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Earlier this week, Verizon Wireless reported their Q1 2013 quarterly earnings, showing some impressive results.

The carrier, which is the biggest in the U.S., added 677,000 new postpaid subscribers, up 35 percent year-over-year.

VZW now has 98.9 million retail customers, 30 percent of which are using the company's "share everything" plans which gives subscribers a "bucket" of data that can be shared within a family or a family of devices, like smartphones and tablets.

Total revenue was $29.4 billion, a modest 4.2 percent increase year-over-year.

7.2 million smartphones were activated during the quarter, 5.9 million of which had LTE support. Verizon now says 61 percent of its subscribers have smartphones, an all-time high.

According to an FT report, Nokia is considering building a 5-inch Lumia device for sale this year.

The device will offer the biggest screen yet on a Lumia, and could push "phablet" territory dominated by the Galaxy Note.

Additionally, the company will be unveiling several other high-end Lumias, including one with true PureView hardware, a 40MP camera.

Nokia shipped 5.6 million Lumia phones during the Q1 2013, a good gain from the Q4 where they shipped 4.4 million units. Both those figures, however, are much lower than smartphone kings Samsung and Apple, which are expected to have sold 95 million smartphones combined during the quarter.

E-tailing giant Amazon has stepped up their efforts to compete with Netflix and will be posting eight comedy pilots to its site, for free.

The pilots will be free, but any show selected to run for a full season will be available only through the Prime streaming service.

Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and gives buyers free 2-day shipping on all orders, free access to Kindle titles, unlimited access to the streaming movie/TV catalog and cheap overnight shipping options.

Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, says "The production quality had to be really high; we have top people and terrific casts." The pilots are said to have cost the company over $10 million to produce.

Besides the comedies, Amazon is also expanding into original kid's shows.

According to Samsung mobile boss J.K. Shin, the company is considering using mobile memory chips from rival SK Hynix.

The company makes DRAM chips, and has Apple as its biggest customer.

Supply has tightened over the last year in the DRAM market, and prices have reflected such a move.

Samsung is the world's biggest DRAM maker, and the company uses its own chips for its popular Galaxy smartphones. Samsung expects to have so many S4 available for sale, however, that it has looked into other companies due to diminishing supply.

Analysts believe Samsung can sell 10 million GS4 per month, surpassing its predecessors by a large margin.

Netflix's new original series, 'Hemlock Grove,' is available for streaming as of Friday.

The 'supernatural' horror series is directed by Eli Roth (of Hostel fame), and takes place in a small town that has suddenly begun seeing werewolf and other monster attacks.

Streaming king Netflix has been ramping up their original content, trying to compete with HBO. The first two series, 'Lilhammer' and 'House of Cards' have been hits, and the company is bringing the cult classic 'Arrested Development' back next month for a final season. Later this year, 'Orange is the New Black" will be released, and next year a major sci-fi series called "Sense8" will be made available.

As with all Netflix original series, you can view all episodes already, without having to wait week to week.

Trailer is RED BAND, meaning there is some slight nudity and foul language.

Toshiba has announced its entrant in the high-end ultrabook market with its Kirabook device.

The notebook runs on Windows 8, has a 13.3-inch display with a large resolution of 2560 x 1444 and 221 ppi, on par with the Macbook Pro with Retina Display. The display is also 10-point multi-touch.

Under the hood is either a 3rd-gen Core i5 or Core i7, 8GB of 1600 MHz RAM, and 256GB of solid state storage.

The magnesium alloy chassis is just 0.7-inches thick and the laptop is extremely light at just 2.6 pounds.

"At the core of the KIRA brand are products derived from inspired engineering," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Products that will carry the KIRA name will be more than a collection of the latest hardware technologies, but a statement of craftsmanship, fit and finish, and features built for the consumer's benefit, not technology's sake."

According to NPD's latest figures, the video game industry saw another 10 percent year-over-year drop, continuing the trend of double digit declines.

Gamers spent just $992.5 million on consoles, software and accessories for the month of March, down from $1.1 billion last year.

While the trend itself is very disheartening for the industry, it is important to note that the reports do not include digital sales, which have become very popular especially through outlets like Xbox Live. Additionally, the PS4 and Xbox Next will launch later this year, so gamers are shrewdly staying away from purchases as they wait on the new contenders.

