VoIP firm Skype has reportedly paid $85 million for smartphone group text messaging service GroupMe, to put itself on competitive footing with rival messaging services from RIM, Apple and others.

In a letter to accompany their earnings, which were announced this afternoon – the first since the unpopular announcement of a price rise, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings remained bullish on the firm’s growth and value proposition.

Nokia has been having a hard time of it recently. The firm’s floundering smartphone products have been almost completely eclipsed by efforts from Apple and Google, and now the once-king of the handset finds itself shedding marketshare at an alarming rate.

The World Bank has been in the news rather a lot recently, and not always for the most salubrious of reasons, but the global financial institution seems to want to clean up its image and make itself more transparent to citizens everywhere. How better to do this than with a mobile app? Or, in the World Bank’s case of overkill, six iPhone/iPad apps, with a promise of “more great mobile applications” to come.

Yesterday Apple held their quarterly earnings call to announce their revenues for the last three months and, somewhat unsurprisingly, they managed another quarter or massive growth, huge profits and all-round good times.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. One-time king of the social networks, MySpace, has finally been sold by owner News Corp for a rather paltry (rumoured) $30 million to advertising firm Specific Media. The amount is less than a third of the $100 million News Corp were hoping to recoup with the sale of the iconic social network, which paved the way for current social supremo Facebook.

RIM’s continued slowdown was laid bare in the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, where the Canadian smartphone maker dished out their latest figures, which included lower-than-expected revenue, and bad news for those looking for a 4G Playbook.

Nokia Corp., once king of the handset world, has been going through a tumultuous period as of late. Stephen Elop, who took over the CEO position last year after his predecessor Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was unceremoniously booted out for failing to maintain the Finnish manufacturer’s competitive edge, has made some aggressive changes.

Poor PC vendors. If a new report by analyst firm IDC is to be believed, the world and his wife are conspiring to reduce PC shipment growth for the rest of 2011. At the beginning of the year IDC predicted 7.1% growth for the PC sector, however after a poor Q1 that forecast has now been revised down to just 4.2%.

Ready for a daily deal? This one may cost a lot. Groupon announced it has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public in hopes of raising $750M in an IPO. Groupon’s IPO is underwritten by its own group of investors in Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. Few companies have [...]