From CNET News.com: Although Windows 8 is expected to hit store shelves later this year, Microsoft believes its current operating system, Windows 7, will have an awfully good year.

Speaking at a forum in Seoul this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that his company expects 350 million Windows 7-based devices to be shipped this year. Bloomberg, which was in attendance at the event, was first to report on the news. Ballmer said that the operating system's success "makes Windows the most popular single system."

If that many Windows 7 devices are actually shipped this year, it would indicate accelerated demand for the platform. In April 2011, Microsoft announced that it had sold 350 million Windows 7 licenses in the operating system's first 18 months of availability.

"The momentum we've seen and continue to see with Windows 7 is incredible," the company said at the time.

Windows 7's success has come despite a rapidly increasing demand for tablets -- a sector of the computing market Microsoft has been unable to capitalize on. However, the company plans to make its move into the tablet market later this year with help from Windows 8. That operating system is expected to be available on a host of products from several vendors, including Lenovo and Dell.

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From DailyTech: Need your privacy protected? Don't count on Verizon Wireless. The joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and Vodafone Group Plc. (LON:VOD) has wound up in an embarassing situation after it shared a bit too much information in the latest extortion attempt by big media's hired legal hitmen.

"Malibu Media LLC" an alleged "copyright troll" started the mess when it accused five "John Does" operating on Verizon Wireless networks of file-sharing movies via bit-torrent. It obtained a subpoena for their records, in an attempt to gain access to the users' information for use in a threats-for-cash scheme.

Faced with the subpoena, Verizon Wireless happily threw customer privacy and trust away, handing over the privileged information. The only issue was that Verizon Wireless did not follow due process -- one of the defendants had filed a challenge and Verizon Wireless was supposed to wait until a judge ruled on that challenge. Instead, Verizon Wireless handed over the records five days before the ruling.

The carrier's overzealous approach became more embarassing when one of the defendants's lawyers convinced Magistrate Judge E. Thomas Boyle to issue a stay of the subpoena. Now Verizon Wireless's actions were clearly in violation with the ruling -- the only question was how the judge would deal with it.

The Magistrate who rejected the subpoena opted to clean up the mess created by Verizon Wireless by ordering the records be sealed and ordering the Malibu Media law team to destroy the copies they received. It has also forbid the media attack-dog from using those records in court, unless -- for some reason -- the decision to quash the subpoena is reversed.

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From DailyTech: The latest numbers are in from NPD DisplaySearch looking at the mobile PC share and shipments for Q1 2012. According to the numbers, Apple shipped nearly 17.2 million mobile PCs in Q1 racking up 118% year-over-year growth. The big seller for Apple that pushed it to such high numbers is the iPad. DisplaySearch found that nearly 80% of Apple's mobile PC shipments were the iPad.

Apple's ever-popular tablet shipped over 13.6 million units alone in Q1 of 2012 for 162% year-over-year growth. The overall market shipped 76.2 million mobile PCs during Q1, for a seasonal drop of 15% compared to Q4 2011. Shipments grew 30% year-over-year showing that the mobile computer market is making a comeback after the economic turmoil 2011.

Tablet PCs grew 124% year-over-year with notebooks and mini notebooks growing 12%. The tablet PC growth is absolutely fueled by the Apple iPad. Breaking down the numbers based on region, China was largest market for growth quarter over quarter.

"The China region had sequential quarter shipment growth, achieving 13% for mobile PCs overall, 12% for notebook and mini-note PCs, and 16% for tablet PCs," said Richard Shim, NPD DisplaySearch Senior Analyst. "This is noteworthy given the sequential declines in all other regions as well as the declines in other product categories including TVs and monitors."

Apple's iPad allowed the company to reach 22.5% of the overall mobile PC market for the quarter, nearly twice HP's share. The other top five brands for the quarter relied on notebooks for their market share. HP was second largest shipping 8.9 million units for 11.6% of the market. Acer took the third spot with 6.9 million units shipped for 9% of the market. Lenovo had the fourth place spot with 5.9 million units shipped and 7.7% of the market followed closely by Dell in fifth place with 5.6 million units shipped and 7.3% of the mobile PC market.

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From X-bit Labs: Intel Corp. on Monday previewed its first DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway solution that is capable of 1Gb/s data transfer. The Intel Puma 6 technology will help enable service providers to meet consumer demand and offer new services while extending their extensive network investments. A test program by South Korea’s SKbroadband is targeting production deployment of 1Gb/s Internet connections in 2013.

As the number of Internet-connected devices in the home grows, service providers are challenged to provide higher broadband speeds to more customers utilizing an existing cable network. A service provider’s ability to scale up to this high level of bandwidth will help enable new high-bandwidth experiences for what the industry calls “TV Everywhere,” an immersive blend of Internet, television, gaming and applications across multiple screens throughout the home.

