In today’s mobile and social news roundup: Apple announces WWDC in June; Swype now available on Google Play; Nokia unveils phone with dedicated WhatsApp button; Microsoft and ZTE enter a licensing deal; and Google trumps Apple in Wavii acquisition.

Apple announces WWDC in June

Apple announced that it will be holding its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10-14, 2013 in San Francisco.  Tickets are priced at $1,599 each and will go on sale on April 25, 2013 at 10 a.m. Pacific.

The WWDC is open to those who are a part of Apple’s iOS Developer, iOS Developer Enterprise, or Mac Developer programs, and minors aged 13-17 years old will have to ask a guardian to purchase their tickets.

“We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a statement. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps. We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC.”

Swype now available on Google Play

Swype, the innovative input method for touchscreen devices, is now available for download on Google Play for $0.99.  The Swype keyboard is not all about swiping your screen for input: you can choose from Swype, Type, Write, and Speak input methods to fit your lifestyle, plus it learns your unique style of input and continuously evolves and adapts to your typing patterns.  It has a living language that crowd-sources and updates your dictionary with the latest trending words, and it’s intuitive so that it can almost predict what your next word will be.  It also has a smart editor that analyzes your sentence and flags possible errors.

Nokia unveils phone with dedicated WhatsApp button

Dedication to a social platform is the name of the game, and Nokia isn’t about to drop out of the race.  The Finnish company introduced a new phone in its Asha line that features a dedicated WhatsApp button.

“We are focused on delivering the best WhatsApp experience to as many people as possible,” said Brian Acton, Co-Founder of WhatsApp Inc. “We are very excited about our partnership with Nokia Asha complementing our strategy of giving people around the world an easy experience when keeping in touch with their friends.”

The Nokia Asha 210, available in Single- or Easy Swap Dual-SIM variants, runs on the Series 40 operating system and features a WiFi On/Off control button, chat screen notifications that keep users up-to-date on new conversations, preloaded YouTube launcher for direct video streaming, voice guide for self-portraits as it doesn’t have a front facing camera, a camera app that enables quick editing and sharing on social sites and has a battery that lasts up to 46 days with Single-SIM and up to 24 days with Dual-SIM on a single charge.

Microsoft and ZTE enter a licensing deal

Fresh from taking Hon Hai, Foxconn’s parent company, under its patent licensing wings, Microsoft has now made the same deal with ZTE.  The software giant stated that the deal gives ZTE license to its “worldwide patent portfolio,” which will help avoid future patent wars.

“The ZTE and Foxconn agreements show once more that technology companies around the world, including some of the world’s largest and fastest growing manufacturers anchored in China, recognize licensing is an effective way to share technology and build on each other’s work, accelerating the pace of innovation and delighting customers,” Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Legal & Corporate Affairs, said in a statement.

Google trumps Apple in Wavii acquisition

Google and Apple were both bidding for Wavii, a natural language processing startup based in Seattle.  Any of the two giants could have won the bidding, but in the end, Google beat Apple.  For a little over $30 million, Google has acquired Wavii and its 25-man team, including founder Adrian Aoun, who will be moving to Google’s Knowledge Graph division from Seattle.