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According to new StatCounter figures, mobile now accounts for 10 percent of all Internet usage worldwide, double the number from just 18 months ago.

Asia is seeing the biggest share of the traffic, up to 18 percent of total net usage, but most other nations are seeing strong growth, as well.

The figure makes sense given the fact that smartphone shipments rose 40 percent year-on-year to 144.9 million during the last quarter, alone. Tablet sales remain strong, as well, mainly thanks to the iPad.

Breaking the growth by region shows significant across the globe for the period. Asia saw 192 percent growth since 2010 for mobile Internet, while Europe saw 183 percent. Oceania saw 162 percent growth while Africa saw 155 percent.

North America was the laggard, thanks to their already strong smartphone population. North America growth came in at 69 percent.

The HBO blockbuster hit show "Game of Thrones" is well on its way to becoming the most pirated TV show in 2012.

According to data from P2P analysis firm Big Champagne, the show has been downloaded over 25 million times on public torrent trackers, alone, since April, when the show's second season began.

"It certainly appears to be the most pirated show of the year," notes John Robinson, a senior media analyst with Big Champagne. "The fact that it's consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay's top one hundred TV show chart seems like a pretty in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared."

Looking back, the first season of Game of Thrones was the second most pirated TV season of all time, right behind the latest season of "Dexter."

However, the latest season of GoT is already handily beating the last season of Dexter, as per this chart:

Although HTC claims that AT&T has not allowed them to unlock their own bootloader for the One X, the development community has gone ahead and taken care of the issue.

Thanks to a poster on XDA Developers, there is now a one-click rooting solution for the new flagship Android device.

By having root access, owner's can backup their apps and data easier, remove bloatware, overclock the processor and have additional access to their phone's system.

HTC's One X device is the high-end model among three new phone "HTC One" branded phones.

The device has a large 4.7-inch display with 1,280x720-pixel HD resolution and Gorilla Glass. The phone runs on Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, and the phone maker has decided to keep three buttons, one for back, home and running/recent apps.

At an event in Palo Alto this week, Sony and Google have unveiled their latest Google TV set-top box.

For now, there is only a non-working prototype of the device, but it should be a significant evolution to previous devices, especially the Logitech Revue. The Revue failed so spectacularly that it caused the ouster of the company's CEO and a $90 million loss.

What makes the new box special is the remote control, which is a "double sided device with a keyboard on one side and a track pad and other buttons in the other," explains Phandroid.

The hardware itself will be nothing too special, and be cased in a simple black set-top box.

Sony says the device is coming this summer, with more word and demo at the upcoming Google I/O conference.

Some pics:

T-Mobile USA has announced it has lost another 510,000 subscribers this quarter, failing to stop the bleeding of the past few years.

The loss was the 10th straight quarterly subscriber decline for the carrier, which is the fourth largest in the U.S. at 33 million customers.

Many blame T-Mobile's fate on the lack of Apple's popular iPhone device, as it remains the only major carrier to not carry it. The company is expected to launch an LTE network next year, and get the iPhone, but it may be too late by then.

Additionally, the carrier held off an all "strategic plans" during the end of 2011, as the company was sold to AT&T for $39 billion. However, the takeover was stopped by the FCC and Department of Justice, who sued to block the merger due to monopoly concerns. That break in moving forward has left the carrier struggling to keep up, say most analysts. Because of the broken merger, however, the company was given billions in break-up fees and spectrum, leaving the carrier with money and opportunity for the future.

Another day, another rumor.

The latest rumor from the Apple-sphere is that the company is preparing to release the oft-rumored 7-inch iPad in October.

Perhaps more importantly, the device will retail for $200-$250, half the price of the current base 10-inch model.

The rumors come via Apple watcher iMore, who has had some solid leads and info in the past.

If accurate, the report says the device will be a scaled down version of the current iPad including the 2,048 x 1,536 Retina Display.

The extremely popular Kickstarter project Pebble has sold out, 8 days ahead of its expected close date.

Pebble, which smashed all Kickstarter funding records, reached $10 million and 85,000 units pre-ordered, causing founder Eric Migicovsky to shut down the funding process earlier than its May 18th end date.

Migicovsky also announced that the company has had to double its team from five employees to ten.

The Pebble is compatible with iOS and Android and has a 1.26-inch 144 x 168-pixel black and white ePaper display with a backlight. The device syncs to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and the company just added support for Bluetooth 4.0 via a future firmware update.

Additionally, the watch has a three-axis accelerometer, a vibrating motor and four control buttons for volume and more.

View details of the incredible little smartwatch here: Pebble Smartwatch on KickStarter

Government says new system is simpler.

In the UK, video games have been rated by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Now, the responsibility is being passed on to the Video Standards Council (VSC), which will rate games to the specifications of the Pan European Game Information (Pegi) system. The change is expected to happen in July.

The BBFC will still be called upon at times to judge titles that contain gross violence, or strong sexual material.

The changes now mean that there can be criminal punishment, potentially jail time, for selling a game to a child younger than the title is rated for. The new ratings only apply to in-store purchases, and not to games sold over the Internet.

"It will give parents greater confidence that their children can only get suitable games while we are creating a simpler system for industry having their games age-rated," said Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey.

The UK games industry's trade association, Tiga, has backed the switch to the Pegi system. "It simplifies the system," said Tiga's Richard Wilson. "The Pegi system is reasonably easy to understand. The fact there are criminal sanctions in place will mean that retailers will want to train and support their staff."

