2007: A year in review, February

A month of madness - Apple makes friends with the Beatles and Cisco while Virgin Media and Sky declare war

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NEWS: 26 December 2007 11:00 GMT by Katie Scott

The month of lurve saw the settlement of the Apple versus Apple legal case ending 25 years of feuding as a new agreement was penned between Apple Inc and Apple Corp after the bitter battle finally came to an end.

Both sides mounted up huge legal costs, which they paid themselves.

The outcome – Apple Inc was allowed to continue to use its Apple logos and rumours started that the Beatles best of album, Love, may be the band's first ever made available for digital download.

And Apple also kissed and made up with Cisco over the iPhone trademark.

The month also saw a slew of mobile phones launched. Motorola announced the MOTORIZR Z8, Q range, MOTOSLVR L9 and MOTOKRZR K3. Next up was the quad-band GSM/GPRS BlackBerry 8800.

Nokia came in with business offerings in the form of the E61i, E65, and E90 Communicator.

All three operate on quad-band GSM and 3G networks, and have WCDMA and WLAN connectivity, and are based on the S60 operating system.

And hot on the heels of the release of the three business phones, was the unveiling of a "proper" mobile TV phone, the N77, as well as a satnav phone, the 6110 Navigator.

More basic but still impressive was the final launch, the 3110 classic, costing €150.

The plethora of new phones was followed by Microsoft's unveiling of a Vista-esque version of its phone platform, Windows Mobile 6.

Features included Windows Live for instant messaging with multiple contacts and allows sending of files or images, and support for VoIP.

Another boon for networkers came when Googlemail was made available to everyone.

Google decided to take away the "by invitation only" requirement on its email service for UK and US users.

But the Valentines month ended in acrimony as Virgin Media and Sky pulled on the boxing gloves.

In the end it was Virgin Media customers who lost out, as Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News channels were removed from their bundles at midnight on 28th February.