Taking on Android, Apple to launch iPhone 4 in China next week

Taking on Google’s Android mobile software in a key market, Apple said tonight it will launch the iPhone 4 in China on Sept. 25.

Apple said it will launch the hot-selling phone at Apple retail stores in China, including new stores in Shangai (pictured above) and Beijing. It will also be available the same day at China Unicom retail stores for buyers who want a two-year contract.

China is emerging as a key battleground in … Continue Reading

Is Facebook working on a mobile phone?

Although Facebook has emphatically denied the report, Techcrunch insisted in a story today that Facebook is working on building a mobile phone.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company reportedly became concerned about the growing power of Apple and Google with the rise of the iPhone and Android platforms. Making apps alone, the report said, may not be enough to counter a competitive threat.

A spokeswoman for Facebook denied the report, saying to Mashable, “The story, which … Continue Reading

With Halo: Reach complete, Bungie walks away from a field it dominates (review)

Halo: Reach finishes the story that game developer Bungie began nearly a decade ago. The newest Halo video game for the Xbox 360 is the last that Bungie will make for Microsoft. After that, it moves on to a new universe. It feels like we’re seeing an old friend for the last time before they move on to a new life.

This game fits into the epic story arc, taking you right back to the … Continue Reading

Week in review: Nanowire skin and the secret of Groupon's success

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Researchers make artificial skin from nanowires so a robot can unload your dishwasher — The rise of the machines has begun. Researchers have created artificial skin from electronic materials known as semiconductor nanowires.

The secret of Groupon’s success is … good writing? — Among startups, there’s a tendency to emphasize product technology, rather than … Continue Reading

WeePlaces adds Gowalla and Facebook to visualize check-ins

WeePlaces, a service which visually maps your check-ins on location-based services, has integrated with Gowalla and Facebook, giving users the ability to see where they’ve announced their location to friends across Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places.

Foursquare and Gowalla are the two most popular check-in services, while Facebook has recently entered the market with its Facebook Places. All three services have application programming interfaces which allow services like Weeplaces to pull data from them. Weeplaces … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Securing funding and deadly job titles

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.

VCs and option pools: Now you’re swimming in the deep end – When startups receive venture capital funding, but are forced to establish an option pool to incentivize future employees, many founders don’t realize that ownership stake comes out of their pocket. Attorney Scott Edward Walker details what adding this sort of pool means for valuation – and how it works to the favor of the VC.

How … Continue Reading

Watch out, Disney, Fantage doubles its growth for kids virtual world

Virtual worlds for kids have been volatile during the recession. Some have come and gone. Some have declined. So it’s worth noting that Fantage, a virtual world for kids who like playing games and staging fashion shows, has doubled its audience in the past year.

The Fort Lee, N.J.-based company now has 3.3 million unique visitors a month, compared to 1.5 million nearly a year ago. To date, it has had 7.7 million registered users, … Continue Reading

Supposed Google-killer Cuil's reign of terror may finally be over

Cuil. Just writing that ill-begotten search engine’s name again makes me shudder. But hopefully, this may be the last we’ll hear of the site for some time. Cuil.com went down tonight, and according to former employees, it’s down for good, TechCrunch reports.

Current Cuil employees apparently weren’t paid this week, and they’re seeking other work, the ex-employees said. There aren’t any other details to go with at this time, but the situation certainly doesn’t look … Continue Reading

Groupon responds: Great idea, VentureBeat!

Groupon, the social-buying phenomenon based in Chicago whose CEO, Andrew Mason, I recently interviewed at the DEMO conference, has always done things a bit differently. Transparency is something they prize.

So after I suggested they beef up their PR team with a Silicon Valley veteran, former PayPal executive Julie Anderson Ankenbrandt, how did they respond? Shortly after I wrote the article, this update appeared on Ankenbrandt’s LinkedIn page:

That’s Groupon president and COO Rob Solomon, … Continue Reading

Solvate launches a search engine for fancy freelancers

A New York startup called Solvate aims to connect businesses with high-quality freelancers. It recently gave those businesses a little more control over the process by launching what it calls the Solvate Talent Engine.

When Solvate launched last year, it tried to distinguish itself from remote work marketplaces like Elance and ODesk with its focus on high-end consultants and freelancers, and by personally taking charge of connecting businesses with remote workers. At the time, co-founder … Continue Reading

DiscoveryBeat 2010 contest: Come up with best business idea for discovering content

We’re stirring up the interest in our Needle in the Haystack business idea contest for DiscoveryBeat 2010.

At our first DiscoveryBeat event last December, Ge Wang, chief technology officer and co-founder of Smule spoke about how his company made a deliberate effort to create humorous videos of people using Smule’s apps for the iPhone. Some were so entertaining they were viewed millions of times, giving Smule great exposure for its products. Lots of users discovered … Continue Reading

Constellation Energy to acquire demand response provider CPower

Baltimore energy supplier Constellation Energy announced today it plans to acquire CPower, a demand response company that helps businesses manage peak-time energy use and offers them financial incentives to cut power consumption.

The purchase will allow Constellation to expand into important markets like Texas and New England, Constellation said, and will increase the demand response capacity of the group by 850 megawatts to a  total capacity to 1,500 megawatts. Terms of the deal were not … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs takes out LG's CEO, who resigned for poor smartphone sales

Another CEO bites the dust, a victim of Steve Jobs and soaring iPhone sales.

First, Jobs took out the chief executive of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallusvuo, who resigned last week because of a slowdown in the phone giant’s sales. And today, the CEO of South Korean consumer electronics giant LG resigned because of the company’s poor performance in the smartphone business.

Yong Nam (pictured below) is being replaced by Bon Joon Koo, who is the chief … Continue Reading

Seedcamp invests in 12 European startups

Seedcamp is most easily described as Europe’s Y Combinator. It provides seed investment of up to €50.000 in exchange for 8 to 10 percent of the startup in question. Seedcamp stages events all over Europe which culminate in 20 or so companies being selected to participate in Seedcamp week in London.

Following an investment, the companies spend three months in London working with mentors to develop their product. Erply (received funding of €2 million) and … Continue Reading

Tumblr flies past Posterous in lite-blogging race

Tumblr and Posterous both provide users with the ability to blog without all that much effort. But as similar as the two “light blogging” platforms are, Tumblr is the favorite among casual members of the blogosphere, according to traffic data from Quantcast.

Tumblr attracted around 42 million monthly visits to its hosted blog network globally (17 million of which come from the U.S.), while Posterous averages only around 7 million monthly visits on its hosted … Continue Reading

From cell phones to water filters; LG shifts gear

LG electronics may be one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of TVs and phones but it looks like the company is not content to rely on its traditional electronics base. LG just announced its intention to enter the water-treatment business and to generate $7 billion in revenue from this area by 2020.

LG admitted to having no previous experience with water treatment technology but intends to invest $400 million in this new business in the … Continue Reading

VentureBeat's 5 favorite DEMO companies

The attendees of DEMO Fall 2010 have already chosen their favorite company from the 70 that launched products at the conference earlier this week. And the event team, led by VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall, has handed out its DEMOgod awards.

But the lowly writers here at VentureBeat, the ones who covered all of the launches, have our favorites, too. We were (mostly) uninvolved in selecting the companies for DEMO or the DEMOgod awards, so our … Continue Reading

An open letter to Groupon's CEO: How to get ahead of your next PR crisis

Dear Andrew:

It was great sitting down with you on stage at the DEMO conference this week. We talked a bit about the challenges of your runaway growth and the difficulties of applying your innovative collective-buying model to small, local businesses. It was a friendly chat, I admit — you even joked about offering me a PR job. (Seriously, would you tech mogul dudes please stop poaching VentureBeat talent?)

As flattering as the offer was, … Continue Reading

Former Sun Labs chief believes in spreading cell phone service everywhere (video)

I remember interviewing Glenn Edens when he was the head of Sun Labs, the research arm of Sun Microsystems. He has since moved on to a very interesting startup, Range Networks, that appeared on stage at the DEMO Fall 2010 conference this week in Santa Clara, Calif. Edens says Range Networks wants to get cell phones in the hands of everybody in the world and hopes its technology can lead to service fees that are … Continue Reading