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HTC has purchased a 20 percent stake in SyncTV, the online video platform for content providers.

The stake is part of a bigger investment partnership between HTC and SyncTV parent company Intertrust Technologies.

HTC has decided to finally create an ecosystem that can differentiate it from other handset makers. Outside of SyncTV, the company recently purchased Beats Audio and MOG. All new HTC devices come with Beats Audio support and special headphones and future devices will likely come with MOG apps built-in, either subsidized or not, for music streaming.

The company has run into some struggles of late, as sales growth has come to a screeching halt. The company hopes their recent acquisitions will help them get a leg up in the smartphone market for which it was once a huge player.

SyncTV comes with a "cloud-based video service that supports Android and Windows Phone. Included in the deal is a license for Intertrust?s Marlin DRM software, used to manage and secure content by providers in Japan, China and Europe," says Om.

Rovio, the developers behind the 'Angry Birds' blockbuster franchise, has announced today the acquisition of Futuremark Game Studios.

FGS is owned by Futuremark, the company behind the popular benchmarking software, but is its own division.

Says Rovio Entertainment CEO Mikael Hed: "They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board. Rovio's success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to be a superb addition."

"I am proud to see the potential of our talented games team recognized by Rovio," adds Jukka Mäkinen, Futuremark CEO. "Futuremark will now focus on supporting gamers and industry with 3DMark, our professional grade benchmark which, in a new version to be released later this year, will allow unified gaming performance comparison across operating systems and form factors for the first time."

Rovio recently announced a partnership with Wal-Mart to offer merchandise to million of Americans.

The popular franchise is now available in multiple formats from Pottermore.

Five years after the release of the last novel and almost a year after the release of the last movie in the series, you can now download the highly-anticipated official ebooks for the series.

Last year, author JK Rowling created the Pottermore site with the expectation that ebooks would eventually be made available. The books are now available in ePub, Kindle, Nook, Google Play and Sony Reader formats.

Once you register at Pottermore, you can buy the first three books for $7.99 each and the last four for $9.99 each, or buy the whole set for a discounted $57.50. After purchase, you can download the books up to eight times, in any choice of formats, from Pottermore. Once it is connected to your Kindle or Nook account, for example, it can be downloaded an unlimited amount of times for those devices.

While pirates have had access to each of the ebooks for years now, many fans will appreciate the formatting of the new books, including original illustrations. Into the future, "enhanced editions" will bring audio and video content.

BlueStacks app player, the software that allows Windows fans to run Android apps on their devices, has gone into beta.

The startup company has raised $14 million in capital from venture firms and large corporations like AMD and Citrix.

In BlueStack's previous alpha of the software, Windows users were given access to Android apps, but graphics-intensive apps, like many of the popular games on the platform, had severe issues.

The new beta will give access to all 450,000 Android apps, including full screen support for all intensive apps, as well. Crunch explains that this "new functionality is made possible by the company?s new patent-pending technology, called Layercake, which allows Android apps to run on x86-based PCs, including apps that are written for the ARM processor."

BlueStack's latest update will use your PC's video card to run the apps that need it, including hardware acceleration. The beta also comes with accelerometer tilting and pinch-to-zoom, using your PC's arrow keys.

Tickets for Google's 2012 I/O conference sold out in 20 minutes, says the search giant.

Google's Vic Gundotra has posted today that 6250 queries hit their servers every second starting at 7:00AM, when the tickets went on sale.

The sell-out is impressive given that Google doubled the price to $900 for general admission, hoping to make the event more exclusive. Google gives away many expensive items each year, including a Samsung Tablet 10.1, a Chromebook and a 4G Mobile Hotspot to 2011 attendees.

Intended for devs and other Google fans, the event will take place from June 27th to June 29th in San Fransisco.

Google will stream the keynote and other sessions live, with all the videos made available online within 24 hours for download.

Microsoft is preparing to announce that Xbox Live owners will be getting access to even more TV and movies, via partnerships with HBO Go, Comcast's Xfinity TV and Major League Baseball's MLB.TV.

Each app will also be controllable with gesture or voice controls if you are using a Kinect device.

Microsoft recently noted that entertainment usage had actually surpassed multiplayer game usage on the Xbox 360.

MLB.TV will supply 2430 live games over the next baseball season, along with archives including all of last year's games. HBO GO, just like the desktop service, will bring HBO's entire catalog of original programming.

Xfinity, from ISP Comcast, is an on-demand TV service.

The Xbox 360 has 35 million Xbox Live users who pay for their subscriptions.

Earlier this month, Apple announced they had reached 25 billion app downloads via the iOS App Store.

The person who downloaded the 25 billionth app was set to receive a $10,000 App Store gift card.

Apple has announced that winner this week, Chinese citizen Fu Chunli.

In addition to the gift card, Chunli was given a tour of Apple's corporate headquarters in Beijing, after being flown to the capital city. Apple also gave her some training for her iPhone, which she had just purchased three weeks before downloading the winning app.

In an interview, Chunli says she believed the original phone call from Apple was a hoax. The company then sent her an email and she received texts from her friends congratulating her, as well.

Just a couple of weeks after rebranding their services under the Google Play umbrella, Google has added a tab for the Play Store to their navigation bar in Gmail and other Google services.

Whenever you use a Google site, you will see the Play tab on the top black navigation bar. To make it even more obvious, the word "new" will be in red for the near future next to the tab.

Google rebranded the Android Market to Google Play, making the store a one-stop area for apps, e-books, music, and movies/TV shows.

Around the world, however, Google Play will mean something different to different places. In the UK and Canada, it will offer movies, books and Android apps but no music, in Australia, books and apps only; and in Japan, movies and apps only. Every other nation with Android will just offer apps, no content.

