Motorola Q2 Results: 440,000 XOOMs Shipped. 11 Million Mobile Devices Total.

Sales numbers are king in the tech hardware world. And while The big guns face off against each other with flashy yet empty press releases, we’re left looking for some real numbers. Well, here they are.

Motorola just announced their Q2 results. Our big focus — the XOOM. According to Motorola they moved ~440,000 of them during the second quarter. For comparison’s sake, Apple sells that many every five days. Still, as one of the most popular Android tablets to date it’s both impressive (from an Android standpoint) and a good baseline of what we can base other Android tablets off of.

As for other figures, Motorola states over 11 million mobile devices in total were shipped and made a net revenue of $24 billion, up 41% from a year ago.

Not bad, Moto.

AT&T’s Data Throttling Release Gives Up iPhone 5 Release Date — Simultaneous Launch?

Think AT&T’s data throttling of unlimited users around the same time a new iPhone launches is coincidence? Think again. AT&T has already been burned once twice three times…aw hell, a lot by a truck load of iPhone users gobbling down astronomical amounts of data. With the iPhone 5 launching to what seems like it’s greatest fan fare yet, AT&T faces an even bigger amount of people ready and waiting to flog the carrier’s network. And if AT&T/Apple manage to sneak in support for their faster HSPA+ 21 Mbps network, the good times could end rather quickly, launching us back to 2008 and the days in which the world witnessed AT&T’s network literally implode.

As much as we hate it, AT&T has to do something. And spending the money that’s needed to beef up their network is simply out of the question. (Hey, rich people gotta have their $5,000 shoe laces). So the only other rational solution is to penalize you, the consumer in the form of throttled data speeds. The shocker, however, is that this new throttling will pertain to AT&T’s users who have kept their grandfathered unlimited data plans.

Add 1 + 1, multiply by 2 and halve the result and you’ll get the same answer we did — AT&T’s new throttled data plans could very well drop with the new iPhone. If AT&T wants to protect their network for the fresh onslaught of data chugging consumers on new iPhone 5′s this fall, it almost makes sense — though we still don’t agree with it — for AT&T to make use of throttling.

As for unlimited data users who thought they were set when AT&T told them they could grandfather their unlimited data plans over “forever” — sorry, AT&T lied. Again.

iPhone 5 Spotted Out In The Open? (Spoiler: Probably Not.)

Is this leaked blurry cam photo showing us the next-gen iPhone 5? If 9to5 Mac’s source is telling the truth (and he isn’t some die-hard Android fan trying to pull a quick one on us) — Yes!

The story: The 9to5 Mac tipster was on a train when he spotted an alleged Apple employee holding the device you see above. The Apple logo signals it’s for certain an iPhone, however, the tipster says it was very “EVO-like” in size and shape. Specifically, the phone was larger in dimension than any iPhone to date and featured rounded edges. In fact, the tipster says that once he saw this case “it all came together” as the phone he saw would perfectly fit inside.

Of course the thing that instantly throws water on our burning fire of excitement within is of course the fact that the phone isn’t concealed in any way. After last year’s iPhone4/bar fiasco, we’re pretty sure Apple has found some sort of weird way to bend the laws of physics and cram their latest iPhone prototypes inside of an old Motorola Razr casing. Just sayin’…we don’t see Apple letting an unannounced product flaunt itself in public for the world to see — especially the iPhone 5.

With that said, our interest remains piqued. Larger shot after the break…

Trolling: Spotify Sued In U.S. Over 1990′s Patent.

It’s pretty sad when a new, innovative company’s first month in the U.S. is welcomed with large patent infringement lawsuit — Welcome, Spotify!

The company patent troll, PacketVideo, purchased the patent in question a few years ago — 5,636,276 which itself is incredibly general and vague. Hell, even back in 1995 when the patent was originally filed many people considered the content of the patent pretty ridiculous. Nevermind the fact PacketVideo themselves just purchased the patent — not actually using/producing anything with it. Add up all the parts and you’ve got the classic makings of another useless patent troll. PacketVideo is simply looking for an easy, quick buck. Sadly common sense and actual innovation are not properties of modern copyright.

So what’s Spotify think of all of this?

AT&T To Begin Throttling Unlimited Data Users Starting In October.

If you’re one of the many millions of AT&T Wireless users who have protected their unlimited data plan tooth and nail, let it be known your day is also coming. 9to5Mac is reporting that starting this October, AT&T will begin throttling the heaviest unlimited data users on their network. It’s not yet known what the cutoff will be for reduced speeds nor what the reduced speeds will actually be. Though if we had to wager a guess we’d speculate something not too far over 2 GB.

