Wireless News Desk

Apple Sends FLA Inspectors into Its Chinese Suppliers

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:51:00 EST

Apple sent the Fair Labor Association (FLA) in Monday to start inspecting the conditions under which its widgets are made including Foxconn’s factories in China, the recent subject of an Upton Sinclair-like exposé by the New York Times. Apple said the FLA and its labor rights experts are supposed to interview thousands of workers about their living and working conditions including health and safety, wages, hours and communication with management, checking the plant floor, dorms and other facilities and reviewing documents relating to all stages of employment. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement that “The inspections now underway are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope, and we appreciate the FLA agreeing to take the unusual step of identifying the factories in their reports.”

Mobile Devices Get Active Directory Protection

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:47:00 EST

Centrify is going into the mobile business in support of iOS and Android phones and tablets. The move involves putting its multi-platform support for Microsoft’s Active Directory on its own cloud so companies can protect the increasing ubiquitous BYOD they need to control and secure whether they’re on the corporate network or not. It promises an organization can re-use its Active Directory investment without deploying a complex new infrastructure or dealing with yet another “pane of glass” in the form of another standalone management console. Its new enterprise-scale subscription-based cloud service is called DirectControl for Mobile and harnesses a company’s existing on-premise Active Directory infrastructure, skill sets, familiar processes, and group policy-based management tools to enforce and update mobile security settings, lock or remotely wipe devices, automate the configuration of each user’s authentication credentials, e-mail, Wi-Fi and VPN settings and reduce helpdesk traffic.

Apple Gets Injunction Against MMI in Germany

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

A Munich court Thursday found Motorola Mobility guilty of infringing an Apple patent and handed Apple a permanent injunction against two Android smartphones. Apple can enforce the injunction after posting a bond lest MMI succeed in invalidating the slide-to-unlock patent (EP1964022) that opens a device with a gesture on an unlock image. Patent watcher Florian Mueller, who was in court for the trial in December and again on Thursday when the decision came down, apparently expected the court to stay its hand pending a decision on the patent’s validity but evidently Apple’s post-trial pleadings persuaded Judge Peter Guntz that the patent would ultimately stand. Guntz only upheld Apple’s complaints against MMI’s phones, not its complaint against MMI’s Xoom tablet.

Chinese Company Wants China’s iPad Exports Halted

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

The Chinese company that claims it owns the iPad trademark says it plans to seek a ban on iPad exports out of China, threatening global supplies. According to what a lawyer for Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd told Reuters, the firm is petitioning Chinese customs to stop shipments of the tablet in and out of China. Customs has reportedly not responded to the request. A Chinese court last year found Proview owned the trademark. Apple, which claims it bought global rights to the name from Proview a few years ago, appealed and a final hearing is now set for February 29, Reuters said. Apple says a Hong Kong court supported its position, but that apparently doesn’t mean much.

Apple Testing Smaller iPad: WSJ

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

Contrary to Steve Jobs’ dictum that the 9.7-inch iPad is as small as a tablet can get, Apple is testing a widget that’s around eight inches and has gotten as far as qualifying suppliers for it, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s supposed to be working with screen makers AU Optronics of Taiwan and LG Display of South Korea. The device would reportedly have the same resolution as the current iPad. Apple is expected to unveil an iPad 3 next month with heightened resolution that can also run on Verizon and AT&T’s faster 4G LTE networks. A smaller iPad suggests that Apple may try to broaden its worldwide market share, which stood at 60% in Q3, particularly in developing markets like China and India, and take on competition from the Android mob, which is selling smaller tablets like the seven-inch Amazon Kindle Fire, the 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note and the seven- and 8.9-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab.

More Mobile Devices than People Soon: Cisco

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

The Internet highway may start looking like a proverbial New York traffic jam at rush hour soon. Feel free to substitute any town you like because Cisco says there’s going to be a faster-than-expected 18x surge in worldwide mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016. That’s when mobile cloud traffic should account for 71% of total data traffic, or 10.3 exabytes a month, up from a mere 269 petabytes a month now, outgrowing global fixed data traffic by 3x. That’s like 33 billion DVDs or 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files. There are supposed to be an estimated 10 billion mobile connections by 2016 – more than the 7.3 billion people on earth by then – or more than eight billion handheld or personal mobile-ready devices and nearly two billion machine-to-machine connections, such as GPS systems in cars, asset tracking systems in shipping and manufacturing and medical applications for making patient records more available.

EC Clears Googlorola Merger But Antitrust Probe Could Follow

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

The European Commission late Monday cleared Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility but it also issued a simultaneous warning that the companies could be charged with antitrust violations for abusing the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms of MMI’s standard-essential 3G patents. Google is buying MMI for its huge patent portfolio. Antitrust czar Joaquín Almunia issued an unusual statement separate from the merger go-ahead saying, “Today’s decision does not mean that the merger clearance blesses all actions by Motorola in the past or all future action by Google with regard to the use of these standard essential patents. Our decision today is without prejudice to the legality under EU antitrust law of Motorola’s past and Google’s future actions. However, the question whether Motorola’s or Google’s conduct is compliant with EU antitrust law cannot be dealt with in the context of the merger procedure.”

Apple Wants Samsung Galaxy Nexus Banned in America

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

Apple wants the Ice Cream-bearing Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone that Samsung worked on with Google banned from the United States because it allegedly infringes four strong Apple technical patents – none of this squishy design stuff like before. Apple quietly asked a district court in California for the preliminary injunction last Thursday as part of a new lawsuit. Patent watcher Florian Mueller calls the patents the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” In Florian’s metaphor, they might to unleash pestilence, war, famine and death on Android 4.0 as it comes from Google – no Samsung features have been added to the so-called stock Android – giving the suit a potentially more crippling arc that implicates all Ice Cream Sandwich widgets. It’s the closest Apple has gotten to taking on Google directly and if Google removes any of the challenged features it’s as good as an admission of an infringement taint, Florian observes.

