Business, Financial & Legal - Page 253

Apple may have initially won the court case, but it's not over yet. Samsung have said on Tuesday that they are willing to modify their smartphones if they can't successfully fight the Cupertino-based company's request to have them banned across the US.

Apple made an initial request to ban eight of the South Korean company's smartphones, including one of the most popular, the Galaxy S II. Samsung does plan to fight the request, and would be willing to modify the devices to avoid the ban. How could they do this exactly? Removing their TouchWiz UI and replacing it with the stock Android ROM, be it Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.1 Jelly Bean would do the trick.

Users have been begging smartphone makers to release stock Android ROMs, and it looks like this time is upon us. If Samsung were to begin offering flagship devices with stock Google Android OS's, things could get very interesting, very fast. Could Apple have inadvertently started a new, wonderful trend of smartphone makers pushing devices out with stock, or at least close to stock, Android operating systems?

AMD has hired a new Chief Graphics Product Architect for the Graphics Business Unit. This means that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law will be working on the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro line of products. With fresh blood comes fresh ideas, so here's to hoping he can come up with something that really pushes graphics technology forward.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

John Gustafson's resume is impressive and he will surely be an asset to the company. He joins AMD from Intel, where he "headed the company's eXtreme Technologies Lab, conducting cutting-edge research on energy-efficient computing and memory, as well as optical, energy and storage technologies."

The FCC has issued a statement today saying they are forming a group to study the use of portable electronic devices (PEDs) on aircraft. The current policy is quite cumbersome and requires lots of time and effort to get a device authorized for use during flight. The FCC recognizes this is an issue of consumer interest and this is the reason they have formed the group.

"With so many different types of devices available, we recognize that this is an issue of consumer interest," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "Safety is our highest priority, and we must set appropriate standards as we help the industry consider when passengers can use the latest technologies safely during a flight."

The group will examine the methods used for certification along with a variety of other issues and then present the findings to the FCC. Unfortunately, they will not be investigating the use of cell phones for voice communications. A reason for this was not provided and it seems like a massive miss on the group's priority list.

Store shelves could soon be bare of Samsung products, if Judge Koh accepts Apple's preliminary injunction request. We knew that Apple would go after sales bans after winning by so much over Samsung, we just didn't know which products. Now, Apple has filed with the court listing the models that they would like banned.

Apple is going after the eight devices listed in the chart above. Why wouldn't they go after all 24 of them? Well, a large majority of them are no longer being sold and Judge Koh doesn't like having her time wasted, as Apple and Samsung found out, so they've narrowed the list down to a more reasonable amount.

The devices included in the list are the Galaxy S 4G, the Galaxy S II ATT, the Galaxy S II Skyrocket, the Galaxy S II T-Mobile, the Galaxy S II Epic 4G, the Galaxy S Showcase, the Droid Charge, and the Galaxy Prevail.

Waiting for the next Samsung smartphone or tablet? Well, you could be waiting just a bit longer than expected due to Apple's decisive win over Samsung on Friday. Since Samsung was found to be infringing on basically every single patent Apple asserted, Samsung will likely redesign phones and tablets that are currently in the works to avoid being sued again.

"The verdict is worse for Samsung than what many had anticipated, and it will have to change some products in its pipeline," Chang In Whan, president of Seoul-based KTB Asset Management Co., said. "There could be delays in developing and releasing new models, which together with a potential sales ban could weigh on corporate value."

However, a spokesman for Samsung has said that the verdict won't affect the current product launch schedule. Being forced to do things that are radically different from Apple could, in the end, wind up better for Samsung and the consumer market as a whole. If they have to reinvent the UI or physical design of the phone, they may come up with something far superior.

Your broadband Internet connection may get a little bit more expensive if the FCC goes ahead with a plan to tax it. Right now, the FCC has asked for comment on several different proposals designed to raise money for the Connect America Fund, a fund used to bring broadband access to rural Americans, and a tax is among the proposals.

AT&T, Sprint, and Google have all supported the tax, likely because it would increase their revenues. The tax would be similar to the fee already paid on landlines and cellular phones. This fee goes to the Universal Service Fund, a fund that was designed to ensure every person in America had access to phone service.

"Today we propose three goals for contribution reform: efficiency, fairness, and sustainability," Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, said. "And we underscore that any reforms to the contribution system must safeguard core Commission objectives, including the promotion of broadband innovation, investment, and adoption."

I'm sure most of our readers have been following the legal proceedings in the Apple v Samsung lawsuit. Yesterday, Apple was awarded just over $1 billion in damages for Samsung willfully infringing on their patents. However, Apple's Tim Cook says in a memo to employees that it wasn't about the money, it was "about values."

The memo, sent to Apple corporate employees, is an interesting read:

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.

I woke up this morning to my wife sitting across from me asking "did you hear about the Apple vs. Samsung case? Apple won". I immediately grabbed my Galaxy Note (wink) and read up on it. Today is a dark day for technology, my dear readers.

The jury on the case found that Samsung were guilty on infringing six out of the seven Apple patents, with the results of this pushing Samsung to pay just over $1 billion in damages to Apple. On Samsung's side, the jury ruled that Apple did not infringe on Samsung's patents with their iPhone 3G and 3GS phones, and have awarded Samsung absolutely nothing in damages.

The jury ruled that Samsung infringed on Apple's '381 bounceback patent, with all of their products in question, all 21 of them. In regards to the '915 patent on pinch-to-zoom, the jury ruled that all but three of Samsung's device infringed on the patent, and even worse, found that Samsung's executives either knew, or should have known their products were indeed infringing on the said patents.

We may just have a piece of good news here for users of the Android Facebook app. As most of you know, the thing sucks. I'm not going to use pretty language like "subpar" or other sanitized language when describing it. Facebook updated the iOS version of the app with a completely rewritten version that is faster, more stable, and generally better than the previous iteration--and the previous iteration was still better than the current Android app.

Facebook management has come to realize just how bad the Android app is and is working on getting their employees to fix it. But, if they don't use it, they won't really know just how bad it is or where the problems are. This is where Facebook's new "policy" comes into play. I say "policy" as it's not an official policy, rather a suggestion (with some coercion).

Facebook is suggesting employees, and has even ordered a few, to give up their iPhone and use an Android phone and the Facebook app all day, every day. Hopefully if they are stuck with the terrible app, they will become more interested in fixing it up to where it is at least competitive with the iOS version.

Apple and Samsung may be at each others throats in the US courts, but in South Korea, a court has ruled that Samsung didn't violate on Apple's iPhone design. A judge at the Seoul Central District Court said:

There are lots of external design similarities between the iPhone and Galaxy S, such as rounded corners and large screens ... but these similarities had been documented in previous products. Given that it's very limited to make big design changes in touch-screen based mobile products in general ... and the defendant (Samsung) differentiated its products with three buttons in the front and adopted different designs in camera and (on the) side, the two products have a different look.

The judge also cited that it is difficult to say that consumers would confuse the iPhone with the Galaxy, considering they both sport completely different logos on the back of each model. Consumers also factor in operating systems, brand, applications, price and services when buying a smartphone.