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Major Chinese PC maker Lenovo will invest $800 million to build new facilities in an effort to better compete in the tablet, smartphone and overall mobile device market.

The facilities will begin operating in October 2013 in Wuhan and will support research and development as well as production and sales.

Lenovo adds the new plants will help the company produce more mobile devices for the international market. The revenue generated from the plants is expected to reach 10 billion yuan ($1.58 billion USD) by the end of 2014 and then 50 billion yuan by then end of 2018.

The company is the second largest PC maker in the world but they have only "skimmed the surface" of the smartphone and tablet market. Lenovo has released a number of "Le" phones in China which have met some commercial success.

China has quickly become the largest market in the world for smartphone shipments, so it makes perfect sense that Lenovo would like to get a larger piece of that pie. The company already controls 9.1 percent of the Chinese smartphone market, up from 1.8 percent in 2011.

As reported last week, Microsoft has made the 4GB Xbox 360 model of the console with Kinect available for $99 as long as you sign up for a two-year contract.

The contract is for Xbox Live Gold at $15 per month, bringing the total cost of the contract and hardware to $459.

If you were to purchase the bundle outright for $299 and purchase Xbox Live Gold subscriptions at $60 (full MSRP) per year, that price would come in at $420, significantly cheaper but with more cost up front.

One caveat of the deal (if you are interested), is you must live near a retail Microsoft Store, which are mainly only in California with some scattered around the U.S. Additionally, you will need to pass a credit check to take advantage of the deal.

Finally, just like with a smartphone contract, if you break the contract early you will be hit with an early termination fee that starts at $250 for the first three months then drops $12 per month afterwards.

EPIX, the joint streaming venture between Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate has announced today the addition of two of 2012's blockbuster films to its catalog.

Marvel Studio's and Paramount's The Avengers and Lionsgate's The Hunger Games will see their on-demand debut via EPIX, online and via EPIX apps on mobile devices.

Both movies are easily the top grossing films so far in 2012, with The Avengers making $650 million worldwide in just one week, and Hunger Games bringing in $620 million in two months.

"EPIX is all about providing its subscribers the biggest and best movies anytime and anywhere. We are thrilled to bring this year's two biggest blockbuster titles to the EPIX slate, providing even more value to our viewers and affiliated distributors. We congratulate our studio partners, Paramount and Lionsgate, on their tremendous success," added EPIX CEO and President Mark Greenberg.

According to multiple sources, Apple has also been in discussions with EPIX in an effort to bring the streaming movie channel to Apple TV users. The talks are ongoing and are in early stages.

In March, Eastman Kodak, the bankrupt photography pioneer, sold their online photo services to Shutterfly for a final price of $23.8 million.

Today, a federal bankruptcy judge has approved the sale, and Kodak will shut down the Kodak Gallery on July 2nd.

Shutterfly offers exactly the same services as Kodak Gallery including free photo-sharing, the ability to get pics printed or put on DVDs, and the ability to have pictures put on mugs, in photobooks and T-shirts.

In an email to current customers, Kodak wrote that users who do not want their photos and accounts transferred over to Shutterfly must opt-out via their site before May 28th. Kodak did warn that the full migration "will be a massive undertaking, involving the movement of billions of photos" and that user's photos may not be fully available until later in the year.

Kodak Gallery has 75 million users.

Google plans to move for a mistrial after Jury fails to answer fair use question.

The case is being watched closely by Silicon Valley, as Oracle accuses Google of infringing copyrights it holds related to the Java programming tools it provides.

A federal jury on Monday found that elements of the Android operating system infringed on technology from Java, a platform bought by Oracle only two years ago. Google had questioned whether Oracle's copyrights were even valid, and that it should be excused under fair use principles, as it only used parts of Java that have always been freely available.

Oracle is seeking over $1 billion in damages from the search giant, but the Jury's failure to determine whether Google's actions were legally protected fair use comes as a major blow to Oracle's prospects of securing such high damages.

The Jury did not reach an agreement on Google's fair use defence, prompting a Google attorney to inform U.S. District Judge William Alsup that he will move for a mistrial on the issue of the APIs. Judge Alsup ordered both sides to prepare detailed arguments on that motion, which he will consider at a later date.

Although the government has not confirmed the move, news out of India is that there has been a massive blocking of torrent and other video-sharing sites.

Sites like The Pirate Bay, KickAssTorrents, BitSnoop and Vimeo have allegedly all been blocked from access in the nation. ISPs, "as per instructions from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)," have banned access and users will be met with a screen that says something to that effect.

While the ban on the Pirate Bay is certainly not the first in the site's infamous history, Vimeo being blocked has shocked some residents. The site is one of the popular video-sharing sites in the world, and is a hub for amateur filmmakers to share their new work.

The site is much more similar to YouTube than it is to The Pirate Bay, although YouTube is still standing block-free.

It also appears that some ISPs are still letting customers access the sites, but Reliance Communications and Zylog Wi5 are certainly not.

The streaky Digitimes is reporting today that Apple is preparing a cheap $799 version of their popular ultrabook.

If accurate, the MacBook Air will sell for just $799, $200 cheaper than the current base model.

The source claims the Apple supply chain is gearing up for a third quarter release of the device.

While there is no word on specs, it is easy to see why Apple would drop the price on the ultrabook. Rivals like Intel have been aggressively pushing ultrabooks for 2012, with Intel recently stating that $599 ultras will be available by the end of the year, sporting mid-to-high end features.

Thermal runaway event was the result of a bad repair.

