell phone service, and Amazon launches an iPhone app that enables students to scan barcodes and includes six months of free two-day shipping.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Adobe releases a new tools for designers to create websites with very little code called Muse, the San Francisco BART train service shuts down cellular phone service over fears of protestors, and Google shakes up the smartphone industry by acquiring Motorola Mobility.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Sprint Nextel said today that it has scrapped plans for a 4G version of RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, though the carrier will continue to offer a Wi-Fi version of the 7-inch tablet.

"We apologize for any inconvenience, but the BlackBerry 4G PlayBook Tablet that was announced in January for summer availability will no longer be coming to the Sprint network," the company said in a statement today.

"This was a mutual decision between Sprint and RIM," Sprint said.

RIM, for its part, said it is focusing on LTE technology for 4G. Sprint's 4G technology is … Read more

Android tablets will win over more customers but continue to play second fiddle to Apple's iPad, according to some recent reports and forecasts.

Apple's tablet will dominate the industry for the next 10 years, predicts Needham analyst Charlie Wolf. In a research note released Friday, Wolf is eyeing an 85 percent share for the iPad this year from nearly 100 percent in 2010.

Although that number will gradually shrink each year over the next decade, Apple will retain its lead. And by 2020, the company will still account for a 60 percent slice of the tablet market, predicts … Read more