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Admitting that the acquisition was a brutal mistake, Microsoft has written off its entire acquisition of Nokia's handset business, taking a $7.6 billion loss in less than two years.

Additionally, the company will cut 7800 jobs from its phone business, with a lot of former Nokia execs getting laid off.

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed what everyone already knew - that former CEO Steve Ballmer made a horrible purchase - and it is clear that Windows Phone is still relevant at Microsoft, but not necessarily a huge priority.

"We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. "In the near-term, we'll run a more effective and focused phone portfolio while retaining capability for long-term reinvention in mobility."

In the past few weeks, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has left Microsoft as has phones boss Jo Harlow so it appears that Microsoft has finally conceded that the smartphone industry is a duopoly.

According to new reports, Paramount is looking to shorten the time between when a movie is released in theaters and when it is available on demand.

If successful, the studio would like to have all their films available on demand just two weeks after their theatrical debut, showing how important digital downloads, rentals and streaming are to the business.

The studio will release two small films this fall using the shorter window, but it will move its entire schedule to the shorter window over time.

"What other product creates its most attention at launch and then creates a significant period of time where the consumer can't acquire that product?" Rob Moore, Paramount's vice chairman, said of major motion pictures.

The theory is that a shorter window between theater and home release will help lower marketing costs and also put a dent in piracy, which still remains a problem for the studios, especially on blockbuster films that normally do not make it to home media for months after they have left theaters.

According to a new report, Apple is preparing to ramp up production of its next generation iPhone to record levels.

Apple is allegedly asking manufacturers to have up to 90 million units produced by the end of the year, with screen sizes equal to those of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Last year, Apple ordered a quarterly production run of up to 80 million units, then a record for the smartphone.

There is little known about the upcoming iPhone 6S, although it is expected to add Force Touch technology. The tech was added to the most recent Mac computers and the Apple Watch and allows users to control their device differently depending on how light or hard they touch the screen.

Besides the Force Touch addition, there is not expected to be any other drastic changes although the phone will most likely be available in at least one new color.

Netflix has announced that its first feature film, "Beasts of No Nation," will premier in all Netflix territories and in a few theaters on October 16th, 2015.

In addition, Netflix has announced the release date for a few more original movies, as well.

Beasts of No Nation is already being billed as a possible Oscar contender, starring Idris Elba telling the story of a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country.

Looking ahead, Adam Sandler's first exclusive film, "The Ridiculous Six" will debut on December 11th and feature Adam Sandler, Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Rob Schneider, Taylor Lautner, Luke Wilson and Nick Nolte in a Western comedy.

Pee-wee Herman is back with "Pee-wee's Big Holiday," scheduled to debut in March 2016 followed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend, which will be released in IMAX theaters and Netflix sometime in the Q1 2016.

Microsoft has started their 'Ultimate Game Sale' 2015, placing major discounts on a hundred titles for Xbox One and Xbox 360.

If you are a gamer, this is as good a time as any to pickup that game you've been looking for.

Let's take a look at the list, starting with Xbox One and a Silver Xbox Live subscription (Name, Content Type, Discount):

OnePlus has been slowly trickling out information about their upcoming flagship OnePlus 2 device, and now we have the first confirmation on price.

CEO Pete Lau has promised that the phone will sell for less than $450, adding that for them, "it's never been about the price."

Previously, the company had said the device will cost more than $325, so we now have a pretty reasonable expectation as to the price of the phone.

Here's to hoping it is towards the bottom end of the range.

Microsoft has announced updates to its Windows 10 entertainment apps, including one major rebranding.

The software giant has renamed Xbox Music as 'Groove,' as apparently the old name was confusing consumers.

Here's a rundown of the new features:

The Look and Feel: Groove provides an improved experience for listening to and managing your music in Windows 10. Getting into music is faster than ever with easy-to-use menus and navigation controls that work well with both mouse/keyboard, and with familiar touch gestures on touch-screen devices. Pinch to zoom in or out of different views, drag your favorite tracks in to playlists, hover over the Taskbar icon for playback controls, or right click for contextual menus to pin an album to your Start menu. And you can also infuse your personality in to Groove – choose a light or dark theme for the app depending on your mood, or pick an accent color in Windows Settings and the Groove app makes it shine.

Accessing Your Music on your favorite devices: We're also making it easy to access your content across your favorite devices – with built-in OneDrive integration making your favorite songs only a few clicks away. Upload all your MP3's to OneDrive, even songs purchased from iTunes, and access them all for free with the Groove app on your Windows devices, Xbox, the web -- and even on your Android phones and iPhones (coming soon).

Amazon is celebrating their 20th anniversary with the aptly named "Prime Day," a shopping day that the retailer hopes will trump Black Friday.

Says the company: "Next week, Amazon turns 20 and on the eve of its birthday, the company introduces Prime Day, a global shopping event, offering more deals than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Austria.

On Wednesday, July 15, new and existing members in the U.S. will find deals starting at midnight, with new deals starting as often as every ten minutes. They can shop thousands of Lightning Deals, seven popular Deals of the Day and receive unlimited fast, free shipping."

Amazon is even extending the festivities to new customers who sign up for the 30-day free trial of Prime, as long as they've signed up before the 15th. Amazon has promised Lightning Deals from nearly every category, so there could certainly be some great deals available.

Source:
Amazon

According to Nielsen, consumers in the U.S. are streaming almost twice as much music as they were last year.

For the first half of 2015, streaming jumped 92 percent year-over-year to 135.2 billion songs streamed. Digital downloads fell 10 percent year-over-year, as the medium is slowly being replaced.

Interestingly, video streams increased 109 percent to 76.6 billion, suggesting more music fans prefer to watch music videos or the convenience of sites like YouTube to streaming audio.

Overall, there were 160 million individual songs downloaded and 116.1 million total albums downloaded, still strong numbers for a format that brings the record labels and artists much more money than individual streams do.

Japanese watchmaker Casio is ready to jump into the smartwatch market.

Casio says its watch will be a watch first and foremost, one that tries to be smart. The company says other watch makers have made smart devices that have tried to be watches, and have therefore failed.

The watch maker first introduced digital watches 40 years ago, and is the maker of the extremely popular G-Shock series. Casio's watch have included schedule managers, heart-rate monitors and other messaging features in the past, but so far the company has stayed away from the smart watch arena.

"We are trying to bring our smartwatch to a level of watch perfection: a device that won't break easily, is simple to put on and feels good to wear," said Kazuhiro Kashio, the company's new president. It turns out the company has been working on a device for 4 years with the same team but prototype after prototype has been rejected.

Casio is expected to launch the smartwatch for around $400 during the Spring of 2016.

Back in the early 1990's, Sony tried to partner with Nintendo to create a console that would have allowed SNES gamers to gain CD-ROM support while still playing older cartridge titles.

Over time, the partnership broke up over licensing issues and Sony went on to create the PlayStation console in 1994 and become the undisputed king of the gaming market.

A few days ago, we got a glimpse into the SNES-CD PlayStation console (the Nintendo Play Station), thanks to a lucky gamer who found a prototype sitting in a box. Reddit user Analogueboy posted photos and a video of the device, claiming he found it in a box of his dad's old things. His dad had worked with someone "named Olaf I think" who had worked for Nintendo and left the box behind.

There is a chance that Olaf could be Sony Interactive Entertainment founder Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, which would make perfect sense, but it will be hard to prove. For now, check out the photos and video and see one of the rarest items in the gaming world in action.

Earlier this week, Google announced that Gmail would be getting hundreds of new themes, emojis and background image choices and as of writing all Gmail users should now have them.

Read Google's original post: "Your inbox is home to some of your most meaningful and entertaining messages--from that acceptance letter, to those throwback photos--so we think it's important for Gmail to feel just as personal (and fun!). That's why we offer lots of ways to customize your experience--from inbox categories, to email formatting, to shareable selfies--and why today we're expanding your options with additional themes, and emoji."

There are hundreds of new HQ photos taken by "fellow Googlers" and you have the option to upload your own, as well. You can also now use editing tools and add text to your background image.

The emojis will look very familiar to Android and Hangouts users, and they update the very old emoticons that Gmail used to include.

The Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission has filed lawsuits against Samsung and Oppo this week, specifically over the large amount of "bloatware" that comes pre-installed on the company's smartphones.

Both manufacturer's devices have apps that come pre-installed and cannot be removed, allege the suits, and many of them even "steal" cellular data without users knowing.

For example, the Oppo X9007 came pre-installed with 71 apps and the Samsung SM-N9008S (Galaxy Note 3) had 44 pre-installed apps.

The Commission filed the suits after complaints from consumers. The lawsuit is seeking to force smartphone makers to "clearly state on the product's packaging what apps have been installed, and give consumers instructions on how to remove unwanted software. It also wants to compel the companies to inform consumers about the amount of memory that pre-installed apps take up."

In order to "manage demand" Microsoft has decided to roll out Windows 10 in phases, meaning not everyone with an eligible PC will actually receive it on launch day: July 29th.

The first fans to receive the update are those who have signed up to be Windows Insiders and are currently beta testing the operating system.

Microsoft expects 100 million upgrades to Windows 10, so it does make sense to have a phased roll out but it won't make everyone happy especially if you have reserved a copy for months now.

Says the company: "Starting on July 29, we will start rolling out Windows 10 to our Windows Insiders. From there, we will start notifying reserved systems in waves, slowly scaling up after July 29th. Each day of the roll-out, we will listen, learn and update the experience for all Windows 10 users.

If you reserved your copy of Windows 10, we will notify you once our compatibility work confirms you will have a great experience, and Windows 10 has been downloaded on your system."

You can read more about the phased roll out here: Microsoft

Microsoft has effectively killed off its own Silverlight browser media player, confirming that its upcoming Microsoft Edge browser will not support the framework.

The software giant had noted in the past that Edge will kill off support for ActiveX-based plug-ins but had never specifically mentioned Silverlight.

Says the company: "Support for ActiveX has been discontinued in Microsoft Edge, and that includes removing support for Silverlight. The reasons for this have been discussed in previous blogs and include the emergence of viable and secure media solutions based on HTML5 extensions. Microsoft continues to support Silverlight, and Silverlight out-of-browser apps can continue to use it. Silverlight will also continue to be supported in Internet Explorer 11, so sites continue to have Silverlight options in Windows 10. At the same time, we encourage companies that are using Silverlight for media to begin the transition to DASH/MSE/CENC/EME based designs and to follow a single, DRM-interoperable encoding work flow enabled by CENC. This represents the most broadly interoperable solution across browsers, platforms, content and devices going forward."

Silverlight was first introduced in 2007 and grew popular thanks to Netflix selecting it for its desktop streaming service. Microsoft continued to update the framework until Silverlight 5 in 2011. Silverlight is no longer widely used and Netflix has transitioned to HTML5.