Samsung Electronics is soaring after just posting record fourth-quarter earnings as fellow Asian tech firm HTC has reported a fall in earnings.
According to Samsung, its fiscal fourth quarter profits jumped 73 percent compared to the same period in 2010, thanks in big part to record-setting sales from its smartphone lineup.
For the fourth quarter, Samsung posted a 5.2 trillion won (about $4.5 billion) profit.
The Samsung profit for the fourth quarter was also helped by Seagate’s purchase of …

The United States International Trade Commission will be handing down its verdict next Wednesday on a case filed by Apple against HTC, various reports note.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the ITC will be making its decision whether HTC really is infringing on Apple patents on December 19.
Bloomberg reports that this is now the second time the decision on the delicate matter has been delayed, according to HTC in a statement sent to the publication.
The decision about the HTC-Apple case …

Taiwanese smartphone giant HTC has filed a lawsuit against the Taiwan unit of Citigroup blaming the financial institution of causing a share price decline of the company, a report claims.
According to Reuters, the criminal lawsuit from HTC was revealed by a Taiwanese prosecutor on Tuesday.
HTC is accusing Citi of publishing false information about the smartphone maker leading to a drop in the share price of the company.
Reuters quotes Huang Mou-hsin, the deputy chief prosecutor from the Taipei …

HTC has backed away from appealing against an injunction banning sales of the its 3G devices in Germany, increasing the number of banned mobile electronics products in the country.
IPcom Technologies filed a lawsuit against HTC for several patents and secured a favorable ruling from a German court over HTC infringing a specific patent that involves an algorithm for user priority assignment, claiming that the patent is present in devices worldwide.
Earlier, HTC planned to present an appeal to …

HTC has cut its current guidance for the current quarter by a whopping 23 percent lower than expectations, reports say.
According to HTC, it now forecasts a revenue amounting to NT$104 billion (about $3.4 billion) for the fourth quarter of the year.
This is significantly lower than the earnings the company is expected by analysts to get during the quarter. It is lower by an estimated 23 percent than expectations.
“Due to global macroeconomic downturn and market competition, the assumptions of …

HTC is reportedly building a phone codenamed “Buffy” in a project it is collaborating on with Facebook.
The report comes from All Things Digital, wherein Liz Gannes and Ina Fried detail the Facebook project it has tasked HTC to make.
The tech blog says that “the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources familiar with the …

Tech blog website AllThingsD reported this week that Facebook and a cell phone manufacturer are working on developing a “Facebook phone”.
Less than a year ago there were reports that a Facebook like smartphone incorporating most of Facebook’s social networking functions was on the way, and a number of media outlets confirmed that the social networking giant had been in communication with carriers and manufacturers about how to develop a Facebook branded phone.  Industry buzz over a …

Apple did not infringe on S3 Graphics patents, the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled.

In a development which deals a blow to HTC’s patent war against Apple, the International Trade Commission has ruled on Monday that Apple is not infringing on S3 Graphics Co patents.
The development also runs contrary to a preliminary ruling handed down by a ITC judge in July where it was said that Apple infringed on two patents S3 owns while two other alleged infringements were not found to be …

HTC has released the list of its phones that will be getting operating system upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The announcement was made by the company itself on its Facebook page.
Contrary to the hopes the owners of HTC smartphones had that they would get the updates this year, they will be able to get the firmware for their gadgets  only in early 2012.
List of the first contenders for the update will include smartphones HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL and HTC Sensation XE, as well …

If you’re looking to buy a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and also wouldn’t mind a free HTC smartphone, then head on over to Best Buy.

Best Buy will be giving away HTC smartphones with every purchase of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Image: arjin j / Flickr (CC)

Best Buy is giving away (yes, giving away) free HTC Android smartphones with every purchase of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
These HTC smartphones are no pansies too as they are the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, the Verizon Droid …