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According to the WSJ, China Mobile has signed their long-awaited iPhone deal with Apple, bringing the popular device to the world's largest carrier.

China Mobile has over 700 million subscribers, which should lead to a nice boost in sales for Apple.

At an upcoming December 18th event, China Mobile will show off their new 4G network. Officials with the carrier have long said they would wait to introduce the iPhone until after their 4G network was up and running.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced earlier today that it had approved licenses to China Mobile and its rival carriers to operate the broadband networks.

Apple, despite having deals with other Chinese carriers, has struggled to break out in the nation due to major competition from Android makers that offer devices at half the price of the iPhone, or less.

Analysts believe the deal will add 20 million iPhone unit sales per year, a massive increase to Apple's already large sales.

In November, Motorola Mobility took the wrapping off its Moto G device, an entry-level smartphone that the company hopes will help it dominate the low-cost market.

Google has priced the phone at $179 off-contract and unlocked, a new low for an Android device with such specs, and a clear way to distance the operating system from rival iPhone, which sells for $600 or more off-contract.

While the device does not offer the same specs as the top models in the market like the Nexus 5, Moto X, HTC One, Galaxy Note 3 or the iPhone 5S, it comes at a price lower than each of those cost even when taken with a two-year contract.

We will explore whether the Moto G offers the best Android 'bang for your buck' and whether or not it has a place among the market leaders.

Specs and Design

OCZ Technology, just days after announcing bankruptcy, has announced that they have signed an asset purchase agreement with Toshiba where the company will buy all of OCZ's assets in a chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding for $35 million.

Under the agreement, Toshiba will acquire OCZ's client and enterprise SSD businesses, and OCZ will "continue to operate and serve existing and future customers during this process."

Throughout the process, Toshiba has also agreed to provide "DIP (Debtor-in-Possession) financing to ensure that there is adequate capital and flash supply to support the business during the contemplated sale period."

"Over the past year, OCZ has dealt with numerous issues which have stressed the company's capital structure and operating model, posing a challenge to achieving near term profitability. The combination of NAND flash supply constraints and credit issues have impacted our ability to satisfy the demands of our customers; this combined with increased pricing pressure in our industry have contributed to our on-going operating losses. On an operational basis, we completed a complex investigation, several restructurings and a multi-year restatement that added significantly to our working capital requirements," stated Ralph Schmitt, CEO of OCZ. "We have been working diligently on this partnership with Toshiba and we believe that this is the best outcome under our current corporate conditions."

Yesterday, Motorola tried to offer a Cyber Monday sale on their flagship Moto X, but the company's site could not handle all the traffic.

The company dropped the price of the Moto X to $350 unlocked, making it one of the better tech deals of the day, until buyers were met with errors.

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside apologized for the downtime: "I want to apologize to our customers and fans for the issues we experienced on our website with our Cyber Monday promotion. I want you to understand what happened, and what we are doing to rectify the situation.

First, we misjudged the overwhelming consumer demand for Moto X, which was far greater than we expected. Second, our pre-sale site testing was not sufficiently extensive. Testing failed to reveal weaknesses caused by large volumes of concurrent orders flowing through the MotoMaker customization engine. Thus, when we opened the promotion this morning, an extraordinary spike in concurrent orders caused our website to go down.

We couldn't fulfill orders. The site became unstable. While some orders were filled, many customers tried all day to place their orders, unsuccessfully. Customers were left frustrated.We have since found a solution that we believe addresses the concurrent order issue."

Once-popular cyberlocker Hotfile has settled its long-standing lawsuit with Hollywood and the MPAA, meaning the service will soon shut down for good unless they can "effectively implement 'digital fingerprinting' tech" that will block users from uploading unauthorized files to their servers.

Following the settlement, owner Anton Titov must pay damages totaling $80 million to the major movie studios.

The MPAA was quick to claim victory, stating that this is the first case in which a "US court has ruled on whether so-called cyberlockers like Hotfile can be held liable for their infringing business practices."

Hotfile had received a shocking 10 million DMCA notices before the lawsuit was filed in 2011 and at its peak was one of the largest lockers on the planet.

MPAA chairman Chris Dodd added: "This judgment by the court is another important step toward protecting an internet that works for everyone. Sites like Hotfile that illegally profit off of the creativity and hard work of others do a serious disservice to audiences, who deserve high-quality, legitimate viewing experiences online."

After recently announcing that the PlayStation 4 sold over one million units in its first 24 hours of sale, Sony has updated its system sales totals as of December 1st.

The company says 2.1 million consoles were sold worldwide since launch on November 15th, with 700,000 coming from Europe, Asia and Australia in the two days since its launch on November 29th.

Reads the Sony blog post:

In what is shaping up to be a historic year for gamers, I'm delighted to share an important new milestone with you. PS4′s North American debut on 15th November was PlayStation's largest ever, with more than one million gamers picking up a PS4 in just 24 hours. Now, with PS4′s global launch expanding to a total of 32 countries worldwide, including Europe and Latin America, I'm proud to announce that more than 2.1 million PS4s have been sold.

It's an impressive and record-setting accomplishment for our company and for our industry, and we couldn't have done it without you. I want to personally thank PlayStation fans, both old and new, for your vote of confidence. The best part: the PS4 journey has just begun. In addition to an incredible line-up of PS4 games from the best developers in the world, we will continue to introduce valuable new features and services to PS4 in the months and years ahead.

The U.S. Department of Justice has approved of Microsoft's plans to acquire Nokia's mobile devices and services business.

A notification by the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition confirmed the approval as of November 29th.

