Some numbers out today that underscore the challenge telecoms operators have had in attracting customers to their pay-TV platforms, including the newer services like IPTV, against competition from incumbent TV providers and the growing allure of over-the-top services, from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) to YouTube.

Russia’s big Mail.ru portal is trying to ape Chinese companies’ microblog boom by launching its own Twitter clone. Futubra launched in beta Monday.

We know that consumers in China love Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) products, and that Apple is famous for the lines that form outside its stores in advance of the launch of a new product. But things got a little out of hand earlier today in Beijing, as a mob of people…

When you consider the internet, on-demand services, games consoles, mobiles, apps and [fill in your personal favorite here], we have more ways than ever before to watch TV content whenever and however we want. But despite the growth of services like Hulu, YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) and Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), it…

FilmOn, the premium-content internet streaming site that met controversy earlier this year over lawsuits involving CBS (NYSE: CBS), CNET, and copyright, is expanding its line up, adding two new sports channels for NCAA Basketball and NCAA Football.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, an investor in media titans News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), is turning his attention now to social media: he and his investment group, Kingdom Holding Company, today became the latest investors in Twitter, putting up $300…

Confirming earlier reports, T-Mobile USA will be the first carrier to sell a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Windows Phone in the U.S.—a key market for the beleaguered handset maker. Rather than splashing into the U.S. with a high-end, expensive product, Nokia is taking the more humble route and launching with the…

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is taking its new device strategy up one more notch: today, it started to ship the second of its first two Windows Phone devices, the cheaper Lumia 710, with the first devices going to the company’s stronghold in developing markets—Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Russia—within the next…

Nokia’s luxury device brand Vertu—the epitome of conspicuous consumption with gold-and-diamond handsets priced in the six figures—has been conspicuously absent from the company’s many strategic announcements over the last year, which have seen the company drop Symbian for Microsoft’s Windows Phone, make a u-turn on MeeGo, re-assess its global device…

Following on from its acquisition of mobile software developer SPB at the end of November, Yandex is making one more move to increase its ubiquity among the growing number of smartphone users in the country: the search giant is reportedly planning to launch search apps for Apple’s iOS devices by…

Taking a page from its search counterparts in the East and West like Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Russia’s Yandex has scooped up a mobile software company, SPB Software, to grow its mobile offerings. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Russia’s leading search engine’s Q3 profit almost doubled to 1.7 billion rubles ($56.9 million) as advertising sales went from strength to strength and it began international expansion in the fast-growing Turkish market.

Russian portal and social network operator Mail.ru Group’s half-year growth continued in to Q3, during which revenue was 59.1 percent higher than the previous year at $124.9 million.

Looks like Russia’s search giant Yandex is following in Google’s footsteps once again. Yandex is taking its services to new screens by inking a deal with Samsung to preload access to Yandex on its line of connected TVs as well as its bada-powered feature phones distributed in Russia and other…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) today finally got the keys to Skype, so to speak: the deal for Microsoft to buy the internet telephony giant for $8.5 billion formally closed. The deal was first announced in May but needed to pass successfully through regulatory approval in several major markets—most recently, Europe, just…

After years of effort and speculation, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pieced together nearly 40 broadcast services from around the world to boost the on-demand programming available through Xbox Live. It took a shift in strategy to make room for broadcasters like the BBC, the trend toward authentication to bring on…

Facebook’s annual conference, F8, was pretty thin on mobile news, but a news item today demonstrates how it’s not far out of Facebook’s sites, and also how third parties could play a big role in how Facebook goes mobile in the future. Gemalto, a company that makes SIM cards for…

Not a new development, but further confirmation that there may be one on the horizon. China’s Alibaba, Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies and U.S.-based VC firm Silver Lake are preparing a joint offer to buy Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), according to reports.

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