(Photo: Ubergizmo)

An anonymous person who definitely has no vested interest whatsoever in the success of BlackBerry has purchased 1 million BlackBerries just because he's really super into the device, okay?

DVice reports that the anonymous person swooped in and bought 1,000,000 of BlackBerry's newest gadget, the Z10. Perhaps he will melt them down and build himself a dwelling made of toxic metals and Canadian tears. Perhaps he will spend the rest of his life giving away old BlackBerries as presents. ("Ughhhh, Uncle Mike gave me another Z10 for Christmas.") Or perhaps he will store them in a spare closet in his office at BlackBerry.

At this point we're thinking this could totally be written off as a charitable donation.

A tipster sent us the below screenshot:

(Photo: Twitter)

Because nothing says "business smartphone" like a neon yellow-lined Microsoft brick.

You know your reputation is damaged if Nokia feels justified in mocking you.

(h/t Pitchfork Reviews Reviews)

Whoops. (Photo: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps)

Word on the street says Apple has fired the manager who oversaw the development of its ill-fated Maps app. [Bloomberg]

This anthropologist completely submerged herself in the culture she was studying for three years ... meaning she moved to the Bay Area and started chatting up hackers. [Wired]

Google has released an icy slew of Street View updates, including photos of Svalbard, Norway--which is about 400 miles north of continental Europe. [TNW]

The most commonly asked politics question on Ask.com in 2012: "Who will win the Presidential race?" Guys, it's a search engine, not a crystal ball. For fortune-telling, you need Nate Silver. [VentureBeat]

Nokia is suing to block the sale of many RIM products until they can straighten out royalties, not that it'll save either company from the scrapheap of corporate history. [ComputerWorld]

(Photo: AFR)

If you're not Beyonce and you're still carrying around a Blackberry, chances are you are over 55, wear a three piece suit to work or--like a family itself--you are desperately beholden to a family plan from which there is no escape.

Where once we touted Blackberry Curves like prized possessions, obsessively BBMing friends and humblebragging about the jitters induced by that phantom blinking red light, we now cluck our tongues in derision at the behind-the-times fogies who dare to wield a device that isn't an iPhone or Android.

Current Blackberry users have one bragging right that they wave like a sad white flag, despite the fact that their phones do not have apps and can barely access the Internet without shutting down: It's that damn QWERTY keyboard. Once ubiquitous in the smartphone market, the physical button keyboard has largely been replaced by touchscreen phones designed to drive people with fat thumbs ever closer to the brink of insanity.

Between insanity and perpetual shame is exactly where Blackberry users hover these days, at least according to the New York Times:

“I’m ashamed of it,” said Ms. Crosby, a Los Angeles sales representative who said she had stopped pulling out her BlackBerry at cocktail parties and conferences. In meetings, she says she hides her BlackBerry beneath her iPad for fear clients will see it and judge her.

“I want to take a bat to it,” Ms. Crosby said, after waiting for her phone’s browser to load for the third minute, only to watch the battery die. “You can’t do anything with it. You’re supposed to, but it’s all a big lie.”

One man, who is of course a "musician" living in Los Angeles, drove the final knife through RIM's cold, money-bleeding heart. “BlackBerry users are like Myspace users,” he told the Times. “They probably still chat on AOL Instant Messenger.”

We thought Blackberry's power ballad, which proved the company and its products were more embarrassing than your Dad, would be the company's ultimate source of shame. Turns out we were wrong.

BlackBerrys (Flickr/Hyku)

BlackBerry makers Research In Motion (RIM) have faced a host of troubles recently, including a widespread European service outage, and now comes perhaps the worst news of all: people just aren't buying BlackBerrys anymore. Toronto's Globe and Mail reports on the Canadian smartphone maker's diminishing market share:

Some analysts believe the total number of BlackBerry users is now declining – or on the verge of declining – as existing customers abandon RIM in greater numbers than new customers sign up.

"This is the first quarter we are expecting zero subscriber growth – a loss in enterprise [customers] offset by a small gain in international consumer subs," said Kris Thompson of National Bank Financial. "Starting next quarter, we see the sub base in a downward spiral with Blackberry 10 potentially slowing [the losses], but we’re not holding our breath."

As depressing as this is, RIM has to soldier on in preparation for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in January. While some analysts apparently believe users in southeast Asia and the Middle East may save the BlackBerry's bacon, others contacted by the Globe and Mail seem to believe the explosion of user preference for iPhones and Android-powered handsets may force RIM to seek novel solutions to remain viable, such as licensing its newest operating system to other cell phone manufacturers.

Should RIM succumb to a buyout and  BlackBerrys be consigned to the junk bin of history, we're kind of worried for the person who ends up telling proud BlackBerry user Beyonce, who seems pretty happy with her super-expensive Porsche-designed BlackBerry Bold.

