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It was a long time coming but according to Gartner, smartphones having finally outsold feature phones on an annual basis.

The research firm says 968 million smartphones were sold, with a total of 1.8 billion phones being sold in 2013. While growth was not as large as in the past, global mobile device sales grew 3.5 percent from 2012.

Smartphones overtook feature phones at some point during the Q2, and the trend continued with smartphones finishing the year at 53.6 percent share overall. In the Q4, smartphone share was 57.6 percent, and that trend is expected to continue up.

Developed markets have reached saturation, says the firm, with emerging markets leading to all of the growth for 2013. Latin America had 96.1 percent growth year-over-year, and the Middle East and Africa, Asia/Pacific and Eastern Europe all had growth rates above 50 percent in the Q4.

Android remained king at 78.4 percent with iOS in second at 15.6 percent and Windows Phone grew to 3.2 percent.

Finnish gaming giant Rovio has announced a new spin-off of their popular Angry Birds series, basing the new game on the female character 'Stella.'

Stella was a character in the Angry Birds Go! and Angry Birds Seasons games, but will now be a star of her own sub-brand to be used for games, books, TV shows, and toys.

"Angry Birds Stella is breaking the mould by introducing strong, passionate characters who really stand for something, while adding plenty of action and reality into the mix," said Rovio's chief executive Mikael Hed. "The Angry Birds Stella story will live and evolve across physical and digital, bridging them in fun and innovative ways."

Rovio continues its push into licensed products and spin-offs, which accounted for nearly 50 percent of revenue during the company's last earnings report.

Read more here.

Michael Pachter, video game industry analyst for Wedbush Morgan, has forecasted sales figures for the next-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles.

The analyst predicts that Sony's PS4 will reach 12 million and Microsoft's Xbox One will reach 9 million units sold by the end of the year, showing strong continued demand.

Wedbush called the PlayStation 4 a "phenomenal success right out of the gate," and the console has sold over 4 million units since launch in November. Additionally, the console hasn't even launched in Sony's hometown of Japan yet, and when it does another significant boost is expected.

The Xbox One will also be a success, but due to its higher price, sales are expected to be less, say the analysts.

Nintendo's Wii U will continue its struggles, and could sell 3 million units if Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 are the hits they are expected to be.

Dennis Woodside, who became Motorola Mobility's CEO when the company was acquired by Google, is leaving to Dropbox.

Google announced it was selling its Motorola handset division to Lenovo last month while keeping the patents they really purchased the company for.

Woodside will be Dropbox's first ever COO, as the cloud sync and storage company plans to go public in the near future.

Formerly a Google executive before taking the CEO job at Motorola, Woodside has been received in a very positive light around Silicon Valley, with Apple trying to hire him away from Motorola in 2013.

Six months ago, Microsoft hired Jason Holtman to turn around its struggling Games for Windows Live program, but it appears there will be more work as far as that is concerned.

Holtman has confirmed that he has left the company. Holtman joined Microsoft after eight years of working at Steam.

According to the execs' LinkedIn page, he left last month, and a Facebook post confirms: "Last week I left Microsoft and said goodbye to my friends there. Now looking around for something interesting and fun-no end of that in video games!"

The company remains committed to gaming, says game guru Ken Lobb but the time frame is extended: "Please let us continue to do that over a five-year period so we can have real impact. That's how it feels right now."

Google has partnered with software maker VMware in an effort to bring Windows to Chromebooks.

VMware creates emulation software giving users the ability to run multiple operating systems on the same PC. With the new deal, Chromebook owners will be able to use the Windows desktop and all legacy apps within VMware's Horizon, as long as they have an Internet connection.

By being able to run Windows apps, Google has opened up the possibilities of the Chromebook. Says Google Enterprise President Amit Singh: "Google Chromebooks can save businesses about $5,000 per computer when compared to traditional PCs. Chromebooks are designed for the way people use computers today and are a secure, easy and cost-effective solution to help organizations embrace a new way of doing business. Through our partnership with VMware, businesses can now capitalize on these advantages with access to legacy applications, data and desktops they need to keep employees productive."

As of yesterday, Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs is complete, having receiving early FTC approval last week.

Nest Labs specializes in reinventing common household items in clever ways. The company's Nest Learning Thermostat has been a best seller and its recently released Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm launched to considerable acclaim and attention.

Said Google CEO Larry Page, at the announcement last month: "Nest's founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, have built a tremendous team that we are excited to welcome into the Google family. They're already delivering amazing products you can buy right now--thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe. We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams."

Nest will continue to operate as an independent company, with Google as its parent.

Comcast will announce their plans to acquire Time Warner Cable tomorrow morning in a massive $45 billion deal that will merge two of the largest cable companies in the U.S.

The cable co. will pay $158.82 per share for TWC, which closed today trading at $135 per share.

While the deal requires regulatory approval, there is little doubt that it will go through with the acquisition expected to close by the end of the year.

Time Warner Cable has 12 million subscribers in blockbuster markets like NYC and Los Angeles, and is the second largest cable company in the nation, behind Comcast which has over 22 million subscribers.

In its most recent quarter, Time Warner Cable lost over 300,000 subscribers and notoriously has some of the worst customer service on the planet.

