PC Sales Weakened in Q4–Everyone Blame the iPad

PC sales were weaker than expected in the fourth quarter. Might it have a little something do with the iPad? Yes.

News Byte

Comcast Won't Get NBC U in Time for Christmas, or New Year's Either

Comcast won’t be able to wrap its deal with GE for NBC Universal this month, both companies announced today. Instead, they’re shooting for a January close, when they hope to get final approval from Washington. Given that this one stretches back to the fall of 2009, it’s hard to argue that a few weeks of extra legal bills will matter that much.

Amazon Opens Up on Kindle Sales, Says "Millions" Sold This Holiday Season

Amazon.com has sold “millions” of its new Kindle models in the first 73 days of the holiday quarter, according to a post by the Kindle team in an online forum.

Shocking Bieber Upset: Oil Spill Tops Twitter's 2010 Trends

Although World Cup tweeting caused record high volume and infrastructure demands on Twitter, the most-discussed topic on Twitter this year was actually the Gulf oil spill, said the San Francisco-based company tonight.

Wonderwall Goes Latino

Hola Sofia Vergara! In an interesting brand extension, the popular celebrity and entertainment site Wonderwall has launched a version aimed at the U.S. Hispanic market called Wonderwall Latino. The main Wonderwall site, which is a partnership between Hollywood production company BermanBraun and Microsoft’s MSN portal that launched in early 2009, now has 11.3 million unique users and 337 million page views a month.

77 Percent of Early iPhone 4 Sales Were Upgrades

Apple’s new iPhone 4 is proving to be one hell of a brand-loyalty generator. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, 77 percent of iPhone 4 sales Thursday were upgrades purchased by existing iPhone owners.

30 Million Windows Phone 7 Units in 2011? Sure You Didn’t Mean Windows Mobile OS Phones?

According to a Microsoft presentation made at ReMIX France, Redmond hopes to sell 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices by the end of 2011. And it cites some IDC data to back that goal up. One problem: That data refer to all versions of the Windows mobile OS, not just Windows Phone 7.

Google to U.S. Economy: You’re Welcome

How much was Google worth to the United States economy in 2009? $54 billion. This according to the search sovereign itself, which released a paper today quantifying its economic impact on the country, state by state.

Web Ads Are Growing Again. But by How Much?

We know that the Web ad business (and the ad business in general) is much better than it was a year ago, when it was awful. How much better?

Nokia Reorgs Evidently Biannual

“A simplified company structure.” Evidently, that is the solution to all Nokia’s problems–to the erosion of its share of the smartphone market and its failure to develop a worthy rival to the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. And so this morning, the handset maker announced another sweeping overhaul of its management structure, its second reorganization in less than a year.

Hulu: We’re Profitable, Booming

Blink Different, Redux