Currently, T-Mobile is the only major U.S. carrier that makes use of wide-scale throttling. Speaking of which, we have a T-Mmobile Web Connect Rocket 2.0 3G card and use on average of ~50 GB/month — easily past the company’s 5 GB threshold for throttling. With that said, we still receive dl speeds of ~500 KB/s despite the company claiming EDGE speeds are all you’ll get after 5 GB. (And because of that, we’re certainly not complaining.)

How AT&T structures their throttling plan will be mighty interesting. Will they match the competition and carry the same 5GB threshold as T-Mobile or roll back to the same standard they now use on newer data plans capped at 2 GB? Regardless, AT&T claims over 95% of their users won’t be affected.

We’ll see…

iBuyPower Announces “Professional Series” Line Of Workstations.

iBuyPower has long made a name for itself in the world of consumer-grade custom PCs. Building on that success the company is now taking aim at the corporate/enterprise world with their new line of “Professional Series” workstations.

Processing power will be provided by X58, Xeon and Z68 platforms and feature GPUs from Nvidia’s Quadro and GeFore lines, ranging from the GeFore GT 520 all the way up to Quadro 5000 2.5 GB card ($1330). Cooling the heated silicon can be either air or water based thanks to the companies self-branded closed-loop water cooling kits while power can be had from 600-1500watts. Users can stuff their PCs with up to 24 GB of DDR3 RAM and a large assortment of SSD (up to 512 GB) and HDD options (up to 2 TB), as well as make use of RAID arrays/cards. As always, all of the PCs can be configured with a large array of media drives, card readers, etc.

Base Systems:

• X58: Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Mid Tower Case, 24x Dual Format DVD+/-RW Combo Drive, Intel Core i7-960 processor @ 3.2GHz, NVIDIA Quadro 5000 1GB, 12GB DDR3-1333 Memory, 750 Watt Corsair Power Supply, 120 GB Intel 510 SATA-III 6GB/s SSD and 2 x 1TB SATA-III 6GB/s Hard Drive in RAID 1, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and 24X Dual Format DVD+/-RW Combo Drive

• Xeon: NZXT Source 210 mid-tower case, ASUS P8B WS 206 motherboard, Intel Xeon E3-1240 processor, Coolit ECO II 120mm liquid cooling for the processor, Nvidia Quadro 600 w/ 1 GB of VRAM, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 2 x 1 TB SATA III 6 GB/s in RAID 1, 650watt Corsair power supply, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and 24X Dual Format DVD+/-RW Combo Drive

• Z68: NZXT Source 210 mid-tower case, Intel Core i7-2600 processor, Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 Motherboard, CoolIT ECO II 120mm CPU Cooling System, NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 1GB, 8GB DDR3-1333 Memory, 1TB SATA-III 6GB/s Hard Drive, 24X Dual Format DVD+/-RW Combo Drive, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and 650 Watt Corsair Power Supply

[iBuyPower -- Configure Now]

Sprint Announces Miserable Q2 Results, New Lightsquared Deal, And Future LTE Plans.

Is today a good day to be Sprint? We’ll let you decide that — Today, the nation’s 3rd largest carrier announced their 2nd quarter 2011 results. While the carrier touted over a million new activations, they still managed to lose a total of ~101,000 post-paid (read: far more lucrative) users. Add to that a net loss totaling $847 million and you’ve got a few good reasons for Sprint shareholders to grimace.

But things over at Sprint look to be on the up and up with the company also announcing today a new deal with Lightsquared that would see the company building out a robust LTE network across Sprint’s own spectrum over an 11-year period. For the privilege, Lightsquared will pay Sprint $9 billion for the actual network build out and an additional $4.5 billion in network access once said network is up and running. In total, Sprint will get ~$20 billion out of the deal that is expected to last at least 15 years.

But don’t go jumping for joy at the thought of Sprint LTE devices just yet. Sprint has stated they are not “fully committed” to using Lightsquare’s LTE services for themselves (and in their own devices) just yet, though they will certainly consider the option in the future. But if you consider how incredibly slow Sprint’s WiMAX rollout has been (and it’s getting slower), it’s not too hard to imagine Sprint jumping on the LTE bandwagon with everyone else. While we like WiMAX technology, it’s a dead end. Seriously.

So what do you think: Happy Sprint shareholders?