Samsung to fight EU tablet ban

Samsung has been given a court date to challenge the European sales ban on its Galaxy Tab 10.1, reveals the BBC.

Its case will be heard in D"usseldorf on 25 August, as the company bids to overturn an international injunction brought by Apple.

The iPad maker claimed that Samsung's tablet devices “slavishly” copy its product designs. Apple is also attempting to obtain an injunction in the Netherlands, the only European country not currently covered.

Microsoft will discontinue support of its e-book reader app, the company quietly revealed yesterday, writes Cnet.

No new content for the pioneering app will be sold after 8 November, and the company will end support next year, Microsoft said on its Reader site.

While sales will be discontinued, users will have indefinite access to purchased content housed on their device, Microsoft said. The software giant also said it had no plans to offer an alternative app and that it would not help users migrate their Reader content to another e-book reader.

The phenomenal sales success of Apple's iPad shows no sign of abating, but sales for all other tablet competitors are stagnating and channel inventories are building, states The Register.

US tech titan HP is the latest to correct its prices, trimming £50 off the cost of a TouchPad in an effort to get them shifting, with the 16GB and 32GB versions now available for £349 and £429, respectively.

The lead Apple has built up in the market since April 2010 looks unassailable, with distributors saying demand for the iPad remains strong. “Whatever I can get I can sell straight away,” says one authorised distributor.

A man who used details posted on Facebook to break into the bank accounts of neighbours he had befriended on the site has been jailed for 15 months after stealing more than £35 000 over a two-year period, says V3.co.uk.

According to widespread reports, Iain Wood, 33, ran the scam from June 2008 until June last year, and was caught only when he become overly confident in his system and began directing money to his personal account, helping police to track him down.

Police were unaware that Wood had been stealing money for such a long time when they first confronted him. However, he reportedly asked whether they had been tracking him for a while, causing police to investigate further.