Akihabara seemed relevant. (Photo: flickr.com/jkabahit)

Good news! HBO is now on Hulu. Bad news: It's only in Japan. [GigaOm]

While everyone was distracted by the health care ruling, the Supreme Court decided not to rule on another case, concerning whether you can sue a company for breaking a federal law, even if you can't prove damages. Forbes explains why that doesn't make Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, and Yahoo too happy. [Forbes]

Look, RIM has options, okay? (They're just not great options.) [Reuters]

Amazon is making it easier for developers to create games on the Kindle Fire. Good, because the current selection is zzzz. [Bloomberg]

Yet another I/O roll-out: Google Compute Engine, the company's very own infrastructure-as-a-service product to compete with Amazon Web Services. What, no skydiving to announce it? [Google Blog]

Speaking of the GOOG, they'd like everyone to know Gmail now has 425 million users which, by our calculations, means they've dethroned Hotmail. [TechCrunch]

Either way, the company's meandering strategy and unerring faithfulness to putting out slightly different versions of the same product doesn't seem to be working: RIM's stock has tanked in the last year. The first phone to get email and the instant messenger of choice among young urban professionals in New York City is lagging behind more app happy devices, and the BlackBerry Playbook has hardly made a dent in the device universe (also known as the "device-o-verse" or "gadgetsphere").

So what's Mr. Heins's game plan for the struggling company? The next generation mobile operating system, he told press, BlackBerry 10. So. Not printers? We're actually starting to miss printers.

Mr. Heins's bio:

He previously served as Chief Operating Officer, Product Engineering, overseeing the BlackBerry smartphone portfolio world-wide.

Prior to joining RIM in 2007, Thorsten held several positions in the wireless arena including the Chief Technology Officer of Siemens' Communications Division and several general management positions in Hardware and Software businesses.

Thorsten holds a master's degree in Science and Physics from the University of Hannover in Germany. Thorsten also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Canadian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce Inc.

Big Green Android Machine

Google's surprise purchase of Motorola led a lot of pundits to declare that the window was now open for Microsoft and RIM. They could forge partnerships with some of the manufacturers and carriers who would be wary of allying with a Google that was planning to build its own phone. But the raw data paints a grim picture for the also-rans in the smartphone world.

John Paczkowski at All Things D posted this chart from NPD showing the change in market share when it comes to the smartphones consumers are buying. Android has solidified a massive lead with 52 percent of the market, up from 33 percent this time last year. Apple is the clear second place with 29 percent, up from 22 percent in 2010. Blackberry saw its share dip from 28 percent to just 11 percent. And poor Microsoft saw its last place gap widen, as it fell from 0 percent to just four percent.

The way NPD sees it, Google's acquisition of Motorola means it is poised to grab a large chunk of the smartphone market for itself on both the software and hardware side. And it's partners don't have the leverage to do much about it. "Google's acquisition of Motorola shifts the balance of power in the handset-patent conflict between Google and its operating system competitors," said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. "Android's momentum has made for a large pie that is attractive to Motorola's Android rivals, even if they must compete with their operating system developer."

It's Google's world, we're just living in it.

P.S. Don't be evil.

Image via Bob MacNeil

A heated bidding war taking place at the World Trade Center has finally wrapped up. At stake was the largest collection of technology patents ever assembled into a single sale portfolio, the treasure trove of the now bankrupt Nortel.

Google emerged as the early front runner with a $900 million bid and was expected to compete with Apple over a price that could reach as high as $1.5 billion. In the end a coalition of Microsoft, Apple, RIM, and Sony beat out Google with a massive $4.5 billion bid.

The sad reality of the situation is that the massive interest in the patents is not about innovation. When Google filed its stalking horse bid back in April, Google's general counsel, Kent Walker, said the search giants interest was primarily defensive, "to create a disincentive for others to sue Google. The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low quality software patents." 

The Nortel portfolio is also full of hardware patents, but software was Google's focus. Walker wrote that Google hoped it would, "Help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it's the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners."

The enormous price paid for this portfolio echoes the sentiment that has been percolating in NYC's tech community of late. Fred Wilson wrote an impassioned blog post, Enough is Enough, in response to the Lodsys case.

I believe that software patents should not exist. They are a tax on innovation. And software is closer to media than it is to hardware. Patenting software is like patenting music....The whole thing is nuts. I can't understand why our goverment allows this shit to go on. It's wrong and its bad for society to have this cancer growing inside our economy...We need to eliminate software patents. This ridiculous Lodsys situation is the perfect example of why. We need to say "enough is enough."

Betabeat was chatting recently with Brad Burnham, Wilson's co-founder at Union Square Ventures, about this issue. "The patent lawyers are an entrenched interest and they have an incredible amount of money and influence in the political sphere." Curious to see how bad things were among their own investments, Burnham emailed the USV portfolio. "Almost half the companies had received had been hit with some kind of software patent litigation. And all the ones that had, were those who had achieved some scale. The ones that had not, are just not big enough, not visible enough to be targets."

The hard line from folks like Chris Dixon, who believes software patents should be abolished, is probably not the best way to make progress with the folks in D.C.. But a rising chorus of voices from well established and well connected VCs is probably the best bet for catalyzing change. That, or patent trolls like Lodsys, who anger big dogs like Apple by mucking around in their developer ecosystem.