In November of last year, a report surfaced about an iPhone that started burning shortly after an Australian flight had landed. A cabin crew member had noticed smoke coming from near a passenger seat during the taxi to the gate after arrival at Sydney. The crew member instructed the passenger to throw the source of the smoke to the middle of the isle, and then discharged a fire extinguisher on it.

The source was identified as an Apple iPhone 4. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) launched an investigation into the incident, which also included the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the United States.

The investigation found that the iPhone had been repaired after the screen was damaged, and that repair was not carried out by an authorized service center. At the base of the iPhone is a 30-pin connector, held in place by two screws at either side. The investigators noted that the screw appeared to be missing.

Amazon has announced its new efforts to create original content for the Amazon Prime streaming video service.

The e-tailer will actively develop comedy and children's TV shows to be distributed over the service which is free to all Amazon Prime subscribers. Prime costs $79 per year and entitles users to free two-day shipping on most items and highly discounted one-day or same-day shipping.

Aspiring writers and filmmakers can submit ideas for television series to the Amazon Studios unit and the company will select one project per month and test it for viability with an audience before taking it to development.

Explains Reuters: "Within 45 days of getting pilot TV scripts, Amazon said it will either extend an option on the project for $10,000 or ask the creator to put the idea on the Amazon Studios website. If the company decides to distribute a full-budget series, the creator will get $55,000 and up to 5 percent of Amazon's net receipts from toy and T-shirt licensing, and other royalties and bonuses."

The move comes on the heels of Netflix putting significant money down to move into the original content business. Netflix's first original series, "Lilyhammer" is available now and four other shows, including a new season of cult-classic "Arrested Development," will hit in 2013.

eBay has confirmed plans to upgrade their search engine to better compete against e-tailing giant Amazon.

"Amazon is on version 8.0 of search. EBay is at 2.0, but they are thinking about how they make this huge leap to 3.0," says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. ChannelAdvisor helps merchants sell more online.

eBay's search tech, dubbed "Voyager," has seen a complete overhaul in the last four years after the hiring of Mark Carges as CTO. He hired 100 new employees to bring the total to 150, including several prominent engineers from Microsoft's Bing.

For 2013, the company is working on "Cassini,' the third version of the search engine. Cassini "will trawl full product descriptions, rather than just the titles of listings, and match search queries to photographs of products, while taking into account information about the seller and the buyer," explains Reuters.

Additionally, the new update will take into account past purchases and browsing, making it more tailored to their intent. "Voyager is pretty literal. It takes a query and matches it faithfully against the title of items. It's not intuitive," notes Carges. "Cassini will take the user's query and understand that."

HTC's new flagship has gone on sale today via AT&T and numerous retailers.

The device will sell for $200 with two-year contract via AT&T or $150 through Amazon. Unsurprisingly, the phone is backordered as of posting, with an 8-day delay expected from Amazon.

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.

Along with LTE, the phone will also have a powerful 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.

DataWind, the company behind the $35 Aakash tablet for the Indian market, has introduced two new "UbiSlate" tablets for the nation.

The UbiSlate 7+ and UbiSlate 7C are both considered "premium" devices compared to the Aakash although that word is hardly fitting when compared to American and European tablets that have been released in the last two years.

DataWind's 7+ has a 7-inch, 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchcscreen display with 2GB of internal storage, while the 7c has a capacitive touchscreen display and 4GB of internal storage.

Each tablet is run by a 800MHz single-core processor and 256MB of RAM. There are no cameras or mics, but there are USB and microUSB ports.

Both tablets run on Android 2.2 Froyo, have 2.5G cell modems and have small 3200mAh batteries. The tablets will cost less than $75 and 2GB of data bandwidth costs just $2 per month.

Sprint CEO Daniel Hesse has confirmed he will take a paycut this year following the company's expensive expenditures to get the iPhone.

Hesse will repay $346,000 he has received and will forfeit all additional incentive pay.

"These voluntary actions regarding my personal compensation, which total $3,250,830, will eliminate any benefit for me to the discretionary adjustment the compensation committee made earlier this year," added the exec.

Sprint invested $15 billion on the iPhone earlier this year, gaining access to the popular smartphone for the next 5 years.

However, Sprint pays Apple a huge amount for the luxury of having the device, paying a subsidy that is $199 more per device than it pays for other smartphones.

The Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory, who filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is close to being acquired by U.S.-based Micron Technology.

Liabilities, as of March 2011, were $5.5 billion and the company's desperate attempts to refinance or get a bailout from the Japanese government failed. Elpida was Japan's last DRAM maker and the company was ultimately done in by a Yen at its strongest levels since the end of World War II. Furthermore, South Korean rivals like Samsung managed to take large market share in a short period of time thanks to cost efficiency.

At the time of the bankruptcy, Elpida and Micron at 12.1 percent market share each.

Micron bid $2.5 billion and pledged to keep the company's plants open and employees hired.

It appears that actually putting together a strong cast and a good story can still lead to strong box office sales.

The Marvel blockbuster "The Avengers" has sailed to a $200 million opening weekend, despite pirated copies being available from the movie's international release a week earlier. The figure is the largest in history, by far, beating out last year's Harry Potter finale by $30 million.

In just one week, the film has brought in an astonishing $650 million internationally. That total is more than individual movies "Thor," "Iron Man," and "Captain America" made during their lifetime runs, although each were successful.

Disney, the distributor of the film, says the final figures may even end of being slightly higher: "There aren't even words, to be honest. I'm running low on double takes. Every time we looked at a number, it just got bigger than what we could have hoped for in the best-case assumption. With this film, this weekend, anything is possible."

The Avengers film stars an all-star cast of superheroes including Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Nick Fury and Hawkeye.