If any company has had a rough past 12 months, it has to be EA. Sales expectations were not met on big name titles such as Crysis 3, APB, and Kingdom of Amalur: The Reckoning. To top that off, several of EA's major releases such as SimCity have been plagued with issues since launch.

This morning there are several reports that EA will be closing its Partners asset as a direct result of the recent shortfalls. EA Partners is the publishing force of EA that worked with external developers like Valve to produce games like The Orange Box and Portal 2's retail versions.

Basically the idea behind EA Partners was to allow smaller developers to leverage EA's skill and experience to help promote titles without the need of an expensive dedicated in-house team. News of this pending closure comes hot on the heels of EA shutting down its Montreal Studio.

No official word has been released from EA at this point, but we are hoping to hear something soon.

Today SMART Storage Systems and Diablo Technologies are announcing a new partnership to the world. This partnership has actually been working feverishly in the background for a year and a half developing a radical new storage technology. Details of the new technology are scarce and reading the press release generates more questions than answers.

Luckily, we were able to catch up with Smart Storage Systems president John Scaramuzzo and Diablo founder and CEO Richard Badalone for an in-depth interview to shed more light on this new approach.

The high-level takeaway from the announcement is the upcoming release of a new class of storage from this new partnership, vaguely described as Ultra Low Latency (ULL) SSDs. The coming products are the fusion of SMART's Guardian Technology and Diablo's Memory Channel Storage (MCS) technologies. This new class of storage will radically transform enterprise server, virtualization, and cloud environments by taking a new approach to connecting NAND flash to the server.

It looks like Nintendo won't be having a press conference at E3 in Los Angeles later this year, compared to pretty much every E3 in history having E3 make a big splash with their press conferences at E3.

Nintendo will not be unveiling any new hardware, with their main objective to "announce and have people experience our software". Nintendo will talk about the upcoming Wii U titles, where they plan to have some of these titles in playable form at E3. They're using this years E3 to "establish a new presentation style for E3".

Instead of one big event, the Japanese giant are going to "host a few smaller events that are specifically focused on our software lineup for the U.S. market".

Rightware have announced that their mobile benchmark, Basemark X, is now available for iOS. Basemark X is a cross-platform benchmark, something we took a look at a couple of weeks ago when it was released for Android.

The iOS version can be downloaded from the Apple App Store, and can be run on iOS devices to see how they fare against Android-based devices. The next step for Rightware is Windows Phone 8, something they're working on - they're having to wait until the Unity engine is supported under Microsoft's mobile operating system.

In the near future, we'll also see the release of Basemark X for Windows on the PC, then the fun will really start! You can get Basemark X for iOS from the App Store.

After Apple released their Q2 2013 earnings yesterday, market research firms have dived head first into the numbers, churning out some interesting facts. Strategy Analytics were one of the first to start shoving numbers out, with a report released late last night.

Apple sold 19.5 million iPads in the three-month period, taking 48.2% of the global tablet market. This may sound impressive, nearly 50% of the global tablet sales are iPads - but let's rewind twelve months and look at the same quarter of 2012. Apple were enjoying a huge 63.1% of the market, meaning that we've seen a gigantic drop in Apple's dominance of the global tablet market.

If we look at Android in the same way, last year they took 34.2% of the global table market, but now they've jetted up to 43.4%. What is Apple's loss, is Google's gain, in more ways than one. We do have Windows, which isn't actually doing too badly, jumping from 0% last year to 7.5%, so Microsoft are even benefiting from Apple's slide.

Reuters have reported that Verizon is looking to buy out Vodafone's 45% share of Verizon Wireless, as Verizon is preparing $100 billion in order to complete the transaction.

Reuters' unnamed sources say that Verizon have hired bank and legal advisers to prepare the bid, raising $50 billion in bank financing plus an additional $50 billion in their own shares. Discussions are said to take place "soon", but if Vodafone aren't willing to play ball, they could take its bid into the public arena.

I've made my thoughts on Apple quite clear in an editorial back in October, predicting the huge stock tumble and reduced sales on the iPhone, but one area Apple can come back is by releasing something that we don't expect.

These devices are worked on in the company's research and development department, with R&D expenses growing 33% this year and are set to fly past $4 billion in fiscal 2013. Apple spent an additional $278 million on R&D expenses in the recent quarter, and when compared to their R&D expenditure in 2012, this number is up 33%.

R&D spending for the first six months of fiscal 2013 is now up $530 million year-over-year, another 33% increase from the first six months of fiscal 2012. If Apple keeps this pace, we should expect them to pass $4 billion in R&D expenses this year alone, comparing it to last years $3.4 billion R&D bill.

Google have just joined FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance's board of directors, where they hope to improve their two-factor authentication efforts. FIDO have pushed out press release, announcing that NXP and CrucialTec have also joined the board.

FIDO wants to increase security measures across the Internet, and plan to implement multiple technologies in order to make web security stronger. Biometric verification is one of the technologies the Alliance is investing into, with the technology being reliable for identifying an individual as it uses distinguishable traits, such as fingerprints, voice recognition, eye scanning and face authentication to verify the user.

Another technology FIDO is looking into is One Time Passwords, which can be used just once. These passwords are generated randomly, and can only be retrieved by a special device, or through a computer. FIDO are also interested in Near Field Communication (NFC), which is already baked into many smartphones that consumers already own.

Thanks to just a few of LG's smartphones, they've seen a record amount of smartphones shipped in Q1 2013. 10.3 million smartphones were shipped in the three-month period, riding the success of some of their LTE and 3G handsets.

The smartphones that helped LG reach their record high are the Optimus G, Optimus G Pro, Optimus L Series and Nexus 4. LG have said that more extensive availability of newer devices is expected to help smartphone sales and shipments even more going into Q2. The US launch of their flagship Optimus G Pro happens on May 3, and should see the South Korean company have great success in Q2 and beyond.

Apple's MacBook Pro is a delicious notebook, most people know that, but according to a new study from PC efficiency software vendor, Soluto, the MBP is the world's most reliable Windows PC.

Soluto used "data from its massive online database of PC crashes, hangs, and performance metrics to identify the 10 most reliable Windows PCs you can buy today". Their study found that the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with Boot Camp installed is "at the top of the list". Their study found a few other suitable candidates, the Dell Vostro 3560, the Dell XPS 13, Acer's Aspire E1-571, Acer's Aspire V3-771 and Apple's 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

When it is all swirled together, Apple computers make up 33% of the six most reliable Windows PCs in the world.

Nintendo have made their social network available to web browsers, with Miiverse now available in beta form. Miiverse allows you to view your friends' updates and posts to individual game communities in both text, and written or drawn form.

The squiggly bits arrive thanks to the Wii U GamePad's touchscreen. Nintendo have stated that Miiverse in web browsers is in beta form, and features a simple, responsive design that scales down to mobile devices well.

The ability to make new posts from the web interface isn't ready yet, so for now you'll have to use your Wii U. Before using the app, you'll need to have created a Nintendo Network account on the Wii U. You can check it out here.

PlayStation 3 owner? You might want to check for any new system updates on your console, as Sony have confirmed that update 4.41 is hitting the PS3 today.

Update 4.41 is designed to "improve system stability", but it's currently not known if this is a mandatory update or not. Sony took to the PlayStation Twitter account stating that it's just a minor update.

NASA have just launched three Nexus One smartphones into orbit as part of a low-budget, experimental satellite program that uses off-the-shelf components.

The three Android-powered devices are now circling high above the Earth, encased in 4-inch metal cubes, at an altitude of around 150 miles and will burn up on re-entry within the next two weeks. NASA's mission of each PhoneSat is easy, they just have to take photos of the Earth and send back periodic radio messages.

The mission is to see if the smartphones are capable of supplying the "brains" of future satellites, which would make satellites much cheaper in the future. NASA launched the smartphones into orbit on Sunday when Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket lifted off from Virginia. Amateur radio operators had begun notifying NASA that they could pick up radio signals from the satellites within hours of the launch.

