Amazon's Kindle Fire had a successful holiday season with fourth-quarter sales that may have exceeded 4 million units according to analyst estimates. A number of analysts also predicted that the $199 tablet would take a bite out of iPad sales, it seems that wasn't the case at all.

Following Apple's first-quarter earnings report, CEO Tim Cook said that the Kindle Fire had no impact on iPad sales whatsoever. In fact, it was Apple's most profitable quarter ever, and the most profitable quarter ever reported by a technology company.

Cook said that he carefully examined iPad numbers and is convinced that the Kindle Fire didn't affect iPad sales. He said that he looked at the iPad sales numbers in the U.S. every week following the Fire's launch and noticed nothing.

After a technology blog reported that BlackBerry maker Research in Motion was actively seeking to sell itself to smartphone rival Samsung Electronics, shares of RIM jumped more than 8 percent.

BoyGeniusReport.com cited an unidentified source indicating that RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was meeting with companies interested in either licensing its software or buying a part or all of RIM. Samsung is reportedly leading the pack.

In recent months, RIM has been a target of takeover speculation as its market valuation has hit multi-year lows amid profit warnings and product delays.

Samsung, which is said to be interested in buying RIM, has emerged as the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer on the demand for its Android-based devices. While RIM stock has jumped more than 6 percent four times since December 21, 2012, it is still down almost 75 percent from a year ago.

According to multiple sources on Monday, Facebook's long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) is now likely to come during the third week of May.

Considering that the review by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) usually takes anywhere from three to four months, that means Facebook will need to file its IPO documents within the next month. This timeline assumes that there aren't any issues that would require amending the filing.

Facebook's offering is expected to be one of the largest IPOs ever. Some reports suggest that the company will be raising $10 billion on a $100 million valuation. This amount is presumably to match its massive consumer and revenue growth.

Facebook has declined to comment on the reports.

AT&T has formally and officially made the move not to pursue plans to acquire T-Mobile USA on Monday, bowing to U.S. antitrust authorities by withdrawing its $39 billion acquisition plans.

The deal had been seen by many as a long-shot from the start. Nine months later, both AT&T and T-Mobile USA are looking for a way to move forward, without takeover plans. AT&T had already pulled its application from the Federal Communications Commission, as well as put on hold its efforts to fight the Justice Department's lawsuit to block the deal. AT&T ultimately concluded that it could not put together a package of divestitures or other tactics that would appease U.S. officials that had deemed the deal against the public interest and anti-competitive.

The FCC was extremely skeptical of the merger, and the Justice Dept. said that combining the No. 2 and No. 4 wireless carriers in the U.S. would hurt competition by leaving the market too concentrated, and would also likely raise prices for consumers. In order to close the deal, AT&T needed the approval of both the FCC and Justice Dept.

Had the merger gone through, all 75 percent of all contract wireless customers would be in the hands of either AT&T or Verizon Wireless.

According to a research note published on Friday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecasts that the United States is likely to suffer the loss of its triple-A credit rating from another major rating agency by the end of 2011 due to concerns over the deficit.

The trigger for the ratings drop would likely be a failure by Congress to agree on a credible long-term plan to cut the country's deficit. A second downgrade would come from either Moody's or Fitch. Standard & Poor's downgrade came in August and was based on concerns over the government's budget deficit and rising debt burden. Merrill Lynch said that a second loss of the U.S.' top credit rating would be another big blow to a sluggish American economy.

Ethan Harris, Merrill's North American economist, wrote in the report:

"The credit rating agencies have strongly suggested that further rating cuts are likely if Congress does not come up with a credible long-run plan. Hence, we expect at least one credit downgrade in late November or early December when the super committee crashes."

BlackBerry phones were the "it" phone to have in the early 2000s and are still deeply entrenched in at least the business world in 2011, even though other smartphones have surged in popularity amongst the masses. The decline in the popularity of the BlackBerry, once affectionately known as the CrackBerry for its addictive qualities, may be further hastened with the spreading service outages this week. Research in Motion has reported outages with its BlackBerry service in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia this week. Now, on Wednesday complaints about service outages in North American have begun flooding in.

There were widespread complaints of outages in the United States this morning. RIM, which is headquartered in Canada, confirmed that the problems here are similar to what it has seen in other parts of the world. In a statement, RIM said:

“BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.”

Less than a month ago Netflix announced that it was splitting into two companies. The streaming service would retain the Netflix name, while its DVD-by-mail services would fall under the new company, which would be known as Qwickster. The two companies would also have two separate, non-connected websites, which really confused and upset consumers who wanted the services consolidated. On Monday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted on the news on the company blog that they have decided to can the entire plan.

Hastings wrote:

"It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster."

A spokesman for Netflix told the NY Times that the company "underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service." As a result of the announcement, Netflix stocks have already gotten a bump.

Apple's highly anticipated iPhone announcement earlier this month was a rather huge disappointment. Not only did Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) decide not to release a major update to the phone in the form of the iPhone 5, instead opting for the intermediary modification, the iPhone 4S, but the new features they did add to the device were pretty underwhelming. There is at least one bit of good news that has come out since the iPhone 4S was announced, and that is that Apple is actually going to sell an unlocked version of the iPhone 4S this time.

Apple has not done this previously, and all versions were "locked" to the specific carriers selling them. Apple is currently selling locked versions for AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

According to a line on the Apple website, an unlocked version of the iPhone 4S will be available in November. Of course you won't be able to snag the unlocked version at the carrier subsidized pricing. Pricing on the unlocked iPhone 4S will be $649 (16GB), $749 (32GB) and $849.

Steve Jobs is dead, and this time the news is not another internet hoax perpetuated by social media. The Apple chairman and former CEO passed away today after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Jobs, 56, passed away on October 5, 2011. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) confirmed the news with a statement issued by the company's board of directors which said:

"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."

This evening, the homepage of Apple's website changed to feature a full-page image of Jobs along with the text "Steve Jobs: 1955-2011".

The infamous hacker activist collective known as "Anonymous" vowed to support the on-going Occupy Wall Street protests by erasing the New York Stock Exchange "from the Internet" on October 10. On Wednesday, the group posted a video message on YouTube declaring war on the world's largest stock exchange in retaliation for the mass arrests of Wall Street protesters.

A link to the video was also posted on one of several Anonymous Twitter feeds.

The message, which was about two minutes long, did not give any further details on threat or if it was referring to only an attack on the NYSE public website, which would have no effect on trading whatsoever.

In the past year, Anonymous has launched directed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites, including DDoS attacks on MasterCard and Visa's websites in December. The group uses special software to launch the attacks, which can then slow down or crash the site.

A spokesman for NYSE Euronext (NYX), which operates the exchange, said that the company does not comment on rumors or security matters.