Microsoft’s plan for Windows Phone 8—which appears to be moving in step with its overall Windows 8 launch strategy—has been leaked, and the company is planning to take some big steps forward in terms of overall performance, mobile payments, and voice calling.

Apartment-letting site Airbnb will get investment, endorsement and distribution from the publisher of Europe’s most-read newspaper.

Hoping to tap into India’s rapidly growing e-commerce market, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is launching Junglee.com in the country today.

paidContent understands Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is set to make some big first-anniversary upgrades to its OnePass paid content system in the next few weeks, designed to increase slow take-up among publishers.

It’s an election year, which means politicians are frantically trying to raise money for their campaigns. President Obama’s re-election campaign has decided to add Square’s mobile payments technology to its arsenal and is deploying the company’s credit-card readers to its staff.

Telegraph.co.uk reports the UK’s main commercial free-to-air TV broadcaster has delayed a programme under which it wants to charge online viewers for some content. But that’s not quite the case.

—ESPN: The sports network is seeing a reorg: John Kosner has been promoted to EVP, digital and print media, from SVP and GM of the divisions. Marie Donoghue has been promoted to SVP, global strategy, from SVP, business affairs and business development. Meanwhile, longtime leaders John Wildhack and Norby Williamson…

Square, the high-profile mobile payments company started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has yet to launch outside the U.S. But in the meantime, another, similar-looking competitor has sprung up in the UK: mPowa.

Mecom is to introduce digital pay models across its top newspaper titles, slash costs by €70m and potentially close or sell 65 free titles, following a wide-ranging strategic review by new chief executive Tom Toumazis.

Polar Mobile—the Canadian startup that develops apps for big-name publishers like CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS), Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated (NYSE: TWX), Shanghai Daily, Future Publishing (LSE: FUTR) and the WSJ—today announced two steps up in its growth: it has picked up an additional $6 million in funding and has launched…

Losing your phone is never fun. But losing your wallet is much worse, and that’s one argument where those trying to roll the mobile-payments boulder up the mountain might find some help.

News Of The World’s closure deprived News International of data on which it could have based a decision to introduce digital fees at the UK’s most popular newspaper.

The UK’s largest regional newspaper title, the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, is ending the premium online payment tier it introduced in April 2011, whilst introducing updated paid tablet and smartphone editions.

Dorling Kindersley, the division of Penguin that publishes children, travel and reference titles, made a strong case for how it is moving to a “flat” content model, where a printed book is only one of many output options. The digital publisher of DK also said that companies like his need…

News International’s The Times may shed its social media invisibility cloak by letting subscribers gift paywalled articles to friends.

The consumer draw of free apps over paid apps has been well-documented, and so has the rise of in-app payments as a route to making money from those free apps. New research out today predicts that in-app purchases will, in fact, become the most dominant way that app developers will…

Neil Ashe said he wanted a break when he left CBS (NYSE: CBS) last year and he got one. Roughly a year after leaving as the president of CBS Interactive, Ashe is literally back in business. His new gig: president and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, responsible for just what…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has “apologised unreservedly” after its Kenyan outfit poached customers from a rival business directory by systematically accessing its database.

Back in July, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and other content providers pulled the purchasing options from their iOS apps, in order to comply with Apple’s new in-app purchasing restrictions. Today Amazon launched a workaround—a Web-based HTML5 Kindle store specifically optimized for the iPad.