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RIM Will Announce BB10 Device in August, Launch in October, Rumour Suggests

Loyalists and investors of Research In Motion await with baited breath news of BlackBerry 10, the Waterloo company's next-gen mobile software platform that will lead a wave of new devices and - hopefully - restore RIM to at least some of its former glory. New rumours have now surfaced, offering these patient folks a possibly accurate timeline.

According to sources cited in N4BB, the first BB10 device will be announced in August. A product launch will follow this roughly two months later in October.

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Victory for Wind: Globalive Defeats CRTC and Public Mobile After Years-Long Court Battle

It was a long-winded legal battle. But Wind won.

Today, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from the CRTC and discount carrier Public Mobile to a government decision that allows Globalive - which owns and operates Wind - to offer wireless services in Canada despite substantial foreign funding. It was a lengthy seesaw battle that began years ago when Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding SAE's funding allowed Wind to buy spectrum in the last government wireless auction. 

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Tablet Ownership to Double in Two Years, Research Predicts

Well over 60 million tablets were sold in 2011. By 2016, this number is expected to soar to more than 230 million, according to new data from Futuresource Consulting.

While these numbers include commercial, industrial, and institutional sales, consumers will continue to drive the bulk of tablet sales. Consumers accounted for roughly 90% of all tablet sales last year, Futuresource says.

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The Four Most Popular App Categories in the Future

Tablets will continue to gain popularity, and within that, apps will too. By 2016, ABI Research predicts that tablet owners will download an average of more than 30 apps per year. 

In 2016, ABI forecasts nearly 14 billion app downloads in total. And it expects 11 billion, or 80%, of those apps to come from one of four categories: games, digital publishing, social networking, and e-commerce.

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Weever Apps Collaborates with Mohawk College to Develop Mobile App for Students and Faculty

Mohawk College and Hamilton-based startup Weever Apps have launched a web-based mobile app. The app, developed in part through Mohawk’s iDeaWorks program, will enable Mohawk students, employees and visitors with instant access at their fingertips to search programs and courses, streaming social feeds, events, photos, videos, and a GPS mapping feature.

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Toronto's Claystone Labs is Reinventing the Android Homescreen

Toronto's Claystone Labs has launched its Android homescreen service. The Canadian startup's vision is to become "Everything on your Android phone in one swipe."

It's a new way to using your Android device; Claystone's navigation is composed of Panels that feature content and apps to interact with. Panels are layered atop one another each time a user selects an item, which creats a swipable, browsable Stack. Confused? Check out the video below to see Claystone work its magic.

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Mobile Service in Canada: Overpriced and Anti-Competitive [Study]

In a recent report  called Long Term Evolutionary Challenge: Limiting Wireless Carrier Gluttony, Seabord Group argues that Canada must stimulate competition in the mobile services sector. Consumers complain about high prices and the lack of choice in the Canadian mobile market, composed mainly of an oligopoly between Bell, Rogers, and Telus.

Seabord reports that there is an antipathetic movement toward big mobile telcos since consumers have few phone device choices. Thus, it translates into a lower penetration of mobiles services in Canada versus OECD countries and also many emergent countries.

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The Death of RIM: An Infographic

In 1999, Waterloo-based Research In Motion gave the world a gift. It was called the BlackBerry 850, and it redefined the mobile phone. The 850 triggered an 80% surge in RIM's revenue that year and sparked an incredible run of global growth. The company quickly became a Canadian legend and a worldwide megalithic force in the mobile space. But times have changed.

MBA Online recently looked at RIM and published an infographic titled The Death of RIM: A Case Study. While it lacks many of the finer details that contributed to RIM's downward spiral, the graphic captures the company's past 13 years and encapsulates them into a digestible nutshell.

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Facebook Hits 900 Million Users, 500 Million Mobile Users

Facebook now has more than 900 million monthly active users and more than 500 million mobile users, according to an update to its IPO filing. More than half of those active users come back every single day.

The social networking giant also revealed it generated just over $1 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2012, up 45% from one year ago but down 6.5% from the previous quarter. Advertising made up 82% of Facebook's revenue in the first quarter.

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