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Last November, to the surprise and dismay of many, the European Commission decided it needed to stimulate some homegrown innovation in the mobile space and pulled together €22 million in a public/private investment designed to help Symbian get ahead. It was intended to turn Nokia's former lover into the Embedded Operating System for Europe (hence the name SYMBEOSE), but alas the breakupbetween Symbian and the Finnish mobile maker was too much to overcome. The EC has decided, quite rightly, that there's no sense in continuing its symbtopia project, and now a member of Neelie Kroes'team has confirmed the entire venture has been cancelled. European taxpayers (two of whom you see on the right) will also be glad to know that no money has exchanged hands, so the bullet has been well and truly dodged. Guess that's why they're looking so happy. Update:  Nokia has confirmed the foregoing in a statement, which you can find after the break. "Nokia has been made aware...

AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile was  a big deal  as soon as it was announced, but now  Reuters has unearthed some more context to lend it even more cruciality. We already knew that in the event of AT&T&T-Mobile failing to garner regulatory approval, AT&T would owe Deutsche Telekom, the current owner of T-Mo USA, $3 billion in cash, some spare AWS spectrum, and a roaming agreement "on terms favorable to both parties."  Reuters'  sleuths say that the spectrum in question is worth $2 billion and the roaming deal a further $1 billion, bringing the total breakup payout to a hair-raising $6 billion. Given the wording of the two companies' deal, we don't expect the roaming part of that settlement would be free for T-Mobile (so $6b looks to be a bit of an over-estimation), but the fact remains that AT&T is staking a whole lot of moolah on this takeover going through. Whether it does or not, Deutsche Telekom's René Obermann (above l...

After months of fighting on the playground, Motorola and Huawei have finally come to an agreement to settle their differences once and for all. Both parties have now dropped their pending lawsuits, with Motorola originally accusing Huawei of stealing trade secrets from its former employees, and later on Huawei getting all worried about Motorola leaking confidential information over their partnership to the rivaling Nokia Siemens Networks. The new agreement will now allow Motorola "transfer its commercial agreements with Huawei to NSN for a fee," which would then permit NSN use this info to service Motorola's networks that utilise Huawei's equipment. Aww, isn't it nice when money solves everything? Press release after the break. BGR

iRobot may still be best known as the creator of the homely Roomba vacuum-cleaning drone, but savvy readers will know the company's endeavors span a pretty broad range of robot-related activities. One of those has now borne fruit in the shape of a multiyear agreement with the US Navy for the provision of "portable robotic systems" that can identify and dispose of explosives while also performing a bit of reconnaissance work in their spare time. The announcement doesn't tell us the particular model(s) or number of bots that will be provided, but there is clarification to say that iRobot will be responsible for providing spares, repairs, training, and accessories along with the hardware, with the total revenue for the company potentially swelling to $230 million over the full course of the contract, which lasts through 2015. Our guess is that the "throwable" robot shown off a couple of weeks back would be a good candidate for this task, though we doubt it...