Finnish phone maker Nokia said on Tuesday it was protesting against a tax investigation in India, a crucial market, in the latest dispute involving a foreign company's tax.

Nokia (Helsinki, Finland) said it has not yet received any information on potential claims resulting from the investigation that started in January.

BlackBerry named two wireless industry veterans to an expanded board of directors on Thursday, seeking to allay some investor concern around the level of industry experience it has on its board.

The smartphone maker has struggled in the last three years, bleeding market share to nimbler rivals with faster and snazzier devices.

Shareholders reelected its board nominees at the last annual meeting in Waterloo, Ontario in July. But some investors said they disapproved of the board's performance and the percentage of withheld votes for its long-time directors jumped sharply.

Barely a week after launching an all-new, make-or-break line of smartphones, BlackBerry is already looking at a future in which it is a leader in "mobile computing," Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said on Tuesday.

Heins said BlackBerry (Waterloo, Canada) is aiming to reclaim its spot as an innovator in a world where smartphones already have the processing power to replace tablets and laptops.

NTT DoCoMo has reported a 6.1% year-on-year increase in revenues for the last nine months of 2012, to ¥3,370.8 billion ($37 billion), thanks to the growing take-up of LTE-based smartphones and data services in the final part of the year.

Nevertheless, net income for the same period fell by 5.6%, to ¥702.2 billion, due to an increase in operating expenses aimed at strengthening the Japanese operator’s cloud business and higher handset costs.

China's ZTE Corp, the world's fourth-biggest handset maker, plans to ship more high-end smartphones this year to help increase profit margins and revenue, a senior company executive said on Wednesday.

ZTE (Shenzhen, China) expects to ship more than 50 million smartphones in 2013, exceeding its earlier forecast, and sees smartphones making up 70 percent of overall consumer device sales this year, Lv Qianhao, head of ZTE's handset strategy, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a company event.

Refrigerators are getting smart. A new model released earlier this month runs apps to help users browse recipes, create shopping lists and manage the expiration dates of items like yogurt and milk.

The T9000 refrigerator by electronics company Samsung (Seoul, South Korea) has a 10-inch Wi-Fi-enabled touchscreen and includes apps such as Epicurious for recipes and Evernote for note-taking.

Apple Inc's shareholders have been hit by one of the bloodiest weeks in the history of the stock, but wider fallout from such weakness might be more important to the long-term value of their investments.

While Apple's iPhones, iPads and Macs remain gold standards, signs the company is losing some of its edge in the smartphone market suggest its clout with business partners could wane.

Recent comments from executives at phone carriers and component suppliers show they see room for at least some shift in the balance of power.

Mobile phone service provider NTT DoCoMo Inc will soon release a low-cost tablet computer in Japan priced between 10,000 yen ($110) and 15,000 yen, the Nikkei reported.

The tablet will be made by China's Huawei Technologies Co (Shenzhen, China) and feature a 10-inch screen, the Japanese business daily said.

The new tablet will be able to connect to the Internet via wireless LAN, but will not be compatible with 3G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) high-speed wireless services, the newspaper reported.

Touch-technology specialist Atmel Corporation has announced a takeover of WiFi developer Ozmo in a move aimed partly at boosting its presence in the M2M sector.

The specific terms of the acquisition were not revealed, but Atmel (San Jose, USA) expects to finalize the transaction by the end of the year and says it will be accretive to its earnings in 2014.

Imaging specialist Technicolor is to provide a home automation tablet for use with Swisscom’s smart-homes service.

The Swiss telecoms incumbent has launched what it calls a “smart secure living offering” under the brand of “Quing Home”, allowing customers to control security, automation and energy management through a managed tablet or smartphone application.

Technicolor’s MediaTouch HomePilot tablet is now being positioned by the companies as “the ideal home automation hub for the connected home”.