According to a WSJ report, Microsoft is developing a new Microsoft branded phone dubbed “Pink”, that will likely be powered by Windows Mobile 7, coupled with Zune, Marketplace, and My Phone services, among other services developed by the MS Danger team.

The device will exclusively support the features above; the features will not be available for licensing for other vendors who power their devices with Windows Mobile.

The report also indicates Microsoft is in talks with Verizon to launch the device exclusively in the U.S.

There is currently no other information relating to a possible release, pricing, features, or even what the device will look like.

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A Texas District Court found Apple Computers guilty of “willfully” violating three patent claims associated with predictive snooping of cache member that moves data between computer components including the processor and memory modules. Apple maintained the patent was invalid because of the obviousness of the involved processes. OPTi Inc. now earns most of its revenue from patent related royalties. Apple did not comment on the ruling.

Apple released Q2 (ended March 28) earnings, reporting quarterly profits up 15% to $1.21 billion ($1.33 per diluted share) year over year.

The company sold 2.22 million Mac computers in Q2, up 3% year over year. During the same period, 11 million iPods were sold, along with 3.79 million iPhone devices. Oppenheimer said Apple now holds 70% of the U.S. MP3 market.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during a conference call, “We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history,”

According to comments just made by Apple’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer during a conference, Steve Jobs will be returning to the company this June.

Oppenheimer said during the conference call, “We look forward to Steve returning to Apple [by] the end of June [2009],”

Apple just recorded its best quarterly earnings, with total profits for Q2 up 15% to $1.2 billion (click threw for details). You can listen to the Apple Q2 financial conference call here.

Steve Jobs firstly announced a leave of absence on January 14, 2009 citing health issues. He said he should return to the company by the summer.

On February 26, 2009, the Apple Board of Directors unanimously re-elected Steve for at least one additional year with the company.

AT&T has confirmed today that the company is performing upgrades that will double the capacity of its network.

AT&T Vice President of Technology told TelephonyOnline today that the company will upgrade the HSPA “from 3.6 megabits per second to 7.2 megabits per second through software upgrades at the base station.” No timeframe was provided on the upgrade.

The latest iPhone 3.0 rumors are now say there will be HD playback and HD video output, AppleTV functionality to stream HD movies from iTunes, voice control, dialing, among other features.

You can see the latest roundup of the iPhone 3.0 features here.

In related Apple news, Apple has made it for the first time on the Fortune 100 list ranking in 71st place.

Apple knows how hard it can be sometimes to use your iPhone when moving around, such as when jogging or bustling to your next appointment.

According to a new Apple U.S. patent filing, the company is developing technology that will help improve touch accuracy by making OS elements larger depending on motion-based activity.

The software will be able to detect “signatures of motion” and then change OS elements accordingly. For example, if you sitting at your desk, it is easy to scroll through your contact list, but the process becomes a bit cumbersome if your jogging with the smaller font and list. The new technology will detect motions and enlarge that list accordingly, as seen above from the patent filing.

Other elements of the OS will also change accordingly, including text, icons, among other elements.

This technology is still a while away, if it will ever materialize to begin with.

Update: U.S. Patent Office filing link.

RIM’s consumer base now represents 40% of all clients. With intensifying competition from the iPhone, RIM has hired Don Lindsay as the companies new Vice President of User Experience. Don will be responsible for helping to make the RIM OS user interface more intuitive and design friendly.

Don previously worked at Apple in Apple’s user-experience team helping contribute design ideas to Apple’s OS X.

Don previously also worked at Microsoft who helped design Vista.

According to a new patent filing, Apple seems to want to re-introduce its digital video answering machine with new features.

The app would let you record videos and send them via iChat to your friends who can view them later. The app would also let you auto-reply with your video to incoming callers if you changed your status to Away or Idle after a pre-specified time.

Going further this time, Apple explained in the filing that the videos could be uploaded on its servers, allowing the video to be displayed even when you are not logged into iChat.

Additionally, you would also be able to respond with your own video audio reply.

The concept was first introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 pre-release version in 2006 but never really materialized.

This appears to be the very first leak of the new Macbook Mini from Apple. The laptop will apparently feature an LED powered 10.4-inch (1280x768px) display, 2GB RAM DDR3-800, Nvidia graphics 9400M, Intel Atom Z740 1.83GHz processor with 1MB L2 cache, 64GB Solid State Drive, and a webcam, among other features. There is no confirmation yet from Apple, or any other information relating to price and availability, so we’ll just have to sit back and wait it out on this one, hopefully it just wont be too long of a wait.

Fido GSM telecom in Canada, owned by Rogers who has a complete monopoly over the GSM networks in Canada, has announced today it will not be reordering any new stock of the 16GB 3G iPhone and will simply let the existing stock completely deplete as of the beginning of April.

The move indicates the company could be readying the launch of a new iPhone model by the summer as is widely rumored. Apple most recently unveiled the new iPhone 3.0 OS that features many enhancements, you can find a complete round up here, including screens and the new features.

It is also widely rumored Apple could be releasing an iPhone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard given the new support for push notifications for Gmail on the new 3.0 OS.

Rogers added 199,000 new mobile subscribers in Q4 of 2008 alone, and sold 385,000 iPhone devices across Canada in all of 2008.

Rogers and Fido remain the only companies capable of carrying the iPhone. The Canadian government more recently outlined plans to bring in new competitors to ease the tight grip that a few companies hold on the Canadian mobile telecom market. There are even rumors T-Mobile could expand into Canada.