Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 243

Here I am thinking Apple were really only targeting the use of 'rounded corners' and the 'style' of the iPhone compared to competitors' devices. But, it looks like Samsung's pen-toting Galaxy Note 10.1 has just been added to Apple's on-going lawsuit against Samsung.

But, we haven't even gotten to the best part yet - the Cupertino-based iPhone maker has sought to add Google's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS to the lawsuit. Apple told US Magistrate Judge, Paul S. Grewal in a federal court in San Jose.

Apple attorney, Andrew Liao, told Judge Grewal that the Galaxy Nexus is the only phone with Jelly Bean that Apple wants to add to the patent complaint. Liao also said that Apple seeks to add 17 devices that could use a stylus, even if the products don't ship with a stylus. Grewal hasn't issued a ruling today, saying he was concerned that if he denied both sides their requests, the companies would file a new round of lawsuits.

HTC have been having a very rough year, where their last quarter results pretty bad, and back in August I reported that Taiwan Central Bank proposed a bailout of the struggling phone maker. Now we're looking at October's sales numbers and for the second month in a row now, revenues have dropped in double digits.

Revenue for HTC is down around 19% from September, with year-over-year figures even worse. We're talking 61% since October of 2011, which is a huge drop, even after last month's drop of 53%. The phone maker could possibly soon reach the point where they would struggle to even meet their very conservative earnings goals.

I really don't expect HTC to be here twelve months from now, and this is going to be the case for most other Android phone makers in the near future. With Google selling subsidised Nexus 4 handsets for $399, why would you buy a smartphone for double the price with the phone maker's UI splashed on top and slow updates of Android? I know I wouldn't.

The IDC's latest numbers are here and it is reporting that tablet numbers have increased by 6.7% in the quarter just gone, and 49.5% year-over-year. Apple enjoying shipping just over half of the 27.8 million slates across the world, but they lost a considerable amount of market share.

The iPad maker had 65.5% of the market in Q2, but dropped down to just 50.4% of the market in Q3 - a huge drop. IDC says that this is because people were holding off for the iPad mini - but I don't agree with that. There can't be that many people in the market knowing three months out that there was definitely going to be a new iPad on the market.

Samsung were number two, increasing their market share to 18.4% thanks to their Galaxy Tab and Note 10.1 products, with Amazon and ASUS having a great quarter also. Kindle Fires and Nexus 7's helped them ship around 2.5 million of each.

Bloomberg news is reporting that Apple may be toying with the idea of designing its own chips for use in its Mac line of computers. As technology grows increasingly mobile, the x86 platform pioneered and championed by Intel draws just too much power and produces too much heat. In order to unify the experience between this mobile market and desktop component, Apple may opt to use its own chips.

By using chips that feature similar architectures in both mobile devices and desktop and laptop systems, its easier for programmers to unify the experience. Apps will theoretically have no problems running on the Mac laptops and desktops due to the common architecture and Apple will be able to use iOS on desktop systems--not an idea I am fond of.

This change in processor would take a good while to implement. The Apple team will have to craft their own processor, either through licensing agreements with ARM, or by developing their own instruction sets. Even still, Apple will want to repeat the success they have seen with the iPhone 5's processor.

We all know smartphones and tablets rule our lives now, but just how much do we use them to surf the Internet? Well, according to the latest data from NetMarketShare, it looks like it's a lot.

Their data points out that smartphones and tablets accounted for 10.3% of all web browsing in October, which is the first time it has broken through the 10% barrier.

More interesting is that mobile browsing was at just 7.2% of all browsing in March, meaning that we're seen an explosion of web browsing on mobile phones in the last few months alone. iOS-based smartphones and tablets like the iPhone and iPad account for around 60% of all web browsing in october 2012. Android devices scooped up a little over 27% of mobile web browsing.

It has not been a good couple of months for Apple. After launching the iPhone 5, their stock took a dive. After launching the iPad mini, their stock took a dive. After announcing executive changes, their stock took a dive. Adding all these up, their stock value has dropped from over $700 to below $600, a pretty large change.

Not only has the stock price been falling, they've suffered a few losses in court. The UK courts ruled that the Galaxy Tab does not infringe on the iPad design copyrights and Apple has been forced to run ads saying so. Well, now the company has suffered another loss at the hands of the court, this time in Mexico.

The Mexican court system has ruled that iFone, a telecommunications and call answering service in Mexico and Latin America, has the legal right to the trademark iFone and, subsequently, iPhone, since it is said the same way. The trademark was registered in 2003, and Apple didn't launch their iPhone until 2007. Oops.

Samsung's lawyers argued that the legal posting by Apple proclaiming that Samsung did not copy Apple's iPad design did not meet what the court ordered Apple to post. The court has agreed and now ruled that Apple has 24 hours to remove the current statement and 48 hours to replace it with a proper account.

"This has received enormous publicity and has perpetuated confusion as to Samsung's entitlement to market the Galaxy tablet computers in issue," a Samsung lawyer said in a written statement to judges. "It has created the impression that the UK court is out of step with other courts."

If you'll recall, the statement had in it verdicts that other courts had found, something Samsung clearly wasn't happy with. The original reasoning behind the requirement to post the notice is solid:

Who thought this time last year that SSD maker OCZ would be in this much trouble? The company have announced their reducing a large number of its staff, with as much as 28% of their non-production staff being out of a job, while workers at the company's Taiwan production facility getting cut down by 32%. The company has said:

We are undergoing a transition phase in the Company's evolution in which we are refocusing our efforts on products and strategies that will benefit both OCZ and our stakeholders over the long term. We have already taken aggressive steps to address some short-term tactical challenges and have begun streamlining the organization to help ensure that OCZ will be in the best position moving forward to address the fast growing consumer and enterprise SSD markets.

They aren't just stopping there, either. OCZ plans to discontinue around 150 product variations, too. OCZ adds:

Microsoft is on the receiving end of a patent troll's lawsuit over its just launched Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The patent troll in question is SurfCast and they appear to believe that Microsoft's Windows Live Tiles infringe upon a patent filed in 2000 and granted back in 2004.

The patent that SurfCast is using as the basis of their lawsuit is No. 6,724,403. SurfCast describes Tiles as follows:

Tiles can be thought of as dynamically updating icons. A Tile is different from an icon because it can be both selectable and live -- containing refreshed content that provides a real-time or near-real-time view of the underlying information.

Samsung has finally added the iPhone 5 to their infringement lawsuit, with the South Korean company claiming that all LTE-capable devices that Apple sells are in violation of eight patents the company owns. The lawsuit is already considered weak, as some of Samsung's LTE patents would be considered "standards-essential" and subject to FRAND regulations.

Samsung did threaten to "immediately sue" Apple if the new iPhone was LTE-capable, but at the time were unaware that Apple had already launched LTE-capable iPads a few months earlier. How Samsung would not know this, perplexes me, completely. Apple has maintained their stance, stating that they buy their LTE radios from Qualcomm, who has a full license for the patents and therefore that license extends to its customers.

The biggest issue for Samsung is if their LTE patents will be considered standards-essential when tested in court. The company is now at risk of having some patents ruled FRAND-eligible, which would weaken their portfolio. Worse, is if some of their patents are considered invalid, but Samsung are said to own around 12.2% of all LTE patents. Qualcomm and Nokia both hold equal, or larger stakes in the technology.