"We look forward to the date when our partners at Nokia will become members of the Microsoft family, and are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared the deal unconditionally," added Microsoft.

Nokia shareholders approved the deal last month, and other authorities have approved the deal, as well, since it was announced earlier this year.

The next, and biggest hurdle, will be European Union approval. The European Commission has until December 4th to decide on whether the bid violates EU competition rules.

Microsoft agreed to acquire the divisions for $7.2 billion along with licensing of important mobile patents.

According to the latest Kantar figures for the quarter ended October 31st, Windows Phone has been gaining traction around the globe, most notably in Italy.

The operating system reached a record 16.1 percent of the Italian smartphone market, besting Apple at 10.1 percent. In the UK, the OS hit 11.9 percent and France saw a record high, as well, at 12.5 percent. In France, the market share doubled from last year.

In the major smartphone markets of U.S., China and Spain, the operating system commanded 4.8 percent, 3.5 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.

EU5 nations (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom) saw Windows Phone share increase to 10.2 percent, behind iOS at 15.8 (down from 20.8 percent) and Android at 70.9 percent.

Full chart:

According to a new report out of the UK, the new iPhone 5S is killing its brother, the cheaper plastic iPhone 5C, by a 3-to-1 sales margin.

Kantar Worldpanel does add in their report that Apple has appealed to a broader audience with the 5C, and it has attracted new buyers to iPhone. Almost half of all iPhone 5C purchasers switched from feature phones or Android rivals, mainly from Samsung or LG. 80 percent of iPhone 5S buyers were upgrading from the iPhone 4, 4S or 5.

Similar figures have come out, globally, and Apple has reportedly scaled back iPhone 5C production by as much as 50 percent and moved that supply over to the 5S to tackle extra demand.

During a '60 Minutes' airing last night on CBS, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled his plans for the future of delivery: Amazon Prime Air.

The service will use 8-propeller drones to transport items from Amazon fulfillment centers directly to customer's homes, all in 30 minutes or less.

Bezos did note that the service will require clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and that the group isn't expected to make any drastic decisions until 2015. Bezos did say he expects Prime Air to go live in "four to five years" but the Amazon site itself says the deliveries could go live as soon as the FAA gives clearance.

The "octocopters" are completely unmanned and use internal GPS to deliver the items, all of which must be 5 pounds or lighter and smaller than certain undisclosed dimensions.

Of course, there are many issues to deal with before launch, not least of which is safety for pedestrians in the vicinity of a delivery.

According to 'industry sources,' the Samsung Galaxy S5 could be coming as soon as February or March, well earlier than the one-year anniversary of the S4.

The sources claim the Galaxy S5 could see production start as soon as January, shipping alongside a new Galaxy Gear 2.

If the sources are to be believed, the device will be a major force, including a 5-inch flexible display with 560ppi, a 64-bit processor, 3GB RAM, a 16MP camera and a massive 4000mAh battery to make sure you make it through the day on one charge.

February, just in time for the annual Mobile World Congress, could be a great time to unveil the device, as Samsung looks to continue its streak as top smartphone maker in the world.

Earlier this week, an poster going by Reckz0r posted to pastebin about an 'exploit' for the new PlayStation 4 that would allow the console to be jailbroken.

The pastebin had links to a PS4 Devkit, and a full jailbreak package, but the files did not really exist and there were no mirrors to the links.

Reckz0r even went as far as to post a screenshot of conversations between himself and "playstation" on Twitter to explain why the files were taken down. Of course, Sony would never directly contact a hacker via Twitter, especially one claiming to have exploited their latest hardware.

With another fake exploit, the developer has once again sullied his name. Last year he posted a fake Xbox Live hack and copy/pasted other exploits and claimed them as his own.

More info here.

LG's flagship will see the Android 4.4 KitKat update before end of March.

The Canadian division of the company confirmed the update for the Q1 2014 finally bringing the device to the latest operating system enjoyed by owners of the LG-built Google Nexus 5.

All local carriers will receive the update at the same time, so that at least should make owners more excited that they will not have to wait months for the update while other carriers could already have it.

The device runs on Android 4.3, has a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS panel, a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 SoC, 3GB RAM, dual cameras 13MP/2.1MP, 16 or 32GB internal storage, 24 bit/192kHz HiFi playback, and a non-removable 3,000mAh battery.

Chinese giant ZTE confirmed earlier this week that the company is working on a smartwatch. Lu Qianhao, the company's head of handset marketing strategy, confirmed the device, with the expectation that it will hit the market before the Q2 next year.

Initially, it was suggested that the watch would pair to ZTE smartphones, but CEO Richard Yu says the goal is to eventually have it sync with many major Android models.

New reports says the watch will accept SIM cards, allowing for stand alone phone calls. Video calling will also be enabled using the front-side watch camera.

If accurate, a micro SIM slot would make the watch unique, and certainly more useful than the Galaxy Gear or the Sony Smarwatch 2.

As expected, ZTE will sell the device in China first, but eventually it is expected to make its way to the EU and U.S.

PlayStation UK head Fergal Gara has implied that the PlayStation 4's lifecycle could be shorter than the PS3's was, at least in some markets.

The PS3 launched in 2006 and Sony has stated they will support the system for at least a decade.

Gara says (via CVG): "I think there's reason to believe that the next cycle might be shorter in markets such as the UK. It's probably a sign of the times and how much has changed in seven years, but I think the willingness and the appetite to pick up new technology fast has probably changed quite a bit."
Sony launched the PS4 in the U.S. on November 15th, and in the UK on the 29th.