Accessory maker Incipio buys into audio with headphone vendor Skullcandy, in a deal worth approximately $177 million in cash.

The deal covers the two headphone brands owned by the company, Skullcandy and Astro Gaming.

“We have long admired Skullcandy’s culture of innovation and ability to create pioneering audio experiences with quality and style," Incipio says. "Skullcandy and Astro amplify our dynamic mix of products and brands, while bolstering the technical and operational capabilities that serve as the foundation of our platform. The team at Skullcandy and its international presence will also allow us to accelerate the global impact of our multi-brand offense.”

In 2009 the European Commission fined Intel €1.06 billion for abusing of its dominant market position. Seven years on Intel is still fighting the ruling as it files a final appeal to get it overturned.

The decision came about through an EU probe on whether a company with very large market share "can pursue a commercial strategy, the focus of which is the marginalisation or even the elimination of its only competitor.” According to the EC was attempting to do so through loyalty rebates to lower retail prices, thus unfairly squeezing out AMD.

Other anti-competitive practices from Intel during the 2002-2005 uncovered by the probe include restrictive conditions on rival processor use on PC makers (specifically Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC) and payments to retails who exclusively sold Intel Inside PCs.

Software takes centre stage at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2016, as the company announces enhancements to to the operating systems its devices, namely the iPhone, Watch, Apple TV and, of course, the Mac.

Actually the humble Mac PC got some of the biggest news at WWDC-- mainly because the "OS X" monicker is no more. Replacing it is "macOS," a title more in line with current Apple OS nomenclature (tvOS, watchOS, iOS). The name change comes with the announcement Sierra, an OS update featuring a desktop version of Siri allowing users to use their voices to search for files, switch between apps, search the internet and even use the calculator.

Speaking of Siri, the second biggest piece of WWDC news involves the voice assistant-- Apple follows Amazon's example in providing developers with a Siri SDK, allowing them to freely incorporate it in apps. The conference had a few versions of Siri-enabled apps on show, including WeChat, Slack and WhatsApp, and more should be available once the next version of iOS rolls out.

The Microsoft ownership of Nokia comes to an end-- according to The Verge an internal memo reveals Microsoft is writing off $950 million as part of the failed acquisition before slashing 1850 jobs.

Most of the job cuts (specifically 1350) affect the Microsoft Mobile division in Finland, and the company hopes to finish the culling by end 2016. Microsoft will still keep a small number of ex-Nokia staff, some in R&D roles and others in a Finnish sales subsidiary. Either way, $200m of the $950m impairment charge covers severence payments.

The news comes little more than a week after Microsoft sold off the Nokia feature phone division to HMD and FiH, not to mention Nokia licensing its brand for new mobile phones and tablets. Interestingly, the feature phone business sale announcement included a curious statement claiming Microsoft is not giving up on Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, and will continue supporting such devices and OEM partners.

The Nokia brand is to make a mobile device return-- a Finland-based company named HMD Global Oy (HMD) gets the exclusive global license for Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets.

In a simultaneous announcement Microsoft starts shedding its mobile phone ambitions through the sale of its feature phone business (including brands, software, design rights and a Vietnam manufacturing facility) to HMD and FIH Mobile, a newly created Hon Hai/Foxconn subsidiary. The deal is worth $350 million.

However Microsoft insists it is not giving up on Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, and will continue supporting such devices and OEM partners.

According to Digital Music News customers will soon be able to buy and download music off the iTunes Store no more-- Apple is reportedly considering an "aggressive" two-year termination plan for the online music store.

“Keeping [iTunes music downloads] running forever isn’t really on the table anymore,” an anonymous source insists. Also in discussion is a plan to “ride the [iTunes music download offering] out for the next 3-4 years, maybe longer" once music downloads become an afterthought in a streaming-dominated industry. Another source bluntly states “if he were alive, Jobs would have killed it.”

In turn, Apple actually released a rare statement on a news story-- one insisting “our response is that it is not true, we are not shutting down iTunes downloads per [Digital Music News'] story." However the news website insists its sources are in the right, and the Apple reaction is more of a reassurance to music labels and artists, whose incomes will be wrecked even further with the loss of the paid download revenue stream.

Western Digital clears the final hurdle in its quest to become the biggest storage vendor in the world-- the Ministry of Commerce of China (MOFCOM) approves its acquisition of SanDisk.

Announced back in October 2015, the merger hit a hitch earlier on February 2016 when Chinese investor Unisplendour Corporation Limited (Unis) scrapped a $3.78 billion investment deal with WD. The exit led to a mad scramble for funds on WD's part, until shareholders from both companies approved a deal valuing SanDisk for approximately $17bn (a couple of billion dollars less than the previous asking price of $19bn).

SanDisk is the 3rd biggest maker of flash memory in the world, and is both known for both consumer (namely memory cards and USB drives) and enterprise (SSDs, PCIe flash, 3D chip development, systems components) storage, with expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM), solutions and manufacturing.

The Q2 2016 Apple financial report features a first as run of 51 successive quarters of growth comes to an end-- the company admits a revenue drop of -13% Y-o-Y, the result of currency headwinds and declining iDevice sales.

Mind, the revenue total still makes an impressive sum. At $126 billion, Apple revenues are still worth more than double than those of Samsung Mobile, Microsoft and Alphabet, the Google umbrella company.

Net income also shows a sharp decline of -22% Y-o-Y to $10.5bn, a first in 2.5 years. Both Apple and Wall Street were expecting drops for the quarter, but not to such an extent. As for device numbers, iPhone sales total 51.1 million (with -18% Y-o-Y decline), iPads total 10.2m (-19% Y-o-Y) and Macs reach 4m units (-12% Y-o-Y).