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In the wake of declining market share and serious criticism about a lack of oversight from the board of directors, Research In Motion (RIM) Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down.

The pair have also relinquished their co-chairmanship of the BlackBerry maker's board of directors. Many company outsiders, including a growing number of investors, have voiced frustration with the apparent conflict of interest caused by operations and oversight being in the same hands. In Lazaridis' case, this was magnified by his status as co-founder of the company.

Both men will remain on the board of directors, with Lazaridis becoming vice chair and also chairman of RIM's new Innovation Committee. That committee will be tasked with advising new CEO and former Chief Operations Officer Thorsten Heins regarding the company's future direction.

It remains to be seen if the changes are too little, too late to save RIM. With their next generation of BlackBerry devices not scheduled to appear until the second half of this year, the new CEO still has to convince existing customers not to jump ship to Android or iOS.

He will also need to make sure the new operating system, BBOS 10, is worth the wait. Apparently giving credence to the leaked report last year that unfinished software is the root of their product delays, Heins said, "I can't wait to see it."

Following this week's mega news (no pun intended) of Megaupload being shut down by the DOJ, other cyberlockers are starting to fall, starting with popular service Filesonic.

The service has disabled the ability to share files, making the, erm, file-sharing service completely useless except for cloud storage of your own files.

Additionally, many of the site's biggest uploaders have been banned and had their files deleted, as it seems Filesonic is quickly trying to remove evidence of piracy.

Although unconfirmed, Fileserve is said to be doing the same to its uploaders, as cyberlockers run and hide in the wake of the Megaupload takedown.

One, Rapidshare, says they are not worried as "file hosting itself is a legitimate business." Rapidshare has been around for many years now, and is considered a grandfather of file sharing.

Amazon is preparing to break into the world's second most populated nation, creating its first fulfillment center in India.

Fulfillment centers, which Amazon has in a few nations, are massive warehouses used to store products and house logistics teams for shipping and returns. The new center is going up in Mumbai, the largest city in India.

The company has posted many immediate job positions including IT Manager, Stations Operations Manager and financial analyst.

India has a $550 billion retail market, and it is clear Amazon wants a bigger piece. The company is the largest e-tailer on the planet, with expensive fulfillment centers in the U.S., Germany, China and the UK. Amazon does have multiple software development centers in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and a customer-service center in Hyderabad, says Reuters.

Amazon is already popular in India due to its free shipping and free customs on all books, music and DVDs bought from Amazon.co.uk and sold to Indians.

The Irish Music Rights Association (IRMA) has launched a formal action against Ireland over unauthorized music downloads.

What seems to be the issue at hand is the Irish government promised last year to allow copyright holders to "compel" ISPs to block access to sites known to engage in music piracy. Since then, however, not much has happened and IRMA believes they are "dragging their feet" on the issues.

IRMA represents over 100 labels.

Says IRMA chairman and EMI Ireland chief executive, Willie Kavanagh of the supposed instrument the government will offer IRMA and others in the fight against piracy: "We have not yet received it, leading me to believe it?s unlikely to satisfy the music industry's requirement for injunctive relief."

The government will publish details on their expected plan next month.

30 consumer affairs lawyers have asked Olympus shareholders to sue the company for damages after it was revealed last year that former execs covered up billions in investment losses fraudulently.

The disgraced Japanese camera company hid up to $1.7 billion in losses through fraudulent accounting over the past decade. Although there was rumors of Yakuza ties, the panel investigating has not found sufficient proof.

In an effort to hide losses from poor investments, Olympus went through a huge series of mergers and acquisitions and then inflated the administration fees paid out for the acquisition to companies that did not exist or were owned by Olympus.

The legal team is also considering action against the company's auditing firms, which signed off on the books each year despite noticeable red flags.

Sony has confirmed today that it is looking to move domestic construction of lithium ion batteries out of Japan by March 2014.

The company is hoping to overcome a yen that is at its strongest price since World War II.

Moving the construction to China and Singapore will allow the company to turn the current factories into research facilities. 500 workers will be asked to relocate or retire voluntarily. Everyone else will likely have to begin looking for work.

After years of being the dominant lithium ion battery producers, the Japanese have fallen behind South Korean rivals like Samsung.

The batteries are used in phones, tablets, laptops, electric cars and more.

Kim Dotcom, the larger-than-life founder of Megaupload, was also apparently the top Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 player in the world.

Dotcom, who was arrested two days ago as the DOJ shutdown Megaupload, went by the name "MEGARACER" in MW3 multi-player and had over 150,000 kills as of the beginning of the year.

There are 15 million players of the game, which is the fastest selling title of all-time making Dotcom's feat very notable.

Thanks to Megaupload subscriptions and ad money, Dotcom is said to have a net worth of $175 million, bringing in $42 million last year, alone. Among his assets were a Rolls Royce, 4 other cars including Mercedes-Benz, a large mansion, cash and guns.

In the video, Dotcom has a celebration for himself as he moves up the ranks to the top:

After years of negotiations, earlier this month, MSG was removed from Time Warner Cable's lineup leaving sports fans in New York without Knicks, Rangers, Sabres, Devils or Islanders games.

