Responding to concerns over Windows 8 sales, Morgan Stanley on Thursday downgraded its recommendation on world's leading software firm Microsoft's stock.

Morgan Stanley downgraded its recommendation on Microsoft's stock to Equal Weight - the equivalent of a "hold" recommendation, from it's previously recommendation of Overweight - the equivalent of a "buy" recommendation.

In a research note, the investment banker said it didn't expect a near-term improvement in the global PC market, mainly because corporate sales would weaken.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung has announced that it has pocketed a record profit in the in the three months through December 2012.

Samsung, the world's largest maker of mobile phones and TVs, expects that its widely popular Galaxy range of smartphones has allowed it to make an operating profit of 8.8 trillion won (around $8.3 billion) during the October-December quarter, up 90 per cent from the corresponding period of the previous year.

Consumer electronics giant Toshiba has introduced the world to its latest innovations: 4K TVs, Cloud TV and Media Box.

At a pre-CES event held at the Mandalay Bay hotel yesterday, Toshiba unveiled its L9300 series of TVs that marks the manufacturer's first foray into the US 4K TV space. This series will be made available in sizes of 58-inch,
65-inch and 84-inch in summer. Pricing will be disclosed before launch.

As had long been expected, Google largely emerged from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation unharmed.

The FTC had been investigating Google's business practices since mid-2011 to determine whether the company was abusing its dominance in search results to keep ahead of rivals. The FTC did uncover some questionable practices on the part of Google, but let it walked away without any major penalties.

However, Google suffered a considerable setback related to Motorola, which the Internet search giant had acquired in the midst of the investigation.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung continues to dominate the U. S. mobile phone market, the latest figures compiled by ComScore revealed.

In the three months ending November, Samsung grabbed 26.9 per cent of the U. S. mobile phone market. The figure represents a gain of 1.2 points from the preceding three-month period.

Cupertino, California-based tech giant Apple Inc. emerged at the second spot with 18.5 per cent share of the market. Apple also gained 1.4 points from the prior three-month period.

The modern Internet recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Thirty years ago, the TCP/IP communication protocol which the modern Internet is built on was adopted.

Putting together the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) protocols allowed the transfer of information across the Internet. The TCP/IP communication protocol was co-invented by two American engineers, viz. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn.

On January 1, 1983, Vint Cerf and his colleagues switched on the Internet.

LG will start accepting pre-orders for its much-awaited 55-inch OLED TV in South Korea in January and the deliveries will start in February, the South Korean electronics giant confirmed.

The manufacturer's more than 1,400 retail stores in South Korea will start accepting pre-orders for the TVs starting January 3. The 55-inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV has been priced at 11 million won (around US$10,320) for the domestic market.

After having earlier announced its plans to dump Research in Motion (RIM)'s BlackBerry handsets, one of the US governmental agencies - the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) - recently revealed that it intends trying out the BlackBerry handsets running RIM's forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS.

According to a Reuters report, the ICE - which is a unit of the Department of Homeland Security - has disclosed that it will commence a pilot program in early 2013, for testing the new BlackBerry smartphones which are scheduled to be announced at a January 30 event.

Facebook is apparently set to implement the new versions of its Statement Of Rights And Responsibilities (SRR) and Data Use Policy; after its Tuesday announcement of the official, audited results of the company's last voting on `site governance' policies.

With less than 1 percent of the Facebook users participating in the site governance vote - 589,141 users opposing the changes, and 79,731 users supporting them -, Facebook said that the outcome of the vote gives it the ability to remove the voting mechanism from its governance structure.

In a move which marked Google's early step in the direction of a bigger project related to showing Google Now notifications in Chrome, the Google Chrome team has recently made the addition of a "skeleton for Google Now for Chrome" to Google's browser.

After having launched its social networking site `So. cl' to a few individuals for testing in May, software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that `So. cl' had now been opened to the general public.

Though So. cl - which is an offshoot of Microsoft's FuSE (Future Social Experiences) Labs, and is essentially the company's "experiment in open search" - has been opened to the public with some additional new features, users should bear in mind the fact that the network is still in beta.

According to an AppleInsider report, Apple has recently filed a patent application for what can be describes as true wireless charging technology, which underscores a mechanism whereby charging of devices will be possible from nearly a meter away from the charging source.

With the present-day wireless charging options not being `truly wireless' or `cord-free' as the label suggests, Apple's filing of the patent comes after the company's research in the direction of a "realistic and practical" method for providing wireless charging to devices.

In a move which clearly underscores Amazon Web Services' (AWS) ability to add economies of scale to its IT infrastructure, the cloud provider said in a recent announcement that it will be offering its customers a reduced price for its storage options.

According to the AWS announcement, made at the cloud provider's re: Invent conference in Las Vegas, its 24th price reduction will bring down the prices of the Amazon Simple Storage Solution (S3) and Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS).

During the course of a Wednesday meeting at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that a "seam" has been created between software and hardware with the amalgamation between the company's latest Windows 8 OS and its own branded Surface tablet.

About the company's strategy pertaining to the creation of the Surface tablet and the new Windows 8 OS version powering the device, Ballmer said that the mentioned strategic move underscored a decision which Microsoft should have taken much earlier.

Announcing the debut-week sales of the Nintendo Wii U game console in North America, Reggie Fils-Aime - Nintendo's American corporate president - said that the November
18-launched game system was "effectively sold out at retail" last week.

Noting that the demand for the Wii U is "quite strong," Fils-Aime - citing the retailers' internal Nintendo sales data - revealed that the launch-week sales of Nintendo's new game system in the US stood at over 400,000 units.