While Apple's been busy trying to chase Samsung's Galaxy line out of the Milky Way, Android device makers have ganged up on the Cupertino outfit and experienced a spattering of success. The latest setback for Apple comes from a second German patent ruling against the company over its iCloud service that was brought about by Motorola Mobility, which is currently being acquired by Google.

A U.K. vendor has pulled a batch of Transformer Prime tablets off its virtual store shelves after discovering problems it rooted out via internal testing. Clove made the decision to cancel all pending orders and will not resume selling the tablet until Asus works out whatever glitch has the vendor bugged. In the meantime, Asus is scratching its wondering what the frack Clove is talking about.

Break out the Apple cider if you live in/near Cupertino, California, and toast your hometown PC representatives for dethroning Hewlett-Packard as the worldwide client PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011, but only if you're willing to include tablet shipments in the overall tally. If you are, then congrats, Apple's iPad put your home team over the top and was three times more responsible for the achievement than Macs.

Big things might be in store for Motorola Mobility if Google's acquisition is able to proceed unabated, but for the fourth quarter of 2011, the mobile device maker posted a net loss of $80 million, albeit that figure is largely the result of write-off costs related to the proposed takeover. Still, it's a complete reversal of fortunes compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 when Motorola Mobility posted an $80 million profit.