With the advanced technology of the DOCSIS 3.0 specification, multiple system operators (MSOs) can offer more users faster access to bandwidth-intensive experiences such as streaming video or online gaming using their existing network infrastructure and DOCSIS 3.0 equipment. Due to the flexibility of this technology, the Intel Puma 6 achieves the 1Gb/s downstream speeds by bonding up to 24 DOCSIS channels (up from eight bonded channels in a typical deployment today). Intel Puma 6 has an upload speed that is double current-generation DOCSIS modems. With up to 240Mps upstream (eight bonded channels), more consumers will benefit from new services that include video conferencing, cloud storage and easy sharing.

“We continue to lead in DOCSIS technology, and are now providing cable gateway solutions with 1Gbps capability. Service providers can now deliver on consumer demands for higher broadband speeds, supporting a proliferation of new devices, services and experiences,” said Alan Crouch, general manager of Intel’s service provider division.

The Intel Puma family system architecture provides OEMs with flexibility to easily customize their products to fit a wide range of MSO-required and optional features such as high data rates, wireless communications, power down modes and telephone support. Intel was the first to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 technology with Intel Puma 5, and over 20 million DOCSIS 3.0 systems have shipped.

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From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. on Monday denied plans to recall GeForce GTX products based on the GK104 graphics processing units due to rumoured eventual performance degradation. The company claims that the rumours are incorrect and the graphics products work fine.

"There is no truth to this," said Bryan Del Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia.

The official for the company declined to provide any further details or colour to the information published earlier on Monday. According to a media report, Nvidia GK104 "chips may be suffering from serious performance degradation over long periods of heavy load". The exact effects of performance degradation were not indicated: it is unclear whether certain stream processors stop working, or the chips drop clock-speed. As a result, the company was rumored to initiate recall process for the GK104-based products.

Before making it to the market, all the new GPUs are vigorously tested in various applications; they also pass Microsoft HCL tests, which not only stress graphics chips, but take hours to complete. Therefore, chances that chips may degrade in performance over time are pretty low.

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From CNET News.com: As Google prepares to close its Motorola Mobility acquisition, the company could be considering laying off some of the mobile firm's employees, according to a new report.

TechCrunch is reporting today, citing sources, that Google will launch a "listening tour" around Motorola to see what its employees do at the company. Based on that information, Google could decide to lay off some Motorola employees. TechCrunch didn't say how many employees Google might layoff, but did say that the sources believe the decision could come "imminently."

Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility in August for $12.5 billion, representing a 63 percent premium on the mobile firm's share price at the time. Although the U.S. Justice Department and European Union regulators approved the deal in February, Google didn't get the go-ahead to close the acquisition until this past weekend, when China's regulators gave it the green light.

In a filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Motorola said that it expects to close the acquisition by Wednesday.

Google is by no means a stranger to layoffs. Back in 2008, for example, after acquiring online-advertising company DoubleClick, it announced that it had laid off 300 DoubleClick employees. That decision came just a few weeks after the deal closed.

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From DailyTech: HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) had some happy news to report Monday. Its handsets -- including the Evo 4G LTE and the One X -- finally began to be inspected and cleared U.S. Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints.

HTC, based out of Taoyuan, Taiwan, has suffered deep losses to revenue at the hands of U.S. Customs. U.S. Customs seized the handsets after Apple, Inc. (AAPL), a U.S. smartphone manufacturer, won a preliminary injunction against HTC from the U.S. International Trade Commission. The injunction dealt with a single patent on "data-tapping" -- U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647. Data-tapping involves converting strings such as phone numbers to actionable links.

The One X and Evo 4G LTE were shipped with a fix, which implement a new feature not found in Apple's iOS, dubbed "App Associations. Despite the workaround removing the infringing properties from core Android apps, the HTC handsets were held up at Customs for over a month, with the ban first taking effect on April 19.

With the leisurely pace of the review, HTC faced major revenue losses. The U.S. is HTC's biggest market, and the world's second largest smartphone market. HTC, like Apple, manufactures its smartphones in China. Some have suggested that U.S. manufacturing could be used as a workaround, but this would be problematic given HTC's minimal U.S. engineering presence and the cost of finding local plants and retooling them. Thus HTC remains largely at the mercy of Customs.

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From DailyTech: This time the ban -- set in place by the U.S. International Trade Commission and scheduled to be enforced by U.S. Customs in 60 days -- is on Motorola Mobility Inc.'s (MMI) handsets and comes courtesy of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). The new ban from the U.S. International Trade Commission comes just weeks after U.S. Customs began to enforce a punitive and sweeping ban on imports of HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) Android handsets, sending the phonemaker's shares plunging.

After being slapped with an unfavorable preliminary ruling late last year, the official ruling found that Motorola infringed on one patent -- U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566 -- which covers scheduling meetings.

Much like the ruling against HTC this is a seemingly trivial item; one that Motorola and Android operating system developer Google Inc. (GOOG) could easily work around. The big question is whether a workaround will do anything to prevent a ban.

After all, HTC removed all infringing features from its phones months ago, but U.S. Customs inexplicably opted to seize all its products anyways. A month has gone by with no indication from customs when they are going to bother to review the handset shipments to confirm that the infringing features are gone, allowing them to be released to market.

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