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According to multiple reports, the final bids have been submitted for Hulu by the company's July 5th deadline.

The streaming video site, owned jointly by Disney, 21st Century Fox (News Corp.) and Comcast (NBCU), has been up for sale since March.

Chernin Group, run by Peter Chernin, has submitted a joint bid with AT&T, and is now in the running with DirecTV and Guggenheim Digital Media, both of which have reportedly bid $1 billion for the company along with rights to future content.

The entire process has been private, so all financial details and reports about bids have come from anonymous sources. The decision is expected later this month.

HTC has announced their quarterly earnings report today, and once again the company has produced a stinker.

For the Q2 2013, the company had a profit of just $41 million on revenue of $2.35 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company had profit of $246 million on revenue of $3 billion.

The company's highly-rated One flagship device does not appear to have helped them at all, despite 5 million sales in the One's first 50 days after launch.

May was a strong month, following the release of the One, but June saw revenue drop 24 percent from the month before and 26 percent year-over-year.

The new results are a far cry from 2011 when the company averaged over $400 million in profits per quarter.

Microsoft's former Windows head Steven Sinofsky has signed a very lucrative "Retirement Agreement" as he leaves the company.

The exec has been rewarded 418,361 shares of Microsoft stock (currently valued at $14 million) but he also has signed a no-compete agreement which will block him from "accepting employment at certain competitors or encouraging certain customers of Microsoft to choose a competing offering to Microsoft products" until the end of the year. Additionally, Sinofsky cannot criticize the company in any way as part of his "not disparage Microsoft" clause.

Sinofsky announced he was leaving last November, right after the launch of Windows 8 and the criticism that came with it. Many sources had claimed at the time that Sinofsky had begun to clash with many other executives and the company itself over creative controls for Windows and Windows Phone.

Microsoft released a statement, as well: "Given Steven's 23 years of strong service at Microsoft, which included leading teams that produced six versions of Office and two versions of Windows, the company will continue to provide him with the economic value of the stock awards he earned during his employment, similar to the retirement benefits we provide employees who work at least 15 years and retire at 55 or older. This agreement provides a number of important considerations for Microsoft, including a commitment that Steven will continue assisting with intellectual property litigation until January 1, 2017."

According to multiple sources, Samsung has delayed their upcoming Tizen OS-based smartphone.

The phone had been expected for this quarter but appears to be delayed now until the Q4.

Allegedly, there are "development issues for the app store."

Tizen is the open-source Linux-based operating system backed by Intel, and Samsung's effort to not have all their eggs in the Android basket.

Motorola Mobility's upcoming Moto X flagship will allow consumers to customize the look of the phone and choose an engraving.

Through a site, buyers can choose from a palette of colors, one for the back case and another for the trim of the phone. Buyers can then engrave a name or a full message on the back cover and also upload a photo through the site to be the phone's wallpaper before you even receive it.

Because the phone is being built in a new factory in Texas, the personalized device can be delivered to buyers within days.

The phone will run on Android 4.2.2, and is currently being tested by Verizon and AT&T for release "soon." If you don't care for customizing, you can buy the standard version in stores.

Outside of the mid-range specs and customizable looks, the company will be introducing innovative gesture controls, such as flicking the phone a certain way to open up the camera app, for example.

Credit card processors Mastercard and Visa have begun banning VPN providers, taking a similar stance as they do with file-sharing services.

In one such example, Swedish payment service provider Payson sent an email to all customers stating they cannot accept Mastercard or Visa payments any more due to a recent policy change by the companies.

"Payson has restrictions against anonymization (including VPN services). As a result Payson can unfortunately no longer give your customers the option to finance payments via their cards (VISA or MasterCard)," reads the email (via TF).

Another anonymization provider, the Pirate Bay-backed iPredator VPN, showed anger at the move. Founder Peter Sunde added: "It means that US companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more. It's just INSANE. For iPredator there are always other payment methods, like Bitcoin, but it's insane to censor a totally legit system that is there to avoid censorship and surveillance."

Nokia, in an effort to let more people across the globe have access to faster mobile broadband, has unveiled extremely cheap 3G-capable phones.

The new Nokia 207 and 208 have candy-bar form factors, 3G capabilities, Nokia's Xpress Browser (that compresses data to speed up browsing and eat less data) and will include apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.

Most importantly, the phones will cost just $68 and will ship later this quarter. Nokia also notes that a dual-SIM version of the 208 is in the works.

Nokia sold 336 million handsets last year, and is the second-biggest phone maker in the world behind Samsung. However, Nokia only sold 30 million smartphones last year, which are higher margin and bring in significantly more revenue than a feature phone.

Yahoo has acquired the "smart" email service Xobni for $30 million, continuing recent string of high profile purchases.

Xobni will be integrated into Yahoo's mail service, which has over 300 million users, but has been lacking in cutting edge features.

The 'smart' service "re-organizes email according to the user's social contacts, meshing connections from SMS history, phone calls and Facebook or Twitter," says the company. Xobni users will get the same service they have until July 2014 but paid premium services will be discontinued. By that time, the service is expected to be fully integrated into Yahoo.