Google Glass, and their sure to be following competitors, are definitely set to be the new smartphone craze. Research firm IHS knows this, and has predicted that shipments of smart glasses could hit 9.4 million units between 2012 and 2016.

The first shipments will be small, with expectations of around 124,000 units this year as Google Glass becomes available to developers. Adoption is set to really ramp up going into 2014, expected to push up by 250% as Glass becomes available to you and me, the general public. Google will of course push Glass in the market, which will have competitors' devices gain market share too, with combined sales reaching 6.6 million units per year by 2016.

If smart glasses are too expensive to the general public, these numbers could be much lower with IHS estimating shipments could be as low as a million units through 2016.

In the wake of releasing its financial earnings statement, Netflix posted up a new mission statement document for investors. The document details various metrics about the company and what it is doing to plan for the future. The most interesting fact to take away from the document is that the company is spending roughly $2 billion per year on content.

Most of that $2 billion expenditure goes towards licensing old TV shows and movies, but some of it is used to pay for its original content. Netflix has also noticed that quality is more important than quantity:

As we've gained experience, we've realized that the 20th documentary about the financial crisis will mostly just take away viewing from the other 19 such docs, and instead of trying to have everything, we should strive to have the best in each category. As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can.

There's plenty more to read about in the 11-page document, but I won't bore you with the details.

The growing market for mobile devices is helping boost Qualcomm's earnings. Like most companies, Qualcomm has just reported their quarterly earnings and they are quite good. Unlike desktop chip manufacturers, Qualcomm is producing chips used in tablets and smartphones, the industry that is quickly taking over desktop products.

Qualcomm reported revenues of $6.12 billion, which is up 24 percent year-over-year. Profit came in at $2.07 billion, which is also up, though only by 17 percent. Qualcomm is looking to return $431 million to shareholders and expects third-quarter revenues and profits to be up 25 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

Coinciding with the launch of the Radeon HD 7990, AMD has released updated Catalyst drivers, bringing the count up to 13.4. These are the first WHQL-certified drivers released by the CPU and GPU manufacturer in three months. Our resident GPU Editor and author of the driver analyses pieces will hopefully have a piece up on them soon.

The drivers bring official support for the newly released HD 7790 and HD 7990. To download the newest drivers, you can head over to AMD's driver support site.

Volkswagen has debuted a new vehicle, known as the iBeetle, at the Shanghai Motor Show. This new vehicle was built in conjunction with Apple, meaning that the iBeetle's big selling point is the iPhone integration present. Volkswagen is hoping to boost the popularity of the vehicle more than Apple is hoping to boost the popularity of the iPhone.

The car features a built-in iPhone 5 cradle and offers numerous different functionalities. The Beetle app allows the iPhone to display various gauges, such as a G-meter or compass. The new iBeetle and iBeetle Cabriolet will be put on sale in 2014, likely in the first part of the year.

It seems like everyone is rolling out two-factor authentication. Just a few days ago, Microsoft enabled two-step authentication for Microsoft accounts and now reports are surfacing that Twitter is working on a similar system. Google and others have already employed two-factor authentication to much success.

Now is the perfect time for Twitter to enable extra security. There have been many high-profile hacks of Twitter handles, including one of the AP's account yesterday, which resulted in a massive drop in the Dow Jones. Wired reports that Twitter has a two-factor solution built and is putting it under internal testing before releasing it to the public.

Australian authorities have announced that they have arrested the "self-proclaimed lead" of the LulzSec hacking group. Authorities have not yet named the suspect, but say the 24-year-old was employed in a position that gave him "access to sensitive information." He was discovered after an investigation into a compromised government website.

"[This] man's knowledge and skills presented a significant risk to the clients of the company for which he was employed," authorities wrote in a statement. He faces up to twelve years in jail.

LulzSec is the hacking group responsible for the 2011 Sony PlayStation network hack. Cody Kretsigner, another implicated in the Sony attack was senteced to one year in jail by the American justice system.