Check a screenshot of the new addition here:

AT&T has announced that in addition to the launch of the Nokia Lumia 900, the carrier will also be launching the HTC Titan II on April 8th.

The Windows Phone 7.5 device will also include 4G LTE support, making the two devices the first in the U.S. to have such a radio.

While the Lumia will sell for just $99 with contract, the Titan II will sell for $199 with two-year contract.

The original Titan was one of the more popular WP7 devices, due to its sleek aluminum casing, although the sequel removes that feature in exchange for a plastic one.

Titan II phones have a large 4.7-inch SuperLCD display, a massive 16MP camera with dual-LED flash, 4G LTE and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

Among the rumors about the Xbox successor is the notion that Microsoft will "incorporate some sort of anti-used game system" in the new console.

GameStop CEO Paul Raines does not believe this to be true, despite the persistence of the rumor.

"We think it's unlikely that there would be that in the next-gen console because the model simply hasn't been proven to work," says Raines.

Although it is unclear how a system like that would work, but essentially the technology will "create a one-to-one relationship between a game disc and the console" says Slash. If you played a new game, it would be forever registered to your system, blocking any used game sales.

There are of course inherent flaws with this design, such as if your Xbox breaks, or if you want to bring a game over to a friend's house for split-screen or non-online multiplayer.

GameStop also has good reason to hope the next console does not include such tech, as the company makes most of its margin from the sale of used games and accessories.

In what is likely one of the more ridiculous stories you'll read today, an 83-year-old grandma is suing Apple after she walked right into the famous all-glass doors of a Manhasset-area Apple Store.

Evelyn Paswall, a former VP at a fur-company in Manahattan, smashed her face into the glass door of the Long Island location after she failed to see the doors there.

Reads a statement from her attorney: "Apple wants to be cool and modern and have the type of architecture that would appeal to the tech crowd. But on the other hand, they have to appreciate the danger that this high-tech modern architecture poses to some people."

On her way to return an iPhone, Paswall broke her nose after walking right into the wall of glass Apple has made famous for storefronts: "The defendant was negligent...in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning," reads the suit.

Paswall is now suing for $1 million in damages, and hopes Apple will put better warnings in place.

HTC has announced today it will be shutting down its HTCSense.com information retention service until a renovation of the service is complete.

The service will go offline on the last day of April after a couple years of activity.

Users had previously used the site to sync your Contacts, Messages, Footprints or Call History.

In order to download your saved data, HTC has given some quick instructions:

-Visit [ link ]

-Log in with your HTCSense.com username and password

-Click the 'Download' button in the Account Overview section

-A .zip file containing your data will download to your computer for easy viewing

It is unclear why HTC is making such a move instead of working on the update simultaneously, but the company says "If you would like phone location or backup services for your device, please visit Google Play (formerly Android Market) and download an application that best meets your needs."

The full notification is here: HTCSense Service Change

AT&T has finally confirmed it will be selling the flagship Nokia Lumia 900 for just $100.

The device will be released on April 8th in the U.S. Nokia said the phone is the first to be designed specifically for the North American market.

With 2-year contract, the Lumia 900 will sell for just $100, well below the price of other 4G LTE smartphones, which sell for $200 with contract on AT&T and up to $300 with contract on Verizon. The Lumia 900 is also the first LTE Windows Phone smartphone to reach the States.

Black and blue models will go up for sale at launch, while a white model will go on sale on April 22nd. Pre-orders begin on Friday.

Says AT&T: "Consider Lumia 900 as Nokia's triumphant return to the U.S. smartphone market."

The Lumia 900 has 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 1.4GHz single-core processor, Nokia's ClearBlack technology, LTE support, an 1830 mAh battery, 512MB RAM, 16GB internal storage and an 8MP Carl Zeiss camera with large aperture (F2.2) and wide angle focal length (28mm). The phone also has a 1MP front facing camera.

Microsoft's "Smoked by Windows Phone" campaign is allowing smartphone owners near Microsoft retail stores to trade in any old smartphone (that is activated) for a brand new Windows Phone 7.5 device.

The promotion is completely free, the only issue is you must walk into an actual retail store, and there aren't too many, especially not on the east coast.

Additionally, the Nokia Lumia 800 is excluded from the deal.

How it works (instructions via SD):

1) Get an old smartphone (you may already own one); Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, PalmOS, WebOS, Symbian
2) Get it activated somehow (although not every store checks, some do, so you'll want to make sure it has phone and data on it when you go into the store).
3) Go to your local B&M Microsoft Store and tell them you want to take the "Windows Phone Challenge."
4) Lose the contest.
5) Fill out recycling paperwork.
6) Give them your old smartphone (make sure you format it beforehand as you don't get to keep your old phone).
7) Walk away with a brand new Windows Phone with no contract attached.

According to a new report from IHS Screen Digest, streamed videos will overtake physical discs for the first time ever, in 2012.

In the U.S., consumers will stream videos 3.4 billion times, compared to watching 2.4 billion physical discs.

It is the end of an era, notes Dan Cryan of IHS: "After more than 30 years of buying and renting movies on tapes and discs, this year marks the tipping point."

"U.S. consumers now are making a historic switch to Internet-based consumption, setting the stage for a worldwide migration of consumption from physical to online. We are looking at the beginning of the end of the age of movies on physical media like DVD and Blu-ray. But the transition is likely to take time: almost nine years after the launch of the iTunes Store, CDs are still a vital part of the music business," he continues.

Last year, the "ratio was 2.6 billion views of films on disc to one billion online," notes TheDailyMail.