Barely hours after getting a nod from the European Commision, US Department of Justice (DoJ) has also gives its approval for Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola. The American regulator commented that given Motorola’s history of using its patents, it is unlikely that the sale to Google will drastically alter market dynamics. It also approved the sale of Nortel’s patents and Apple’s acquisition of Novell’s patents. Read on…

Google today announced it has received a nod from the European Commission for its pending purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The acquisition, which was announced on August 15 last year, still has a few hoops to jump before fruition but Google has crossed one big hurdle in the form of the European Commission which is renowned for its anti-trust proceedings (just ask Microsoft). Google is still awaiting to hear from a few other jurisdictions (including American) but the deal is expected to be closed by the end of this quarter.

Google has its hopes pinned on the Motorola acquisition as it would give its hardware partners some much needed patent love to take on the likes of Apple and Microsoft, who have their patent guns trained on major Android OEMs, especially Samsung and HTC – the two largest sellers of Android smartphones. Microsoft has managed to get almost every OEM and vendor on board to pay it royalty for every Android device shipped. However, this deal is much bigger than Motorola’s patent trove alone.

The “Apple is worth more than” meme has gotten plenty of play over the past year, but a new measure of Apple’s success emerged on Monday that is as simple as it is monumental: a single share of Apple stock now costs more than an iPad. As of the open of the market on Monday, Apple’s stock rose just above $499 — the entry-level price of Apple’s iPad 2 — undoubtedly on its way to $500 and beyond. The Cupertino-based firm that once teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and was saved in part by a $150 million investment from Microsoft is now worth more than Microsoft and Google combined. Read on for more.

This post originally appeared on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech.com

Apple on Monday announced that the Fair Labor Association will be conducting audits of its suppliers, and the investigation will include Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China. The inspections, which are being conducted at Apple’s request, are being led by FLA president Auret van Heerdenbegan. “We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “The inspections now underway are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope, and we appreciate the FLA agreeing to take the unusual step of identifying the factories in their reports.” The FLA team will interview thousands of employees on matters such as living conditions, health, safety, compensation, working hours and communication with management. The team will also inspect manufacturing areas, dormitories and other areas of the companies’ various facilities. Apple’s suppliers have apparently offered full cooperation with the FLA, and have granted the group unrestricted access to their operations and facilities. The FLA’s findings and recommendations will be posted on the group’s website in early March. Read on for Apple’s press release.

This post originally appeared on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech.com

One of the biggest deals in India’s nascent online retail business has been conformed. Flipkart has announced it has acquired Letsbuy as was reported earlier in the week. “This acquisition opportunity came at a very attractive price for us and the timing has also been ideal,” Flipkart’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Sachin Bansal was quoted in the Economic Times. The financial aspects of the acquisition have not been revealed though word on the street pegs it between $20-$30 million in part-cash and part-stock deal. Earlier this month, Amazon India launched Junglee, a non-transactional, online price comparison site. The presence of Amazon in India will provide the much-needed impetus to online retail in the country.

Rumors are abuzz that Nikesh Arora, Google’s SVP and Chief Business Officer, will run Motorola once the Google-Motorola deal closes later this year. A report by Business Insider claims that Arora who has been running the company’s international business for Eric Schmidt and who also took over the global business later when Schmidt stepped down, is thought to have been “agitating” for a CEO role. He was recently included in a carefully scrutinized list of candidates to run Yahoo. There’s a possibility that a promised CEO slot at Motorola could have have been the driving force for Arora to continue with Google and to have consciously let go of the Yahoo offer. Dennis Woodside, Google’s current head of U.S. sales, will supposedly take over Arora’s current position.

Facebook on Wednesday formally filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in its first step toward an upcoming initial public offering. Facebook said it is looking to raise $5 billion with its IPO, which has been eagerly anticipated by the Street and by investors. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and others will underwrite the offering, and Facebook could raise as much as $10 billion following its IPO. Reports surfaced this past Friday stating that Facebook had plans to file for an IPO this week at a valuation of between $75 billion and $100 billion. At $5 billion, Facebook’s IPO would be the biggest Internet IPO in history, besting Google’s $1.9 billion 2004 offering by a huge margin. Facebook’s IPO also has the potential to top Infineon’s $5.9 billion offering, which is currently the biggest global technology IPO on record. In 2011, Facebook recorded sales of $3.71 billion and earnings of $0.43 per share on net income of $1 billion according to its S1 filing. Facebook also noted that it currently has 845 million monthly active users, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns 534 million shares, or 28.4% of the company. Zuckerberg’s public letter regarding the IPO follows below in its entirety.

This post originally appeared on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech.com

Amazon is likely to launch in India as Junglee.com, Medianama reports. Rather than having a retail store like it does in most countries it operates, Amazon will be a transactional site for other retailers as it waits for the government to green light FDI in multi-brand retail. We had earlier reported Amazon could launch in India by January end, something Medianama’s sources have also admitted that they expected the launch last week and are now hoping it to happen in coming days.

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Samsung on Friday reported record earnings for the fourth quarter last year. In line with the company’s estimates as reported earlier this month, Samsung recorded an operating profit of 5.3 trillion won, or approximately $4.72 billion USD, on sales of 47 trillion won, or approximately $42 billion USD. Samsung had never reported a profit of more than 5 trillion won in a single quarter and its 5.3 trillion won profit represents a 76% increase over the holiday quarter in 2010. Samsung’s mobile business registered an operating profit of 2.6 trillion won in the fourth quarter thanks to mobile phone shipments totaling a record 35 million units, and operating profit from its semiconductor business accounted for 2.3 trillion won. The company’s full-year net profit of 13.7 trillion won was down 15% year-on-year, however, though full-year revenue rose 6.7% in 2011 to 165 trillion won. “Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our telecommunications businesses continued to post solid earnings with an enhanced line-up of high-end smartphones, resulting in higher average selling price,” Samsung senior vice-president Robert Yi said in a statement.

This post originally appeared on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech.com

We reported on RIM’s 2012 release schedule earlier this week and now we’re back to paint a more complete picture with RIM’s full 2012 roadmap, which is loaded with information. The deck provides details on everything from the company’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook with built-in 3G, to the new Curve lineup including the BlackBerry Curve 9220 and BlackBerry Curve 9320, to new features like Wi-Fi media server sharing and more. From the calendar in the document, it looks like the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone, codenamed London, is currently scheduled for release in late September, but could be pushed to October based on the roadmap, which is a long way off considering we’re looking a a relatively slow three quarters leading up to BlackBerry 10. We’ve dropped 15 slides from this massive deck into a gallery, so check out all of the images below!

This post originally appeared on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech.com

Apple has just announced its best quarter ever with revenues of $46.33 billion and net profit of $13.06 billion. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, up 128 percent from year-ago quarter, 15.43 million iPads, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”

Read on for some quick notes from Apple’s conference call.