Hirai says figures are a "good start."

Considering the record loss that Sony has just experienced, it could do with some good news. New chief executive Kazuo Hirai revealed that 1.8 million PlayStation Vita units have been sold by the firm so far globally.

"The last year, [we sold] 1.8 million units for US, Japan, Asia and Europe. And as a starting phase, I think it was a good start," he revealed during an earnings call. The sales figure is reportedly absent from financial reports released by Sony today.

"A game platform, like Vita - the software is the key to success, how good the software is. We have to reinforce the software area in order to improve the business, that is the basic line," said Hirai.

Sony expects to sell 16 million handheld gaming units over the coming year (10 million Vitas, 6 million PSPs).

MEPs agree on price caps, operator freedom.

Among the new regulations is a maximum limit of 70 cent per MB of data used while roaming within the EU, far below what some carriers are currently charging. Calls will also be capped at a maximum of 29c per minute (excluding VAT).

Additionally, customers can also choose a different operator abroad if they choose to do so. "In a borderless Europe, there is no place for charges that diverge so much at home and abroad," said MEP Ivo Belet.

The European Parliament is introducing these new regulations, amongst others, to prevent occurrences of bill shock within the European market. The new rules will result in significant savings costs for business travellers in the EU, and it also encourages carriers to compete, according to the EU.

The new regulations will come into effect in the European market in 2014.

New weekly chart tracks streamed music.

The Official Charts Company (OCC) in the UK is to compile a top 100 chart of music streamed from services such as Spotify. It estimates that 2.6 billion audio streams were delivered in the UK last year. The new chart tracking what's currently popular will launch next Monday.

The chart, however, does not include video streaming services, which rules out YouTube. Nielsen Soundscan has reported that a whopping 55 percent of all music streamed online comes from YouTube videos.

Nevertheless, the OCC is correct to recognise streaming music with its own charts, as music streaming has overtaken paid downloads.

Streaming has become a new source of money for the industry, but not everybody is convinced that it is enough to replace record sales, or that it is distributed fairly. Rock group Black Keys decided to withhold their new album El Camino from Spotify due to issues with royalties.

"It's set up to be a little bit more fair for the labels than it is for the artists, I think," said Black Keys' Patrick Carney. "It still isn't at a point where you're able to replace royalties from record sales with the royalties from streams."

Facebook sees apps as new stream of revenue.

The new App Center will launch within the next few weeks, providing Facebook users with a hub to find games and other apps. Developers can use the hub to provide free apps, or to sell them to Facebook's gigantic userbase.

Some concerns have been raised by investors about Facebook's long-term ability to sustain revenue, as the social network approaches an initial public offering that could value it at up to $96 billion. Growth of Facebook is being driven strongly by mobile usage, but the service only provides limited ads to mobile users.

The social networking giant has admitted that its number of daily users is fast outpacing the ads it can deliver. It does get revenue from fees on sales of goods within apps on the site, such as Farmville, but its primary source of revenue is advertising.

The new App Center will provide it with a new potential stream of revenue. Facebook users will need to use Facebook Credits to purchase apps, and the company will take a 30 percent cut of the revenue, according to spokeswoman Malorie Lucich.

Nokia doesn't expect dismissal to affect sales in Britain.

In June 2011, a High Court ruling in the UK found that Nokia was infringing a patent held by German firm IPCom. The Finnish mobile giant moved to appeal the ruling, but has had its appeal rejected, paving the way for IPCom to take further action in a case stemming back five years.

The High Court had found the IPCom 100A patent to be valid, providing the German firm a major boost in its dispute with Nokia. IPCom can now seek an injunction on sales of Nokia phones throughout the UK.

Nokia has complained that IPCom's licensing fee demands are unjustifiable and excessive. Despite the decision by the British court to reject its appeal, Nokia said the dismissal would not affect sales of its handsets in Britain.

ISPs must block notorious torrent site.

The court in The Hague has ordered Internet service providers UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort to block access to the Pirate Bay website, mirroring an order issues by a court in the United Kingdom recently.

The court decision comes just after the Netherlands became the first state in the EU to pass Net Neutrality, barring ISPs from throttling traffic to certain services, or charging for access to certain bandwidth-demanding services.

The ISPs now have ten days to comply with the court's order, after which point they can be fined up to ?10,000 per day for failing to do so.

ISPs are expected to appeal against the court's decision. They had attempted to demonstrate to the court that use of public proxy servers, or even just using Google Translate, would circumvent any such blockade, making it completely pointless.

New chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, faces enormous challenges.

The Japanese consumer electronics firm is slashing costs in an effort to halt huge losses that have plagued it in recent years. Sony's TV business alone accounts for $12 billion in losses over the past nine years. The company is planning to cut 6 percent of its workforce - about 10,000 jobs - in a bid to turn the TV unit around.

Shares of Sony Corp (valued at around $15 billion) have hit a quarter-century low. Hirai is determined to change the fortunes of the PlayStation-maker, with the firm reporting a record loss of $5.74 billion in the year just ended.

The company is to focus more efforts on smartphones and other mobile devices, its games division, advanced medical devices and batteries for electric cars. It expects to sell 33 million smartphones this year (compared to 22.5 million last year), but predicts an 11 percent decline in PlayStation sales, to 16 million units.

In the year to March 2013, Sony expects an operating profit of 180 billion yen.

"The operating profit forecast isn't far off the level seen two years ago ... This suggests we're on a recovery trend and last year was definitely the bottom," said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo.