After eight years of attempting to break into the Chinese cellular market, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has received clearance to begin selling the popular devices in the country. Initially the company will focus on service to corporate customers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou among other large cities, with plans to expand later to other areas.

Representatives of RIM's Beijing office were quoted in the press as saying the company had already received 5,000 advance orders, and that the devices will be available by the end of this month. The move follows several other international expansions in the past few months. The Blackberry launched in Kenya at the end of June, and Kuwait in the end of May. RIM also launched the technology in Nigeria and Jordan earlier this year.

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In a likely attempt at turning its fortunes around there, Microsoft will begin selling the Xbox 360 Elite in Japan starting October 11. The company hopes its feature set will attract discerning Japanese gamers.

Traditionally, consumers in the country have opted for homegrown systems over those of competitors outside the country, evidenced by the dominance of Nintendo in this generation and Sony's PlayStation consoles in previous generations.

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Universal has confirmed earlier reports that it was seeking to end its long-term agreement with Apple's iTunes.

Reports first surfaced in The New York Times on Monday that the label was looking to end its long-term contract with the digital music provider and instead opt for an "at will" contract.

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Mozilla said Thursday that it had teamed with eBay to offer a version of its Firefox browser that is optimized for use with the auction site. In addition, eBay has released an add-on for those who want to add the functionality to an existing copy of the browser. The browser and add-on are available for several European countries including the UK, France and Germany. No US version was available as of press time.

Some of the new functionality in Firefox eBay Edition include a sidebar that would allow users to follow their auctions in real time, status alerts for various events including outbid notices, integrated search, and support for eBay's Account Guard product. Financial terms of the deal between eBay and Mozilla were not disclosed.

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Although its iPhones won't be out of warranty for another year, Apple is attempting to stave off future bad press -- like it received when iPod batteries began exceeding their life span -- by announcing a battery replacement program. iPhone users will be able to pay $79 plus $6.95 shipping for a new battery.

Because the iPhone's battery is not removable like previous iPods, the device must be sent into Apple for repair. The service will take about three business days, Apple says, and users must back up their data beforehand - a simple process via iTunes. While some might characterize the program as expensive, Apple will still replace non-charging batteries free of cost for the first year, and batteries for other cell phones can run up to $50.

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Physical CD sales continue to drop, but sales of digital music are surging, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan.

From the period of January 1 to July 1, nearly 230 million albums were sold, a 15 percent drop over the same time last year. However, digital music sales increased by 49 percent to 417 million. When combined, album sales only dropped about 9.2 percent.

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Following BetaNews' story yesterday on the State of Massachusetts' decision to propose formally accepting Microsoft's Office Open XML as a "suitable" format, advocates on two of the three sides of this issue wrote us to say they were concerned our story's contents might tend to favor a different side.

First, a Microsoft spokesperson cautioned us about a statement we cited from Linux Foundation board member and attorney Andrew Updegrove. "I was reading your story on the Massachusetts policy and was noticing something in Andy Updegrove's quote at the end of your piece which is actually inaccurate," the spokesperson wrote, "which I'm guessing he may not realize, but thought you'd want to know.

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Russian authorities last week put the final nail in the coffin of AllofMP3.com, the thorn in the side of United States and UK music industry groups that have attempted to shut it down for years. But the service quickly resurfaced under the name MP3Sparks.com, with the ability to take credit cards once again.

AllofMP3 was controversial because it sold unprotected (DRM-free) songs for pennies, far cheaper than services like iTunes or Napster. Record labels claimed the site had no licenses, nor paid royalties to artists. AllofMP3 parent company, Mediaservices, claimed to pay royalties to ROMS, the copyright holder service sanctioned by the Russian Parliament, and to FAIR (Rights holders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively).

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Now with an official fresh consumer-grade iPhone in its laboratories, CE analysis firm iSuppli can fine-tune its estimates of how much of a markup Apple adds to the device, based on its estimated bill of materials. Each 8 GB model which retails for $599, iSuppli estimates, cost Apple a total of $264.85 in manufacturing and parts costs.

While profit margins are certainly not unheard of, and are arguably the reason why capitalism exists in the first place, Apple's possible 55.6% gross take from each retail sale is, by any estimate, healthy. Other expenses for royalties on intellectual property, shipping, and certainly marketing must also be taken into account.

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The Business Software Alliance, a leading software industry organization, has announced a new approach to fighting piracy in the workplace: up to $1 million in cash to those whistle-blowers who rat out their employers. But the reward is only paid out if the BSA receives a cash settlement from the company.

Previously, the maximum reward offered through the two-year-old program was only $200,000. The carrot-and-stick approach worked, but only secured $22 million in settlements from companies with unlicensed or pirated copies of software installed on computers.

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More details are now available on the hacking of the Microsoft UK Web site, with experts saying that the attackers got in through a SQL injection exploiting a vulnerability in the Web server software.

The attack, which occurred last Wednesday, defaced the front page of the Web site and inserted the image of a child waving the flag of Saudi Arabia. According to Zone-H.org, a hacking news Web site, the attacker used the SQL flaw to inject his own HTML code.

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After a decade and a half of negotiations, waiting, and litigation - with the emphasis toward the latter - the DVD Copy Control Association, which administers the CSS copy protection scheme, formally announced yesterday that it will soon become legal for businesses to burn DVDs on demand whose copy protection includes CSS.

The announcement comes at what may finally be the resolution of a debate among different infighting groups of movie studios and CE manufacturers, over how - or whether - to implement a way for licensed companies to sell DVDs through a replication service. One such service, CinemaNow, has been in business since July 2006, offering licensed download-to-own movies via the Internet.

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The records of nearly 2.3 million consumers have been exposed including credit card, bank account, and other personal information after an employee of a Fidelity National Information Services subsidiary stole the information and then proceeded to sell it to a data broker. From there, it was sold to several direct marketing companies, although the data was not used for ID theft or fraudulent activity.

Of the records, 2.2 million contained bank account information and the remainder credit card numbers. To protect those affected, the company, Certegy Check Services Incorporated, asked a court to force the employee to return the information and order that the companies who bought the data stop using it. It has also begun the process of notifying those affected. The employee who stole the data has since been fired, Fidelity said.

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Just days after Apple released its iPhone, digital touch technology company Immersion said Monday that Nokia had licensed technology for future devices.

Of course, neither company is saying the move is in response to the release of Apple's iPhone, which makes heavy use of touchscreen technology. However, with the iPhone potentially 'changing the game' in mobile devices, it could be seen as a defensive measure.

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Google acquired voice communications management company GrandCentral on Monday, a move that it hopes will strengthen its service offerings.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although some have pegged the purchase price at somewhere around $50 million. It is thought that GrandCentral's technology could eventually make its way into Google Talk.

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