The two companies had been fighting over how much MSG should be paid and each had an ad campaign blasting the other side. MSG was asking for a 53 percent price increase for their sports programming. Both companies continue to negotiate, but for the New Year, cable subscribers are left with nothing but a blacked out channel.

Today, sources close to the situation tell the NYP that the sides are nowhere close to an agreement.

Confirmed by an MSG spokesman: "We have had no meaningful discussions in over a month and remain miles apart."

MSG is urging consumers to switch cable providers, but unfortunately many in New York City do not have any other options. If you are not in an area with Cablevision or Verizon FioS, Time Warner has a complete monopoly.

According to industry sources, Acer, Asus and Lenovo will begin to offer ultrabooks with Thunderbolt-enabled motherboards in the Q2 2012.

The ultrabooks, which are thin and offer significant power and battery efficiency, will also run on Intel's new Ivy Bridge platform, allowing for the Thunderbolt ports.

Thunderbolt combines DisplayPort and PCI Express, but is currently very expensive and has only been adopted in high-end devices. Adding the port is said to cost over $20 as of now.

For the new ultrabooks, Gigabyte Tech will be the manufacturer of the motherboards.

Ivy Bridge is expected to be fully standardized by 2013.

UBM TechInsights has torn down the new PlayStation Vita, and revealed that it costs about $160 to make.

The 3G model was torn apart and overall, the components came to $159.10. The cost breakdown does not include the small cost for R&D and shipping. The handheld sells for $300, meaning Sony seems to be making a nice margin right from launch.

For comparison, Sony sold the PlayStation 3 at a loss for at least the first two years, relying on accessories and software to make up the difference.

Here is the breakdown:

According to Fredrik Wester, the CEO of developer Paradox Interactive, the next round of gaming consoles will be the last generation.

Says the exec: "The next generation of console hardware will probably be the last. I'd be surprised if we see another generation after that."

Wester also says boxed products will eventually disappear, giving way to "open" platforms like the PC, mobile/tablets and social networks. Many companies would prefer to use direct download services like Steam to distribute their games, cutting out physical discs and the theoretical "middle man."

Paradox, for example, has seen a 97 percent rise in digital revenue in just two years, along with a 250 percent rise in income.

(Mock PS4 via Rant)

Zynga has confirmed it is in "active conversations with potential partners" to break into the real gambling business.

Following a ruling last month by the U.S. Department of Justice that only online sports betting is illegal, some states are moving forward to legalize online gambling of other sorts, including card games.

To break into the $36 billion market, Bloomberg says Zynga would need to partner with a casino or other operator that could get an Internet gambling license and then only operate in a state where gambling is legalized.

The social gaming company is behind hits like FarmVille, CityVille, MafiaWars, Empires and Allies, Words with Friends, and Zynga Poker. The company has 4 of the top 5 most popular games on Facebook, and has over 200 million monthly users. 30 million players alone play Poker on a monthly basis. That does not include its popular Hold'Em and other game apps.

Zynga makes money through virtual item sales like new guns, poker chips, and upgrades for your farm and there are certainly players out there who would like the ability to win real money.

Following the announcement of the Optimus Pad LTE, details have leaked for a high-end LG smartphone, their most powerful yet.

If accurate, rumors have LG unveiling the monster device at next month's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

The LG X3 will run on a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, have a large 1,280x720-pixel 4.7-inch display, run on Android 4.0.x, have dual cameras 8MP/1.3MP, 16GB internal storage, LTE and HSPA+ radios, NFC and a large 2000mAh battery. Additionally, the device will be relatively thin, at just under 9mm.

LG is one of the largest phone makers in the world, by volume, but its smartphones have not necessarily caught fire in the United States. Cnet speculates the new phone will hit the States in April or May.

According to a new iGR Research survey, Samsung is the most 'preferred' brand amongst Android vendors.

Furthermore, the research puts Android's market share at 47 percent in the U.S., almost doubling up on Apple at 24 percent share.

For those surveyed, Samsung was the preferred brand among consumers, followed right behind by Motorola, HTC and then LG. Major Asian brands ZTE and Huawei rounded out the bottom, but both companies barely have any share of the American market.

iGR also says that 45 percent of Android users have researched the OS before buying and went out specifically to purchase one. 27 percent of those selected the OS because of Google's backing and reputation.

Reads the research note: "Understanding why consumers select specific brands and certain smartphones is critical to the success of OEMs in the highly competitive U.S. handset market. While a user's current handset brand influences the selection of a new Android smartphone, many other factors also come into play. For example, handset display quality and functionality also highly influenced the smartphone purchase decision."

Despite selling the actual hardware at a loss, the Kindle Fire appears to already be profitable for Amazon.

RBC Capital analyst Ross Sandler came to the conclusion after a proprietary survey of 216 Kindle Fire owners: "One high level conclusion is that Kindle Fire unit economics are likely to be more favorable than consensus expectations, based primarily on frequency of digital goods purchases.

Our assumption is that AMZN could sell 3-4 million Kindle Fire units in Q4, and that those units are accretive to company-average operating margin within the first six months of ownership. Our analysis assigns a cumulative lifetime operating income per unit of $136, with a cumulative operating margin of over 20%. We believe these insights could ease some investor concerns around operating margin compression per Kindle Fire unit in 2012, which bodes well for Amazon shares."

From the survey, a few more points of interest, thanks to Forbes: