iPhone sales beat out BlackBerry, rise 91% to 14.1M in Q4

In its fourth quarter earning results today, Apple announced that iPhone sales rose 91 percent year-over-year to 14.1 million units sold.

The iPhone’s strong sales led Apple to beat out Research in Motion’s 12.1 million BlackBerry phones sold in its most recent quarter.

So what does this tell us? For one, despite the fact that the “antennagate” scandal forced Apple to give away free cases to iPhone 4 owners, consumers still wanted to get their … Continue Reading

Mark Cuban bets $5 million on future of device-tracking firm BlueCava

BlueCava, a credit bureau for devices conducting business online, has closed a $5 million first round of funding led by billionaire Mark Cuban and entrepreneur Tim Headington. The company told VentureBeat it expects to conduct a second round as soon as April.

BlueCava is used by companies doing business online to identify the individual “fingerprint” of any desktop or mobile device being used in a web transaction. This snapshot then provides businesses with the device’s … Continue Reading

Kleiner's Bing Gordon: "The most promiscuous app audience" in history

Bing Gordon, who has invested in hot gaming companies like Zynga and just-acquired Ngmoco, said today that for app developers, just getting discovered is overrated. What’s important, he said, is making sure users keep coming back.

Gordon is a former Electronic Arts executive and now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He spoke this morning at VentureBeat’s DiscoveryBeat conference in San Francisco, and said that discovery has a “constrained” value, while retention is … Continue Reading

Fox's Liz Claman grills executives for 3 days in Silicon Valley

Liz Claman, anchor of Fox Business Network, is back for a series of broadcasts from Silicon Valley. She has done her segment on 3 Days in the Valley for three years now and began the newest series today. Claman, (pictured with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey last year), is interviewing a series of Silicon Valley bigwigs today through Wednesday (see the schedule at the bottom). We got together with Claman for a quick Q&A over the weekend … Continue Reading

PapayaMobile creates partnerships to help developers make money on Android apps

When it comes to making money on apps, Apple developers are far ahead of Google Android developers. But PapayaMobile is announcing today that it has set up key partners to enable in-app purchases for Android apps.

If developers support it and consumers take to it, it could be a big deal. We’ll hear more about this development from Si Shen, chief executive of Beijing-based PapayaMobile, at DiscoveryBeat 2010, where she is a panel speaker today.… Continue Reading

CrowdStar says It Girl social game is raking in the revenues

CrowdStar, a fast-growing social game company, believes it has created a next-generation Facebook game with its successful It Girl title. The game makes at least three times more money per player than any other game CrowdStar has released on Facebook.

Peter Relan, chairman of the Burlingame, Calif.-based company, said in an interview that It Girl is making several times more money in terms of average revenue per user than other CrowdStar games. He refers to … Continue Reading

Facebook restores LOLapps apps after a two-day ban

After giving LOLapps the death penalty, Facebook is granting a reprieve. The social network allowed LOLapps to begin operating its apps on Facebook late Monday night after taking them down for a couple of days.

Facebook made all of LOLapps’ apps inaccessible over the weekend after it found what it called “violations of its terms of service.” Those violations are likely related to privacy issues. The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that it found … Continue Reading

Video publisher Brightcove names new CFO, reportedly preparing for IPO

Online video publisher Brightcove is preparing for an IPO next year after it named Phase Forward’s Chris Menard as the company’s chief financial officer today, according to a report by Reuters.

Brightcove gives content providers and marketing firms a way to publish video content to the web using HTML 5 — which means it will be enabled for most mobile devices. The company also offers ways to deliver live and on-demand video content.

Menard is … Continue Reading

Update: Ice Energy raises a cool $24 million

Shortly after announcing a $4.5 million infusion of cash from TIAA-CREF and Good Energies, energy storage company Ice Energy announced today that it has closed a total $24 million in third-round funding.

The company makes a unique product in the energy storage sector, using ice to reduce energy required by AC systems. Ice Energy says it can reduce energy demand by AC systems by up to 95 percent, and its Ice Bear units can shift … Continue Reading

Microsoft's Kinect and Windows Phone 7 marketing blitz to top $1B

If you haven’t heard of Microsoft’s Kinect yet, it will no doubt be hammered into your head over the next few weeks as the software giant is gearing up to spend over $500 million to market the Xbox 360 motion-controlling accessory, the New York Post reports.

Together with Microsoft’s reported half-billion dollar marketing budget for Windows Phone 7, the company will be spending upwards of $1 billion to outdo its competition — which includes rival … Continue Reading

Unsocial broadcasts your business identity to those around you

Unsocial, a mobile app that helps people find potential business connections in their immediate vicinity, came out of stealth mode today at VentureBeat’s DiscoveryBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco.

Unsocial users can connect their LinkedIn accounts, or create a unique account for the application, and immediately find others using unsocial within a few miles. They can also find events in the area — such as DiscoveryBeat — and see an attendee list and announce their … Continue Reading

Appbackr shows off a wholesale market for selling iPhone apps

Appbackr has launched its beta version today in the hope of creating the world’s first wholesale marketplace for iPhone and iPad apps. The service would let developers submit their apps to be sold in bulk at wholesale prices.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s wholesale catalog of apps is now available to buyers. Appbackr showed off the marketplace at the DiscoveryBeat 2010 conference today. Appbackr’s wholesale buyers pay the developers immediately, and the developers can start … Continue Reading

RIM brings BlackBerry Style flip phone to Sprint, for some reason

Raise your hand if you’re on Sprint and you’ve been dying for a BlackBerry flip phone — because that’s just what you’re getting with the recently announced BlackBerry Style.

The phone sports the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, two displays (external and internal), and a 5-megapixel camera. But check your touchscreen ambitions at the door — the Style is more of a traditional BlackBerry device with its optical trackpad. It will be available for pre-order … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: $4.5 million for Ice Energy, Google could be building a "highway to nowhere"

Here’s the cleantech news GreenBeat is following today:

Financial services company TIAA-CREF announced it will put $50 million venture capital investments in energy efficient and green building technologies. The cash will be invested alongside VC investments made by cleantech investment firm Good Energies in a partnership between the two companies. So far, the partnership has invested $4.5 million in Ice Energy, which makes energy-efficient cooling systems. Side note: Good Energies also took a stake equal … Continue Reading

Netflix streaming video now disc-free on the Nintendo Wii

Nintendo announced today that Wii owners can now watch Netflix streaming video without the need for a Watch Instantly disc.

Instead, Wii owners can download the free Netflix application from the Wii Shop Channel, and install the service directly on to their Wii Menu home screens. Nintendo also announced that more than 3 million Wii owners have already connected to Netflix — a number that will surely rise quickly thanks to the disc-free option.

The … Continue Reading

YD Online's Angel's Choice app to help with iPhone discovery

Getting stuff discovered on the App Store is pretty tough, considering there are about 300,000 apps available. But there’s an app for that. YD Online is launching its Angel’s Choice app today at the DiscoveryBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco.

Angel’s Choice is a game with a venture capital theme, allowing you to invest in your favorite apps. If lots of other players also vote for your app, then the value of the app goes … Continue Reading

New York, New York: A heckuva tech platform?

Already the most successful tech entrepreneur in New York City’s history, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration are hard at work transforming government into a platform where the tech and social media communities can create solutions to problems facing the nation’s financial hub.

Last week, in the Bloomberg administration’s most recent monthly strategy workshop, staff from a number of city agencies discussed technology and social media strategy with a panel of city leaders including Deputy … Continue Reading

AppStoreHQ introduces appESP for personalized recommendations on Android apps

Discovering new and useful Android apps isn’t easy. That’s why AppStoreHQ is introducing appESP, a personalized discovery platform for finding new apps on Android phones.

The company is releasing the app today at DiscoveryBeat 2010, our conference on getting apps noticed. The appESP “discovery engine” generates recommended apps using three sources: statistical analysis, or comparing installed apps across all Android users; social, leveraging your own friends to boost recommended apps your friends use; and something … Continue Reading

Sharethrough raises $5M to turn video ads into viral hits

Sharethrough, a video ad startup that has assembled an impressive team of investors and advisors, just announced that it has raised $5 million in its first round of funding.

The San Francisco company says it’s not just another video ad network. Instead, as the name implies, it’s focused distributing videos in a way that maximizes viewer sharing — not only does that increase the number of eyeballs, but Sharehtrough says that viewers who watch a … Continue Reading