VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Sony will shut down two-thirds of its retail outlets located across the US, with 11 out of the 31 stores near major markets to remain open, as part of its move to offload unprofitable units and reduce liabilities.

Menlo Park, US-based fitness startup GOQii is helping people stay motivated with their healthy endeavors by combining its fitness wristband with human coaches who will provide advice and help them set their health objectives.

Some states have already undertaken measures to ban drivers from using Google Glass even if the search giant's wearable device innovation is still in its experimental stage, Bloomberg reported.

After the seed funding round led by Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, wearable technologies startup Quanttus received a $19 million Series A round from Khosla Ventures and Matrix Partners.

Irish telecom tycoon Denis O'Brien picked up a minority stake in San Francisco, US-based startup Spritz to see how the latter's easy reading app could help improve the literacy rate in developing areas.

New York, US-based tech giant IBM and Dallas, Texas-based telecom firm AT&T struck a strategic partnership that will create a simplified service that will help businesses deal with network security problems and other cyber threats.

Threatened by the news of the Mozilla Foundation developing a $25 Firefox OS smartphone, Finnish phone maker Nokia also launched its own set of new Android smartphones for emerging markets during the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona.

Sony's wearable technology called the SmartBand SWR10 which was first introduced at the CES last month will finally be available in 60 markets in March, TechCrunch reported.

Boston, US-based app maker Spritz said it will launch its app that will make reading easier on small devices on the soon-to-come smartphone Galaxy S5 and smartwatch Gear 2 of South Korean electronics giant Samsung.

Chinese gadget maker Huawei unveiled five new devices during the Mobile World Congress tradeshow held in Barcelona, including two tablets, one smartphone, one smartband, and a fast mobile Wi-Fi device.

Nine new hardware partners for its Windows Phone were introduced by officials of technology giant Microsoft at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, VentureBeat reported.

Android still remains at the top for smartphone sales, getting 70% of sales in the last three months that ended January. However, the real war is among Android makers, TechCrunch reported citing data from Kantar.

The top smartphone makers in the world, Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics, failed to reach a settlement agreement on their smartphone technology dispute in a meeting with a mediator in the first week of February, Bloomberg reported.

A major vulnerability found in Apple Inc's software for mobile devices could give the power to hackers to access encrypted communications like email, Reuters reported.