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Mozilla has confirmed that the non-profit company will began selling ads in the Firefox "New Tabs" homepage, with the new initiative dubbed "Directory Tiles."

"Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla's pursuit of our mission," the company says. "The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy."

Mozilla began the foundations of the Directory Tiles last year when it allowed users to opt-in to receiving tailored content that was based on their browsing histories.

Darren Herman, Mozilla's VP of content services says: "Mozilla is moving from a dumb window to the internet to a smart agent on behalf of the user, putting the user first."

There is significant opportunity for Mozilla, as Firefox is the second-most used browser in the world, at about 18 percent market share (depending on what data you follow).

Foxconn, one of the largest manufacturers on the planet, has been secretly working with Google on their robotics dreams, says sources.

The sources claim that Foxconn has been working with former Android boss Andy Rubin, who now heads up the robotics division at Google. To be able to speed up deployment from their factories, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou recently met with Rubin to discuss the new technologies.

Rubin is said to have asked the chairman to "help integrate a technology company that Google is acquiring as Foxconn's strength lies in mechanical engineering."

Google has been not-so-quietly building a massive robotics division, acquiring eight robotics companies in the last year, most notably Boston Dynamics.

Fans of 'Terminator' need not worry, however, as the reports claim that Google is working on robots to help with electronics assembly manufacturing and to also better compete in retailing (potentially drones), not looking to create AI. Google would create a robotics operating system, taking a head start in the industry.

Sony has sent out press invites for two special events within the next month, including one during this year's Mobile World Congress event in Spain.

The first event is slated for February 24th, and the company is expected to launch a new Xperia flagship.

Sony will have to compete with Samsung, who has their Galaxy S5 announcement set for later in the day.

Additionally, Sony will hold a special event in Indonesia on March 5th, teasing a waterproof device with the tag line of "Life is an incredible journey, discover it with us on 5 March 2014!"

Jolla has announced that its Sailfish browser has been opened to the development community, with the app now open sourced.

Devs can download the Sailfish Browser code through code depository GitHub, to modify and improve the experience.

Jolla's browser has a foundation in Mozilla's open source Gecko browser engine.

The Jolla smartphone uses the Sailfish OS, which was created by former Nokia employees that had worked on the now defunct MeeGo operating system.

Featuring a 4.5-inch IPS LCD with 540 x 960 resolution (245 ppi), the device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, dual-core at 1.4 GHz, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and dual 2MP/8MP cameras.

New reports claim that Apple will debut its oft-rumored sapphire displays for the upcoming iWatch, rather than on the iPhone 6 as previously rumored.

The protective sapphire layer is said to be better than the market standard, Corning's Gorilla Glass, and Apple already uses it for its Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Last year, Apple invested $578 million on sapphire, having GT Advanced Technologies build a manufacturing plant for the material in Arizona.

Sapphire coatings, like those created by GT, are extremely scratch resistant and can also resist breakage, both of which will be very important for a smartwatch.

Apple is expected to launch the iWatch later this year after over two years of rumors and leaks.

Sony has made gamers happy by promising there will be over 100 games released for the PlayStation 4 console during 2014.

The titles will be both physical and digital-only releases, and will include smaller indie titles, as well.

Sony made the announcement during their Media Preview Event, where they made numerous other announcements.

Among the stats are 1.7 million hours of gaming have been live streamed and there's been over 172 million hours of online gaming since launch.

Here's a fun fact: More than 100 PS4 games are planned for release in 2014. Stay tuned for more updates from today's media summit

-- PlayStation (@PlayStation) February 10, 2014

According to a research note from Nomura, Microsoft is making up to $2 billion from its Android licensing agreements, significantly more than what it makes from its own Windows Phone smartphone operating system.

Analyst Rick Sherlund says Microsoft is using the huge profits to hide major losses in its entertainment and devices division, the division that is home to the Xbox, Skype and Windows Phone. The division is a money loser, but would show annual losses of over $2.5 billion if not for the Android deals, says Sherlund.

To come to the conclusion, Sherlund assumes that Microsoft makes $5 per unit of Android devices sold, and that Microsoft has squeezed deals out of 70 percent of Android makers. Sherlund also assumes a 90 percent gross margin for the royalties (which seems conservative).

By contrast, the software giant's Windows Phone platform will bring in an estimated $347 million profit for the fiscal year, on revenue of $3.3 billion. By 2015, with continued strong growth, Windows Phone revenue will jump to $8.4 billion in 2015 with gross profits expanding to $1.6 billion. Additionally, Nokia's feature phones will bring in $1 billion in profits next year Sherlund also estimates Microsoft's Nokia feature phones willl bring in around $1bn in gross profits by 2015.

After announcing the product at CES this year, Asus' VivoTab Note 8 is now available through the Microsoft Store.

The 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet is notable because it supports Wacom pen input for graphic design.

Under the hood is a Bay Trail Intel Atom Z3740, 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage.

Microsoft is selling the tablet for $329 with a 64GB model expected soon.

Check the device here: Microsoft Store

Barnes & Noble has confirmed that it has laid off a significant portion of its Nook hardware engineering division, including their VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein, over the past few weeks.