"Did you ever meet someone who truly 'gets' you?" read Xobni's press statement. "That's how we feel about Yahoo. The power within every Xobni product is that it responds to how you communicate. Every day you demonstrate who and what is important to you. That can benefit not just your inbox or smartphone, but the many services you use. Yahoo gets that, and they want us to use our platform to make many Yahoo services better for you."

Earlier this week we reported that current Microsoft Entertainment (Xbox) head Don Mattrick was leaving the company to take the helm at struggling casual game maker Zynga.

Mattrick will replace Zynga founder and current CEO Mark Pincus, who may have been out of his league once the company went public last year.

It has been reported today that Mattrick will get a huge pay package for his services, with a base salary of $1 million, a sign-on cash bonus of $5 million and an annual bonus of $2 million.

Additionally, the exec will receive a stock grant of 9 million restricted shares that vest over the next three years. At Zynga's current share price, that stock is worth over $30 million. At the end of his first year with the company, Mattrick will also get another $11 million in shares (based on current valuation), taking his overall compensation package to $50 million.

If Zynga is satisfied with his performance this year, he will also be eligible for new stock valued at $7 million next year as a bonus/grant.

Rovio has just released a major update for its original 'Angry Birds' title on Android and iOS.

The game now has a new gameplay mode called "Egg Defender" in which the red bird gets special powers to attack the pigs, among other new features.

Rovio has added 15 new levels and added 73 new "pig contraptions" right from the game "Bad Piggies." Additionally, there are now moving targets, says the company.

You can get the game in your respective app store.

Teaser video:

Samsung Mobile boss JK Shin has confirmed that the company has shipped 20 million Galaxy S4 since launch, a strong figure only surpassed by the iPhone.

The flagship device launched 68 days ago, and it reached the 20 million milestone much faster than its predecessor, the Galaxy S III. In fact, at this same point in its life, the S III had reached just 12.5 million sales.

Samsung was not able to catch the pace of the iPhone, however, as the iPhone 4S sold 21 million in the same time frame from launch, and the iPhone 5 sold 24 million.

Regardless, the S4 is the fastest selling Android device of all-time and a massive hit for its Korean maker.

Great chart via Verge:

Samsung has acquired the media software (and now hardware maker) startup Boxee for $30 million.

The Israeli company had been looking for a buyer for the last few months after it appeared raising more money would be tougher than expected.

"We can confirm that Boxee will be joining Samsung. We'll have a formal statement on our website later this week," a Boxee spokesperson said, leaving out any other vital information. Boxee's 40 employees are expected to keep their jobs.

Since founding in 2007, the company has raised $30 million, so investors will at least get their initial investments back.

Boxee creates media software for desktops and also offers a set-top box that connects to many streaming services and includes the company's own software for playing local content. Samsung will most likely integrate the software into their Internet-connected Smart TVs into the future.

Five years ago, Michael and Xochi Birch sold their popular social network Bebo to AOL for a handsome sum of $850 million.

The Birches pocketed over $300 million from the sale and quickly after selling the company fell apart on a scale similar to MySpace, as Facebook became the dominant player in the space.

In 2010, private equity firm Criterion Capital purchased the site for $10 million from AOL (who wrote off the massive loss) in an effort to turn it around but they failed as well, declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year.

Michael announced on his Twitter today that they have purchased the company back for just $1 million, and try to re-invent it if they can. Nicely done, Birch family.

We just bought Bebo back for $1m. Can we actually re-invent it? Who knows, but it will be fun trying...

-- Michael Birch (@mickbirch) July 1, 2013

BSkyB, a major pay-TV broadcaster in Europe, has won a judgement in the UK against Microsoft over the use of the trademark "Sky."

The next stage will be an appeal from Microsoft and the judge has to decide on whether there will an injunction or financial compensation, or both.

In June 2011, Sky began the suit and concerns "an action for passing off and for infringement of two registered Community trade marks (CTMs) and two UK registered trade marks (UKTMs) for the mark 'SKY' by which the Claimants [BSkyB] seek to prevent the Defendants [Microsoft] from using 'SkyDrive' as the name for their cloud storage service throughout the European Union."

BSkyB provides mobile apps and had a cloud-based online service, as well, dubbed Sky Store and Share.

Microsoft, on its end, is fighting to invalidate four Sky trademarks "on the grounds of descriptiveness for cloud storage services." We tend to agree with Microsoft on this one, where SkyDrive is not easily confused with BSkyB's services, but the judge thought differently.

Sky says in a press statement: "Sky is pleased with the judgment handed down today by Mrs Justice Asplin. We regard any unauthorised use of the Sky name as a clear infringement of our well-established Sky brand. We remain vigilant in protecting the Sky brand and will continue to take appropriate action against those companies that seek to use our trademarks without consent."

Nokia has bought out Siemens stake in their joint NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks) venture.

The price, 1.7 billion euros, is less than industry analysts had expected so it appears Nokia may have gotten a good deal.

Nokia will pay 1.2 billion euros for the 50 percent stake and took out a 500 million euro loan from Siements due in a year to pay for the rest.

The joint venture just became profitable last year, and had been valued at just about 5 billion euro.

Nokia Siemens's headquarters will remain in Espoo, Finland, and CEO Rajeev Suri will keep his current position.