“They ask ‘Why can’t you be more like Apple?’ So we should go bankrupt and fire our founders and bring in a moron? That’s what we should do?”
— RIM director Roger Martin (The Globe and Mail)

* Rumors are flying fast and hard from multiple blogs that Apple (AAPL) will announce the iPad 3 on March 7. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess what the next-generation tablet will look like and what features it will have, however many seem to think it will sport nearly twice the screen resolution of the previous iPad and possibly a quad-core processor. (iMore, The Loop, parislemon)

* Apple is having the Fair Labor Association investigate working conditions inside Foxconn factories. The move comes weeks after The New York Times ran an eye-opening series of features diving into the harsh atmosphere workers experience. (The New York Times)

* U.S. and European regulators approved Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility. Separately, Google (GOOG) confirmed that 30 million-plus Iranians have been blocked from using Gmail, Google Videos, and YouTube since Feb. 10. (Reuters and Bloomberg)

* A rough breakdown of popular social network Pinterest reveals that 97% of users are women. (TechCrunch)

* It may be the end of an era. Leading BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay will stop serving up the majority of Torrent files beginning Feb. 29. (The Verge)

* One billion people will own smartphones by 2016. (The New York Times)

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