SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s quarterly profit almost doubled after a jump in iPhone sales, particularly for the greater China region, blowing past Wall Street expectations and soothing fears the device was past its best days for sharp growth. Shares in Apple, the world’s most valuable technology company, shot up 8 percent in after-hours trade, after falling as much as 13 percent from a record high of $644 in the past two weeks. The results prompted a slew of analysts to raise their target price for Apple

Facebook struck a $550 million deal to get its hands on hundreds of AOL patents from Microsoft as the social network hardened its defenses before it goes public on the Nasdaq.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sanjay Jha, the chief executive to Motorola Mobility, was awarded a total compensation package of about $47 million in 2011, almost four times his 2010 pay, according to a regulatory filing. The cellphone maker, which agreed to be bought by Google Inc for $12.5 billion, said on Friday that the rise was due to the successful splitting of Motorola into two companies last year to form Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. Jha’s pay package, including option awards, increased from about $13 million in 2010, the company said in its proxy filing on Friday.

NEW YORK/TORONTO (Reuters) – BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has hired law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP to work out a restructuring plan that could include selling assets, seeking joint ventures or licensing patents, people briefed on the matter said. As part of the struggling Canadian smartphone maker’s strategic review, the RIM board is discussing ways to boost revenue from its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and possibly opening up its proprietary network, the sources said. …

Three Panamanian men were on their way home after a night of fishing, happy with their success, when the motor on their small open boat rattled and quit, leaving them adrift in sight of land, but too far out for their cell phones to work.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Verizon Wireless plans to put its marketing weight behind Microsoft Corp’s next mobile phone software to help develop a strong competitor to Apple Inc and Google Inc, according to the chief financial officer of Verizon Communications.

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. A romanticized Louie teaser, an early Olympic advertising tearjerker, and Dwyane Wade enlivens SoHo playgrounds without removing his suit.

Asian markets on Wednesday bounced back from recent loses following some much-needed positive news out of Europe and an IMF report forecasting global growth would be stronger than expected.

The U.S. is looking at “all options” as it seeks to discourage North Korea from conducting a third nuclear test, a senior U.S.

LONDON (Reuters) – Nokia’s bid to challenge the dominance of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android has failed to convince telecom operators in Europe, depriving it of powerful allies in its fight to regain the top spot in the mobile market. Four major telecom operators in Europe, where the phones have been on sale since before Christmas, told Reuters the new Nokia Lumia smartphones were not good enough to compete with Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy phones. Nokia now faces a battle for the key U.S.

COMMENTARY | When it was released, the Transformer Prime was the latest and greatest of Asus’ Transformer tablets; Android-powered gadgets which “transform” into notebook computers through the use of an add-on dock, sold separately, which extends the battery life and adds a keyboard and touchpad.

Sara Ferraioli is a Manager in the Human Resources Contracts division at Winter, Wyman, the largest and one of the most recognized staffing organizations in the Northeast. Find out more on the Winter, Wyman blog or follow on Twitter .

COMMENTARY | In Google’s most recent earnings report, CEO Larry Page said of “lower priced tablets that run Android” that “we definitely have a belief that there is going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market as well, with lower priced products that will be very significant.

The HTC One series is the Taiwanese smartphone maker’s new flagship line of smartphones, powered by Google’s open-source Android operating system. It’s split up into three models, including the high-end, quad-core HTC One X, and the midrange HTC One S.

The HTC One series is the Taiwanese smartphone maker’s new flagship line of smartphones, powered by Google’s open-source Android operating system. It’s split up into three models, including the high-end, quad-core HTC One X, and the midrange HTC One S

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc announced a stock split designed to preserve the control of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin over the world’s No.

(Reuters) – Global smartphones annual sales will cross the billion-unit mark in 2014, helped by strong demand from China and the launch of cheaper low-end handsets, Credit Suisse said. Sales across the globe will grow about 46 percent to 687.9 million units this year and will touch 1.05 billion units in 2014, the note said. “We see robust growth for the smartphone market in China, which we think will account for 22 percent of global units by 2015,” analysts including Kulbinder Garcha wrote in a note

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television.