Apple's got a ton of money sitting on the sidelines, and, as Bloomberg/Businessweek reports, investors aren't happy about it. In total, Apple has about $51 billion in cash and investments, and the tech giant received a 0.75% return on the investments in the past fiscal year, according to a regulatory filing last week. "The gain pales next to the roughly 10 percent investors would have earned from the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average over that time," reports Bloomberg/Businessweek. Not surprisingly, then, "Some investors say Steve Jobs should put that money to …

It's fair to say that Apple and Google share a passion for separating consumers from their wallets. It's no surprise, then, that the tech rivals are reportedly fawning over a mobile payments startup that aims to make wallets (and purses) a thing of the past.     "Both Apple and Google are engaged in conversations with mobile payments startup BUKU about a potential acquisition or a wide-reaching partnership at the very least," reports TechCrunch, citing unnamed sources.   What makes BOKU such a prize? "It is beautifully, majestically, tear-jerkingly simple," according to VatorNews. …

Thanks to the growing popularity of iPhones and Android-powered devices, 28% of U.S. mobile subscribers now have smartphones, Nielsen reports. Among those who acquired a new cellphone in the past six months, 41% opted for a smartphone over a standard feature phone, up from 35% last quarter. With their computer-like operating systems, smartphones allow for a far more advanced content and communication experience, and are thus seen as fertile ground for advertising and other monetization opportunities. In the U.S., the Apple iPhone has practically caught up to the RIM Blackberry OS, with 28% and 30% marketshare, respectively. …

Closing in on Nokia's top spot among mobile OS vendors, Google's Android grew over 1,300% in just a year, reports research firm Canalys. Worldwide, Android now commands a quarter of the market, compared to Nokia's 33% share. Overall, about 20 million consumers now have Android-powered phones -- up from just 1.4 million this time last year. "The big winner globally, as in the U.S., was Google's Open Handset Alliance," notes Fortune. Putting Google's success in the most practical of lights, ReadWriteWeb points to the broad range of price points available …

CEO Valerio Zingarelli is out at web and mobile video content platform Babelgum, paidContent reports. Taking his place is Chief Marketing Officer Stefania Valenti -- the company's third CEO since it launched in 2005. Funded by Italian telecom billionaire Silvio Scaglia, Babelgum's original CEO Erik Lumer made way for Zingarelli in 2007. As paidContent notes, that change "prefaced the exits of the company's chief technology officer, chief architect and chief operating officer." Prior to becoming CMO in 2007, Valenti ran press relations at Scaglia's FastWeb, while her previous experience is all PR, according to paidContent. According to …

Less than a year after Google acquired AdMob, the founder and CEO of the mobile ad network Omar Hamoui is heading for the exit. The news, first reported by TechCrunch, doesn't bode well for Google, which dropped $750 million on AdMob, and is smack in the middle of a battle royal with Apple over the future of mobile advertising. Needless to say, "It sounds like Google is getting the short end of the stick here," writes TechCrunch. "Hamoui has actually only been able to work at the search giant for five months, because the AdMob/Google acquisition was …

Controversial tech investor and blogger Dave McClure says he's figured out how to get a leg up on Facebook, and it's got everything to do with "intimacy." In an "Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network," MsClure says there's this one little problem with his own Facebook experience: "I've got too many g*ddamn friends." (Over 2,000, if you're wondering.) Insisting that "MEANINGFUL=MONETIZABLE," he insists that Facebook is "at risk of being upstaged by a more private & meaningful social network (or perhaps via some subset or abstraction layer on top of FB, if they can move quickly)."

Later this week, eBay plans to unveil its first major homepage redesign in nearly four years, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to The Journal, the move is part of an "urgent effort to close a technology gap that has caused the onetime Web pioneer to lag behind rivals like Amazon.com," which, "for years has had many of the same features that eBay is adding." Admitting as much, eBay CEO John Donahoe tells The Journal: "One of the most important things we had to do was become more of a technology-driven company." By Donahoe's own reckoning, eBay …

Lars Rasmussen isn't the first exec to leave Google for Facebook, but, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports, his case is somewhat unique. There's obviously the excitement that comes with joining something new and not-yet-entirely defined. "It feels to me that Facebook may be a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company," the co-founder of Google Maps told The Herald. "They've already changed the world and yet there seems to be so much more to be done there." Apart from Facebook's bright prospects, however, there's also the matter of Google failing to stand by Rasmussen and his visionary …