Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has once again indicated it is interested in a potential BlackBerry deal, sending shares in the Canadian smartphone company soaring on Monday.

Speaking to French newspaper Les Echos, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing admitted that a buyout might be in the cards as the company seeks to gain more traction in the western mobile market.

He said that a deal "could possibly make sense, but first I need to analyze the market and understand what exactly the importance of this company is."

The inflammatory comments come after CFO Wong Wai Ming told Bloomberg in January that Lenovo was "looking at all opportunities," one of which was BlackBerry.

Rescue operation?

When Lenovo first publicly admitted its interest in buying the former mobile kingpin, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins didn't exactly deny the possibility of a a partnership.

Heins, who in the past has not ruled out investment, a buyout or licensing BlackBerry 10 to other manufacturers said: "As always with these topics, we will talk about things when they are ready to be talked about and ready to be announced.

"There are other constituents in the process that need to be involved - if there would be anything."

How willing RIM is to sell-up are accept investment or a takeover bid remains to be seen.

Rather than crying over its fall from grace, the company has been on a PR offensive since the company launched its first handsets running BB10 on January 30, claiming strong early sales, while setting its sights on place in the mobile OS race.

Fair share

Monday's comments boosted the company formerly-known-as-RIM's share price, sending it up 14 per cent on Monday. Shares are up 26 per cent overall in 2013, Bloomberg reports, following a long period in the doldrums.

The next we may hear on the matter of Lenovo's interests is when Heins delivers the company's quarterly results to investors in a conference call on March 28.

That's unless Lenovo continues to continue to speak publicly on the matter.

Source : techradar[dot]com

The long-rumored Amazon smartphone isn't acting at all like the company's speedy Amazon Prime two-day free shipping service, as its release date has reportedly been delayed.

That means the Amazon phone's speculated second quarter release date is likely to be missed, according to DigiTimes, which cites sources in flat panel supply chain.

While the exact reason for the delay isn't clear, the report does say that production at manufacturing partner Foxconn International Holdings "has not been as smooth as expected."

It goes on to indicate that the Seattle-based company's phone is still under an "engineering verification test period due to issues related to its mobile platform."

TechRadar reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this story if the company responds.

Amazon Kindle phone?

Whether or not the Amazon smartphone will run a version of Google's Android operating system like its Kindle Fire tablets is unclear.

However, today's rumor about its delayed release date echos previous reports that the phone's production is being handled by Foxconn subsidiary Ensky Tech.

Ensky Tech is responsible for manufacturing Amazon's e-book readers like the Kindle Paperwhite and tablets like the Kindle Fire HD.

The Foxconn subsidiary is said to be unlikely to start mass production of the Amazon smartphone until June, which means the rumored roadmap has been pushed back by at least three months.

When the Amazon phone's release date does roll around, however, analysts have suggested that it will be able to garner attention with a large screen size between 4 inches and 5 inches and a price as low as USD$150 (£101, AUD$146).

Source : techradar[dot]com

The latest Apple rumors point - literally - to new security features built into the iPhone 5S.

According to the sometimes-questionable China Times, Taiwanese company Chipbond is developing touch display drivers for the next-gen iPhone to support both NFC and fingerprint scanning.

The rumor doesn't come as much of a surprise, especially following a recent Apple patent that would equip future iPhones with a fingerprint reader next to the home button.

Notably, Apple's patent described a liquid crystal security window for scanning fingerprints, which fits with Chipbond's specialty in developing LCD drivers.

iPhone 5S - the S stand for security

Rumors of fingerprint scanners and NFC support in Apple's devices trace back to last July when Apple bought mobile security firm AuthenTec for $356 million (UK£238 million, UA$346 million).

AuthenTec's specialization was in fingerprint scanning technology, a specialty shared by biosecurity firm Microlatch, which Apple has reportedly also been in talks with since last year.

While fingerprint scanning could be used as added security to unlock a device, it's also rumored to be a key part of the next iPhone's NFC support by asking for fingerprint confirmation to make payments more secure.

Apple's actions speak to its interest in using fingerprint scanning and NFC technology in its devices, and if the rumors are true and the chips are already in production, then we may be looking at a key iPhone 5S security feature.

How this special features stacks up to the Galaxy S4's reported eye scrolling tech, we may not know for a few months. But fingerprints vs. eyeballs could make for an interesting dichotomy between the two firms.

Source : techradar[dot]com

Last week Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller was quick to poke some fun at Android security, posting a link on Twitter to an F-Secure report that paints a dire -- if not overblown -- picture of the malware situation on Google’s mobile operating system. But for the past six months Apple was also guilty of leaving its iOS App Store open to attacks that could trick users into installing paid apps or steal their passwords.

In a recent blog post, Google researcher Elie Bursztein reports that Apple has finally enabled HTTPS-by-default for the App Store as part of a raft of server-side security improvements and performance tweaks, even though he and a couple of other researchers had warned them about the dangers of this omission back in July 2012.

Up until January 23, 2013 the company only used HTTPS for purchase pages.

Like most attacks exploiting the lack of full-session HTTPS on websites, the App Store attacks described by Bursztein could have been carried out against users of public Wi-Fi networks like those found in libraries, parks, airports, coffee shops and so on. He went on to demonstrate a few possible scenarios.

Password stealing: By intercepting the unencrypted traffic whenever an app update is requested from the iTunes server, and attacker could then inject code to produce a pop up asking for the users' password.

App swapping: It is possible to swap a free app with a paid app, forcing the user to buy and install the attacker’s app of choice instead of the one the user originally intended.

Fake upgrade: Similar to the previous scenario, and attacker could trick the user into buying and installing an app by inserting a fake update prompt or hijacking an actual update prompt to silently redirect them to another app. In both cases it’s possible to monetize this attack by having a very expensive application available through the App Store and tricking the user into purchasing it using the app swapping approach.

Preventing application installation: Without HTTPS it’s possible to prevent the user from installing/upgrading applications either by stripping the app out of the store or tricking the app into believing it is already installed.

Privacy leak: The App Store application update mechanism discloses the list of the apps installed on the device.

It’s unclear if any of these scenarios have actually been exploited in the wild but now that HTTPS is enabled by default on the App Store it’s no longer an issue. Bursztein says he’s really happy that his spare-time work pushed Apple to finally protect users.

Source : techspot[dot]com

The latest Apple rumors point to new security features with both a fingerprint sensor and Near-Field Communication reader built into the iPhone 5S.

According to the sometimes questionable China Times, Taiwanese company Chipbond is developing touch display drivers for the new iPhone to support both NFC and fingerprint scanning.

The rumor does not come as much of a surprise, following a recent Apple patent that would equip future iPhones with a fingerprint reader next to the home button.

Notably, Apple's patent described a liquid crystal security window for scanning fingerprints, which fits with Chipbond's specialty in developing LCD drivers.

iPhone 5S, the S stand for security

Rumors of fingerprint scanners and NFC support in Apple's devices trace back to last July when Apple bought mobile security firm AuthenTec for $356 million.

AuthenTec's specialization was in fingerprint scanning technology, a specialty shared by biosecurity firm Microlatch which Apple has reportedly also been in talks with since last year.

While fingerprint scanning could be used as added security to unlock a device, it is also rumored to be a key part of the next iPhone's NFC support by asking for fingerprint confirmation to make payments more secure.

Apple is clearly interested in using fingerprint scanning and NFC technology in its devices, and if the rumors are true and the chips are already in production then we may be looking at a key iPhone 5S security feature.

Source : techradar[dot]com