SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc, the subject of a takeover battle between activist investor Carl Icahn and the company's billionaire founder, reported a 79 percent slide in profit as personal computer sales continued to shrink. Michael Dell and private equity house Silver Lake want to take the world's third-largest PC maker private for $24.4 billion, arguing its transformation into a provider of enterprise computing services was best conducted away from public market scrutiny. ...

ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) — Dell's first-quarter earnings plunged 79 percent as the shift to smartphones and tablets reduced demand for the company's personal computers.

Samsung’s marketing Death Star isn’t just hovering over the United States — it has designs on conquering the entire world. Per Barron’s, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry thinks that Apple may have a tougher time in India than other markets because BlackBerry and especially Samsung have already blanketed the country with ads touting their smartphones as elite products that consumers simply see as less expensive versions of the iPhone. Because of this, he says that the companies have created ”an environment where they tend to mentally enslave the consumer to buy their products.” Chowdhry says this is particularly true of Samsung, which he says airs TV ads once every 15 minutes in India.

ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey authorities have issued a murder warrant for a homeless hitchhiker who gained Internet and television celebrity after using a hatchet to attack a man who ran over a California utility worker.

Millenial Media, a leading mobile advertising platform, is out with another Mobile Mix report. It shows Amazon’s tablets gaining share in the mobile content market at a fairly dizzying clip. The Mobile Mix report is based on billions of monthly ad impressions and it offers an interesting glimpse of emerging trends in mobile content consumption. Perhaps the biggest bombshell is that Amazon is now hogging 28% of ad impressions served to Android tablets; just marginally behind Samsung’s tablets that get a 35% share. No other Android vendor has achieved double digits. The cheapo Kindle tablet strategy has helped Amazon to already vault to the top tier of the U.S. tablet market when it comes to content consumption. Android tablets get 45%

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Investors snapped up the stocks of companies that make computer networking gear Thursday after industry leader Cisco Systems Inc.'s latest quarterly earnings raised hope that business is picking up after a long stretch of lackluster demand.

In the past year, Microsoft has increased its efforts to dethrone Google as the world’s top search engine. To accomplish this, the company has launched a “Scroogled” advertising campaign that looks to shine a light on Google and its sometimes questionable privacy practices. The company has previously attacked Google’s search engine and Gmail service, and is now taking aim at its Chrome Web browser. iCosmoGeek obtained an internal video that is believed to be created by Microsoft that mocks Google’s latest Chrome commercial. Google recently created an advertisement touting Chrome’s ability to sync addresses and passwords across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. Microsoft’s video attacks the company, meanwhile, for tracking customers and monetizing their personal information with targeted advertisements across smartphones, tablets

Google on Thursday faced questions from British lawmakers regarding the company’s tax practices, Reuters reported. It has been alleged that Google may have misled parliament last year when it said it complied with U.K. tax law. The company had previously claimed that, in an effort to avoid additional taxes, it doesn’t make sales to U.K. customers from within the country. An investigation by Reuters discovered that this was not the case, however. Google’s Northern Europe boss Matt Brittin flip-flopped on the issue while being questioned, and said the U.K. team is selling but “not closing.” Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge noted that Google was abandoning its “don’t be evil” mantra and was being deliberately misleading.

By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp's new CEO Brian Krzanich said on Thursday that under his leadership the top chipmaker will be more responsive to customers in an intensified focus on the fast-growing smartphone and tablet market where it lags its rivals. Krzanich took over as chief executive at Intel's annual shareholders meeting, replacing Paul Otellini, who in November unexpectedly announced his plan to retire. Under Otellini, Intel has been sidelined in smartphones and tablets while demand for its PC processors is on the wane. ...

By Li-mei Hoang LONDON (Reuters) - A group of British hackers who "ran riot" causing millions of dollars of damage to computer networks run by Sony, the CIA and other agencies were sentenced to jail terms on Thursday. Police said four men, members of the hacking collective known as "LulzSec", put thousands of internet users' personal data at risk through their high-profile cyber attacks in 2011. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — To the U.S. technology industry, there's a dramatic shortfall in the number of Americans skilled in computer programming and engineering that is hampering business. To unions and some Democrats, it's more sinister: The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

The latest numbers from IDC show that Windows Phone is still having a tough time gaining traction, as the operating system was found on just 3.2% of all smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2013. And things could look even worse for Microsoft in the second quarter since Windows Phone devices will have to go toe-to-toe with heavyweight flagships being rolled out by both Samsung and HTC, as well as the low-cost BlackBerry Q5 that BlackBerry is aggressively pushing into emerging markets. In fact, the only company that’s really devoting a lot of resources toward manufacturing and publicizing Windows Phone devices is Nokia, which really has no choice since it has chosen Windows Phone as its exclusive operating system. Let’s

Google's event on Wednesday attracted more live viewers than Anderson Cooper's CNN show. Why?

The first day of Google’s I/O Developers Conference keynote has come and gone without a single mention of a potential update to the company’s Android operating system. Despite a number of rumors that suggested Google would announce a new version of Android at the annual event, the company remained quiet on the issue. According to a press release from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, however, a new version of Android will be announced in the ”in the coming months.” The group announced on Wednesday that Google has committed to bringing support for Bluetooth Smart to future versions of the operating system. The power efficient Bluetooth standard is already supported in Apple’s iOS, as well as in a number of Android smartphones

LONDON (AP) — Four young computer hackers who masterminded cyberattacks on targets from the CIA to Sony Pictures and Rupert Murdoch's News International were sentenced to up to 32 months in prison on Thursday.

(Reuters) - Shares of NetApp Inc jumped 7 percent on Thursday after Bloomberg cited unidentified sources as saying activist investor Elliott Management has taken a "significant" stake in the company and intends to push for changes to the board and cash return strategy. The data storage equipment maker's stock was up at $38.75 in heavy mid-afternoon trading. Elliott has been in talks with the company for weeks over various proposals, including a new slate of directors, Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying. Elliott now has a stake of under 5 percent, it said. ...

Apple recently denied allegations from the United States Justice Department that suggested it was the ringleader in a conspiracy to fix eBook prices. The trial isn’t set to start until next month, but AllThingsD posted a now-public document the DoJ plans to use as evidence when making its case. In the email from late Apple co-founder to News Corporation’s James Murdoch, Jobs writes that News Corp. should “throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.” Apple stands accused of colluding with book publishers to stop eBook vendors like Amazon from selling titles at discounted prices. Apple is now the lone defendant in the price-fixing

LONDON (AP) — U.K. lawmakers subjected search giant Google to blistering criticism Thursday, accusing the U.S. Internet company of playing games with Britain's tax rules to avoid paying what it owed.

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - Google Inc faced angry questions on Thursday from British lawmakers investigating its tax affairs and whether it had misled Parliament in testimony last year, adding fuel to a debate on taxation that has risen to the top of the UK political agenda. Google's Northern Europe boss, Matt Brittin, was called back to testify to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) after a Reuters investigation showed the company employed staff in sales roles in London, even though he had told the committee in November its British staff were not "selling" to UK clients. ...

One of the more prominent criticisms of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is that its preloaded apps clog up a lot of the device’s internal storage, to the point where only about half of the 16GB model’s storage space is actually available for use. A Samsung spokesperson now tells The Inquirer that the company is “reviewing the possibility to secure more memory space through further software optimisation” and “is committed to listening to our customers and responding to their needs as part of our innovation process.” All the same, it’s hard to imagine Samsung freeing up significant amounts of space on the Galaxy S4 since the company sees its own unique apps and services as a key part of differentiating the device