Although the infamous torrent tracker has joked about moving its servers to North Korea, it appears that the site really did come close to doing so back in its early years.

TPB co-founder Tobias Andersson made light of the fact during an interview earlier in the week, and TorrentFreak reported on the news.

Andersson says the team "wanted to host a server in the North Korean embassy in Stockholm" where they had a contact. "This was way back in the beginning. Probably around 2004-2005. Back then, the site didn't need the insane amounts of bandwidth it would later on," Andersson adds.

TPB was just a baby at the time, not yet the behemoth it is today.

"In 2004 the site was still young and cocky. So when an opportunity appeared that obviously would piss off the US government, we didn't want to miss it," Andersson also said.

After being introduced to the employee within the embassy, they were told they could bring the server inside in exchange for a fee. The employees did not receive any pay, so the extra income would have been a gift. Had they done so, the site would have been protected from local law enforcement and from the U.S. "We thought, why not host a server or two at the embassy? If not all of them, perhaps at least some of the frontend servers, so that when the cops, media and Hollywood searched for them, they'd end up in the most hostile and isolated countries in the world."

According to the Japanese business daily Nikkei, Sony is actively in talks with Apple to double its supply of camera sensors to be used in the upcoming iPhone 6.

Sony currently produces all of the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors for the iPhone 5S' rear camera.

Apple currently uses a handful of suppliers for the sensors on the FaceTime camera, but the paper says Apple may decide on Sony to supply all the CMOS sensors for both cameras.

Sony is the big dog in the global CMOS sensor market, with 32.1 percent share. An increased deal with Apple would certainly lead to that share being higher into the future.

The paper says Sony has already begun planning for the expected production boost.

Ubisoft's upcoming blockbuster 'Watch Dogs,' which was set to be released in 2013 but was instead delayed until 2014, has been delayed again, if you are a Wii U owner.

Says the publisher: "We made the difficult decision to further delay the release of Watch Dogs on Wii U, to focus the team's resources where they could have the broadest possible benefit for both our customers and Ubisoft."

The PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360 versions are all expected in the Q2 and there was no timeframe set for the Wii U version.

With the latest move, it is clear that Nintendo has no horse in the race anymore, as publishers and developers slowly but surely move support away towards more profitable ventures.

According to sources, Xbox Studios, in their effort to bring original programming to the Xbox consoles, are developing a series based on the early career of rapper Nas.

The half-hour series will revolve around Nas' life and career in the 90s, before he became a star with the release of "Illmatic."

Deadline says the show is "set in the 1990s in Long Island City's Queensbridge housing complex, where Nas grew up, and takes a look at music, family and the levinetrials and tribulations of the rap game."

Xbox Studios has been actively buying scripted programming, and developing their own shows, before a major launch of content via the Xbox console and other Microsoft products.

Sprint posted their fourth quarter earnings this week, losing money again and remaining the only major carrier in the U.S. to lose money on a regular basis.

The carrier confirmed record subscribers, 53.9 million, adding 58,000 post paid subscribers, 322,000 prepaid subscribers, and 302,000 wholesale subscribers for the quarter.

For the year, the carrier sold 5.6 million smartphones and 5.6 million for the quarter. 95 percent of postpaid customers purchased smartphones, a higher figure than rivals AT&T and Verizon.

The company lost $1 billion for the quarter, slightly better than the $1.3 billion it lost in the same quarter for 2012.

Sprint also boasted that its LTE network now covers 200 million Americans, and its Sprint Spark service, which includes LTE speeds up to 50Mbps, is now in 14 markets. The company's network is way behind AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile's, which continue to blanket the nation.

Sony used their media event yesterday to announce that the slimmer and lighter PlayStation Vita will be finally making its way to North America.

The company will sell the device as part of a Borderlands 2 bundle for $200. "Many of you have probably seen some of the announcements come from Europe and Japan," added John Koller, Sony's head of hardware marketing for PlayStation. "We're very proud to bring it here [to North America] as well."

Sony released the slim Vita in Japan last October, with a 20 percent slimmer and 15 percent lighter design. The model also has an HD five-inch LCD screen (rather than a more expensive OLED), has better battery life, 1GB internal storage and replaces Sony's proprietary charging port with a micro USB. Additionally, the handheld is Wi-Fi-only, removing previous 3G/LTE support.

"We like to iterate. We like to talk about the fact that the systems tend to evolve," concluded Koller. "The Vita evolves in many of the same ways that we've evolved other platforms in the past. This one I think is really important, though. This [slim PS Vita] makes it easier to play. It's a slimmer form function, and it's just easier to hold in your hand. The LCD is brilliant."

'Flappy Bird' creator Dong Nguyen, the man behind the surprise blockbuster game, has said in an interview with Forbes that the game became too addicting and is now 'gone forever.'

Despite making a reported $50,000 per day in ad revenue, Nguyen took the game down this week, removing it from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.

"Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed," says the developer. "But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever."

Even though the game has been removed, if you have it installed you can continue to play it. The game is extremely simple in nature, but frustrating. You tap the screen to get your bird through a series of green Mario-esque pipes without hitting anything. Despite how simple it sounds, most players have not broken the 100 point threshold that takes them out of the "noob" standings.