As has become commonplace, hardware sales saw the biggest decline, down 32 percent to $221.6 million. Software sales were up 2 percent to $602.4 million, a nice reprieve.

Voddler, the "Spotify for video" film and TV streaming service, has expanded globally.

The service had been available in Scandinavia and Spain, and has about 1.2 million users.

Starting this week, Voddler is expanding to the rest of Europe and Russia, with North America, Asia, South America over the next month.

Noted CEO and founder Marcus Bäcklund (via Crunch), "We have partnered with carriers in the past for VOD, and I think it's possible to do that in the future as well here, but what we are really trying to do here is offer an independent and open platform for everyone."

Voddler's "LiveShelf" offers a catalog of 5000 videos from "leading film studios, including Hollywood majors" which you can rent for $5 or buy for $10. Some are available for free and all can be viewed on mobile, tablet PC and TV screens.

"ViewShare" allows users to share content with others, letting up to 10 viewers watch your content.

Google has revealed the terms of service for the Google Glass augmented reality eyewear, and there are some pretty clear restrictions.

The $1500 glasses are being sent to a select few thousand early adopters.

Reads the ToS: "You may not resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person without Google's authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the device will be entitled to any refund, product support, or product warranty."

Each device is registered to the owner's Google account, making it easy to see if it has been transferred or sold.

Microsoft was the first to report their U.S. console sales figures for March, claiming the top spot in the nation for the 27th straight month.

The company sold 261,000 units in the U.S., besting the PS3 and the practically dead Nintendo Wii.

March NPD's: 261k Xbox's sold in the US. Number 1 for the 27th straight month

-- Larry Hryb (@majornelson) April 18, 2013

Amazon has announced the expansion of their Android Appstore.

Developers can now submit apps for distribution in almost 200 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, "and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City."

Users of Android devices in the nations (not just Kindles) can start downloading apps "in the coming months."

"Amazon's platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices," said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe."

After a one day delay, the parody Steve Jobs movie 'iSteve' is now available for viewing online.

The movie will star Justin Long as Jobs and Jorge Garcia of 'Lost' as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The movie will be about 80 minutes long.

iSteve comes on the heels of Ashton Kutcher's 'jOBS' biopic being delayed, and Aaron Sorkin's Sony-backed Jobs biopic being set for release in late 2014.

The movie is a satire of biopics in general and will stretch facts and stick completely to Funny or Die's comedy roots, although the long-form film is certainly a move away from the site's regular content, which are 5 minute clips or shorter.

View it here: iSteve

According to the Verge, the upcoming Windows Blue update (Windows 8.1) will include the option to boot to desktop, bypassing the current "Modern" UI.

The boot option will send users directly to the traditional desktop they've been accustomed to, skipping over the Modern UI which includes tiles that are better suited to touchscreen environments.

Microsoft will have the option disabled by default, but sources say the option to boot to desktop will be easy to find and enable.

Many of Windows 8's functionality will remain intact with the option enabled, including access to the Charms and Start Screen, as well as search and all other "hot corner" functions.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has revealed the latest Android activation figures.

Last month, the company was seeing 1.4 million activations daily but that number has increased to 1.5 million as of this week.

The exec says Google is on pace to reach one billion total activations by the holidays. The company saw 750 million at the end of February so the figure would be a huge jump.

Schmidt further noted that a key to achieving exponential growth, or reaching the "next five billion people looking to get connected" will be getting devices to a sub-$100 price point.

AT&T has opened its pre-order pages for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The device will sell for $199 with contract, or $640 without.

Samsung's latest has a 5-inch 1080p super AMOLED display with 441ppi. The screen is also protected by Corning's latest Gorilla Glass 3 and can be used with gloves thanks to "mitten tech." Under the hood the phone is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5 (international) or Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (North America), has 2GB RAM, 16-64GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a removable 2600 mAh battery, 100 Mbps Cat 3 LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The device also has an IR blaster, turning it into a full remote control. The device is a thin 7.9mm.

The rear camera is 13-megapixel camera while the front camera is 2-megapixels.