To the applause of many key stakeholders, the Department of Energy will today unveil the recipients of $3.4 billion in stimulus grants for 100 smart grid projects. The grants will range from $400,000 to $200 million to fund 25 large and 75 small utility and state projects across 49 states. The money is meant to enable a complete grid overhaul, as well as create tens of thousands of jobs. more

Even with a slew of competitors coming to market any day now, Apple (NASDAQ:APPL) has a reason for feeling cocky. The maker of the iconic iPhone today reported its best quarterly sales ever for its phones and line of Mac computers. Apple posted a 47% increase in profit in the fourth quarter and sold more than 7.4 million iPhones across 80 countries. more

The economic recession may have caused layoffs and cutting back in the enterprise, but it hasn’t hurt the growth of business use of mobile data services. According to ABI Research, mobile data services revenues will increase 17% next year and continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12% until 2014. more

Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VOD, NYSE:VZ) is taking on AT&T (NYSE:T), cable companies and anyone else that might stand in its way in a series of confirmed and rumored announcements today. Most notable has been the bevy of device announcements coming from VZW and others that suggest the carrier fully intends to become a smartphone force to be reckoned with. more

Smartphone competition continued to take a toll on Nokia (NYSE:NOK) in the third quarter as the handset maker’s market share declined to 30.9% from 34% in Q2. Competition won’t let up going forward either, and it is primarily coming from the same source – devices built on Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system. more

Popular music discovery application Shazam passed the 50 million user milestone today, an increase of 15 million users since February. The app, available in more than 150 countries, lets users tag and identify songs by holding their handset to the source, and then gives the option of purchasing or sharing the identified song. Shazam also announced an undisclosed strategic investment from the iFund, a $100 million fund started by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. more

The quickly shifting roles of devices and services has some of the best minds of the tech world struggling to figure out which are the razors and which are the blades of the connected consumer economy.

In an interview this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “The iPhone has proven that you can sell a phone with a subscription. The contract cost is greater than the cost of the phone. So what do you think: Do those prices remain higher from AT&T and those guys? Does the hardware become free?” more

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – There are few among us who haven’t dropped, stomped, sat on or cracked a cell phone (or, if you’re like me, called a plumber to find out your flip-phone was the cause of a clogged toilet). In a lot of cases, that accident has been the phone’s demise. To give Nokia (NYSE:NOK) handsets a better chance at survival, the global handset maker has Research and Development labs where technicians presuppose - and account for - any destructive, accidental and inevitable mistakes consumers make with their cell phones. more

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – An SMS message is the same to a messaging vendor regardless of the protocol, but as 4G networks continue to come online, there will be new issues of support and interoperability that carriers will have to address. Two vendors at CTIA, Sybase 365, the mobile messaging and commerce subsidiary of Sybase Inc. (NYSE: SY), and wireless messaging and device management vendor Interop Technologies are demonstrating that they are ready to take this old standard and migrate it to any next-generation network. more

Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) is puttingthe LiMo Foundations Linux-based operating system at the heart of its new social-networking centric mobile Internet portal, called 360, and plans to bring the phones and service to most of its global subsidaries this year and next. The big exception is Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD), which tends to go its own way anyhow. But while VZW may not be participating in Vodafone’s global cloud applications extraveganza, it is still following its lead on the device. more