"We've been very clear about our focus on rationalizing the NOOK business and positioning it for future success and value creation. As we've aligned NOOK's cost structure with business realities, staffing levels in certain areas of our organization have changed, leading to some job eliminations. We're not going to comment specifically on those eliminations," said the company (via BI).

The Nook hardware division was in charge of the once popular Nook e-readers as well as the unpopular Nook tablet line. After a decent start, revenue began crashing and losses mounted, making the division the worst performing for all of B&N.

B&N discontinued the Nook tablets last year, and began focusing on building apps and a digital distribution platform, so OEMs could potentially build Nook devices.

According to a few sources, BlackBerry is working on a "killer" smartphone with high-end specs. Unfortunately, it likely won't see the light of day until the Q2 2015.

The device will feature the extremely efficient and powerful 20nm Snapdragon MSM8994 chipset, which uses a 64-bit architecture and has eight CPU cores and can be clocked up to 2.5GHz.

Additionally, the device can have up to 4GB of LPDDR3 1600MHz RAM, an Adreno 430 GPU and OpenGL ES3.0, direct x11.1, OpenCL1.2.

While those specs would blow any current machine out of the water by a long shot, by Q2 2015, it is expected that many high-end phone will boast such specs, meaning BlackBerry will once again be playing catch-up.

Earlier today, HTC reported their fourth quarter earnings, posting another poor three-month period, as expected. Worse, the company forecasted a further decline in profit and revenue for the Q1 2014.

Revenue fell to NT$42.9 billion ($1.4 billion USD), a full 28 percent decline year-over-year. Net profit for the quarter was NT$0.31 billion (nearly $10 million) and operating margins fell apart to -3.7 percent.

HTC forecasted that its revenue will drop in the Q1 to NT$34 billion ($1.12 billion), marking the third straight quarter of declines following a little boost from the HTC One launch.

The company will also change its focus again, this time to the lower-end smartphone market which should open up its products to hundreds of millions of new potential buyers. CEO Cher Wang says the phone maker will move to more phones priced between $150 to $300.

According to the WSJ, Nokia will release its oft-rumored Android smartphone this month, just as the company's handset division closes on being sold to Microsoft.

Nokia had been working on the device before Microsoft began their due diligence into purchasing the company, and many in the industry believe that Microsoft preferred to purchase the company outright rather than let the top Windows Phone maker move towards Android. Microsoft will pay $7.4 billion for the handset business and to license the company's patents.

The sources say the new Android device is aimed at emerging market customers but the operating system will be a variant that does not promote "key Google-developed features that a more traditional Android-powered phone might." This means the phone will not have Google's Google Play app store but instead will come pre-installed with a suite of Microsoft/Nokia apps including Here maps, Mix Radio, and a new Nokia application store with Android apps. This is similar to Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets, which use Amazon's own app store (for which they get a cut, and not Google).

Torrentfreak has unveiled some interesting torrent statistics, pulling data from torrent tracker Demonii.

Demonii, while not a household name, is a massive standalone tracker that does not offer torrents but helps people connect to share files through other torrent sites. For example, The Pirate Bay added it to all of its torrents last year, and the tracker has reached 20 million peak peers in the last month.

The tracker opened up its traffic stats to the viewing public, giving an insight into the world of torrents and their users.

Unsurprisingly, the most people connected to the tracker on Sunday afternoon (EST), with numbers generally falling significantly at other times of the week. Also interestingly, Demonii handles up to 3,333 connections per second, a huge figure.

As promised, Dong Nguyen, the developer of Flappy Bird, has now removed the game from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.

The developer looks to be shying away from the spotlight, as the game was bringing in about $50,000 in ad revenue per day after being released just last month.

If you already have it installed, you can continue to play it but searching will lead you to a page that includes reviews but no ability to download.

The frustratingly addicting game was the top free game for both Android and iOS. The developer's tweet announcing the news has quickly become one of the most retweeted Tweets of the year, with 130,000 rewteets in 24 hours.

I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.

-- Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

Infamous patent troll Innovatio IP Ventures has settled with Cisco over hundreds of million of routers used by the average retail business.

The trolls bought old Broadcom patents and last year sent 13,000 letters to chain hotels and even coffee shops, demanding up to $5000 in licensing fees for the use of Wi-Fi routers and other access points. None of the companies paid and Innovatio filed lawsuits.

Not willing to see their end users abused, Cisco, Netgear and Motorola all intervened in the lawsuits, getting Innovatio to reduce their demands from $5000 per business to $5 per router. Cisco did not relent and got the final settlement down to 3.2 cents per router. Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler says the company will pay $2.7 million, 3.2 cents each for 85 million unlicensed devices. Cisco had already struck licensing deals for its other 100 million active routers. Innovatio can no longer attack Cisco router users.

"We spent $13 million on this litigation, not including the $2.7 million settlement," wrote Chandler. "I'm proud that we stepped up for our customers and appreciate the great job that our counsel at Kirkland and Ellis did for us. But that expenditure would not have been necessary if Innovatio had met its obligations to license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and had come to Cisco seeking a reasonable license first rather than targeting our customers and those of other manufacturers."