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'Smart device' shipments hit 308.7 million units, says Canalys

Tablet shipments were up 106% in Q1 2013, smartphones up 48%, notebooks down 13%.

FORTUNE -- Total shipments of smart devices, which Canalys defines as notebook PCs, smartphones and tablets, hit a record 308.7 million units in the first quarter of 2013, according to a press release issued Thursday.

Unsurprisingly, given recent trends, Google's (GOOG) Android platform dominated the smartphone market, Apple's (AAPL) iOS the tablet market and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows the notebook shipments.

The MORE

NSA's 3-step guide to hacking Google

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act release, you can search like a spy.

FORTUNE -- The National Security Agency has declassified its training manual for using common search engines as a research tool.

Written by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight and published in 2007 by the NSA's Center for Digital Content, Untangling the Web: An Introduction to Internet Research is a 643-page long introduction to everything from the very basics of MORE

Look at what the radicals at Groupon are working on

Yes, Groupon's whimsy-prone founder is gone. That doesn't mean the e-commerce company has changed its ambitions much.

FORTUNE -- Eric Lefkofsky does not know what became of Montgomery Ward & Co., the iconic Chicago catalog merchandiser and retailer that was built to last more than 100 years.

I am of two minds on his knowledge gap. On the one hand, you'd think that the man whose several companies, including the much-criticized deal-promotion site MORE

Brief of the day: Apple on Google as a 'friend of the court'

Apple to Google: If you've got something to say about Samsung, join the damned suit.

FORTUNE -- Following its $1.05 billion patent infringement victory last summer, Apple (AAPL) appealed the district court judge's decision not to ban the sale of the Samsung devices that the jury determined had infringed multiple Apple patents.

Google (GOOG) and several other companies now want to file an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief to the MORE

Chart of the day: Whose lunch has Android been eating?

In the U.S., it's everybody's but Apple's according to comScore.

FORTUNE -- It's often been said that Android's share of the U.S. smartphone market has come chiefly out of the hides of Research in Motion's (BBRY) BlackBerry and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Phone, but nothing shows this quite as clearly as Horace Dediu's charts at Asymco.com.

Not that Apple (AAPL) hasn't been hurt by the success of Google's (GOOG) mobile platform. Some of MORE

Apple's lead over Samsung in the U.S. widened in April

But Samsung isn't falling behind the iPhone as fast as it was in February or March.

FORTUNE -- Google's (GOOG) Android, at 52%, took the largest share of U.S. smartphone sales in the three month period (Jan. - Mar.) covered by comScore's report Friday. But it managed to lose 1.4 percentage points sequentially, while Apple (AAPL), at 39%, gained 2.7.

In the Apple vs. Samsung competition, Apple widened its U.S. lead, which MORE

B&N turns to Google to save the Nook

Barnes & Noble's tablet business is struggling mightily. So what's the book chain to do? Let Google in.

FORTUNE -- Ask Stephane Maes, Barnes and Noble VP of Product, why holiday sales of its Nook tablets were weaker than expected, and he'll tell you it wasn't due to lack of interest. When shoppers looked at the Nook HD, one of the first things they asked was whether apps bought for their MORE

A bad month for Android: April brought 7 major patent setbacks

April was the cruelest month yet for Google and Motorola on the patent front.

FORTUNE -- It was Google (GOOG) against the world last month, as it fought and lost patent battles directly or by proxy with Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Nokia (NOK), HTC and ZTE. "Google shoot blanks in smartphone patent wars," wrote Thomson Reuters' Reynolds Holding. Or as The Verge's Nilay Patel put it: "Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola?"

FOSS MORE

The move to Internet TV, by the numbers

Households with broadband Internet access are increasingly piping Internet video to their TV sets, through a variety of devices.

FORTUNE -- We can examine the strategies of Netflix (NFLX) and Comcast (CMCSA) all we like, but the speed at which television moves off of cable and onto the Internet will be determined largely by what people decide to do in their living rooms. Now that they have the hardware and software MORE

5 ways to make Google Glass better

Some early reviews call Google Glass the future of computing. But even they say that future remains a little rough around the edges.

FORTUNE -- When I ask people outside Silicon Valley about Google Glass, the company's big play on wearable computing, I get a similar response: Sounds cool. Looks geeky.

"Ugh, I won't even think about wearing that thing until they ditch the god-awful Back to the Future look," a friend and MORE