Google Cultivates a Rep as Patent Gouger

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Apple quietly wrote a letter to ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, in November asking it to set basic rules for the licensing of standards-essential patents and to make its patent-wielding members commit to the principles. Apple clearly had Google and its Android acolytes in mind in writing the letter. Motorola Mobility and Samsung are asking ludicrously high sums to license IP that’s supposed to be available on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND). They have also sued alleged infringers like Apple and Microsoft demanding product-stopping injunctions. Apple wants all this to stop. It wants ETSI to insist on appropriate royalties, a common royalty base and no injunctions. Apple’s lead IP lawyer Bruce Watrous told ETSI that the industry lacks consistent adherence to FRAND principles in licensing all the patents necessary to make mobile devices.

iPad 3 Next Month: AllThingsDigital

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Apple is going to launch the iPad 3, or whatever they call it, the first week of March at a special event in San Francisco according to AllThingsD, a prophecy the punters regarded as being as good as a statement from the company. As a result Apple Thursday hit an all-time high, teasing the magic $500 number, with a closing price of $493.17, up from $315 last June, after seeing $496.75 during the day. The blog figures street availability a week or so later. The dingus, the same size as the iPad 2, will reportedly be built on a way faster chip with improved graphics and a 2048×1536 Retina Display – “or something close to it,” the blog said.

MMI Said to Want 2.25% of Apple Sales for Patents

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:30:00 EST

Mobile phone inventor and proposed Google acquisition Motorola Mobility apparently wants Apple to pay a royalty of 2.25% of sales to cover a FRAND license to its fundamental standards-essential patents according to an October 17 letter between the companies’ outside German lawyers unearthed over the weekend by patent sleuth Florian Mueller. That price, depending on MMI’s other terms, like how far back it’s talking and exactly what devices it means, could easily translate into a billion-dollar payment and give other essential patents owners similar delusions of grandeur imperiling Apple’s cost structure.

Google Loses Appeal to Suppress Evidence in Java Suit

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington Monday punctured Google’s hopes of hiding the telltale Lindholm e-mail from the jury when Oracle finally drags Google and Android before the bar to answer charges of infringing its Java copyrights and patents. The appeals court sided with the district court that has already told Google six times that the highly compromising e-mail couldn’t be suppressed. Neither court bought Google’s story that it was an artifact protected by attorney-client privilege that was turned over in discovery to Oracle by mistake. The appeal court found that Google engineer Tim Lindholm “was responding to a request from Google’s management, not Google’s attorneys.” It said the message concerned a negotiation strategy, not a legal strategy and “does not evidence any sort of infringement or invalidity analysis.”

IBM Buys Worklight

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

IBM is buying a privately held 12-year-old Israeli outfit called Worklight for its write-once-run-anywhere application platform and tools for smartphones and tablets. The price IBM is paying wasn’t disclosed. Worklight’s widgetry, which can be used to create and run HTML5, hybrid and native apps, is supposed to put new and existing consumer and employee-facing apps on multiple mobile devices – including iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids – and then securely connect them to a company’s data center. It includes an IDE, middleware, management and analytics and is supposed to reduce time to market, cost and complexity. The apparently key acquisition is expected to close this quarter and be part of IBM’s Software Group.

German Ban on Galaxy Tab Stays in Place

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:15:00 EST

The temporary injunction that Apple got forbidding Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 to be sold in Germany survived a Düsseldorf appeals court, which found Tuesday that “Samsung unfairly imitates the iPad with its tablet.” The court said the ban includes the smaller Galaxy Tab 8.9. However, the grounds have changed. Originally Apple charged the Galaxy Tab with infringing its European Community Design IP, a claim the lower court bought. The appeals court said Samsung violated the German unfair competition law so the ban sticks but Samsung’s still selling the slightly modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N, and that widget, which Apple also wants banned, may survive a court decision due February 9 because – according to the appeals court decision – Samsung has effectively shot down Apple’s Community Design IP. FOSS Patents says, “If Samsung is allowed to continue to sell the 10.1N, the commercial relevance of today’s appellate decision is next to nil.” See, “Apple can’t replicate the German decision in other countries since German unfair competition law is pretty unique. A win based on an EU-wide design right would have been strategically more valuable to Apple. Even though Samsung formally lost its appeal because the preliminary injunction remains in force, it succeeded in defeating Apple’s design right.” Apple is going to have to come up with unassailable patent IP. A Dutch court last week found Samsung didn’t infringe Apple’s Community Design after the court narrowed Apple’s claims. Apple’s technical patent claims and infringement charges should hit a German court in the next few months.

EC To Probe Samsung for FRAND Abuse

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:06:00 EST

Samsung’s cavalier assertion of 13 3G standards-essential patents it happens to own in its worldwide patent war with Apple has provoked the European Commission to open and prioritize a formal antitrust investigation of the Korean company for alleged FRAND abuse of ETSI-pledged patents. The regulator thinks Samsung may be distorting competition in the mobile space although so far it hasn’t got any European court to buy into its contentions and give them teeth. The EC can fine Samsung 10% of revenues. Samsung could also withdraw the suits. The EC said Tuesday it will investigate whether Samsung’s claiming Apple infringed the standards-essential patent means it’s “failed to honor its irrevocable commitment given in 1998 to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to license any standard-essential patents relating to European mobile telephony standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.” It will also examine whether Samsung’s behavior amounts to abuse of a dominant position. One might assume that Apple complained but the EC claims the probe is its own idea. FOSS Patents thinks the Samsung investigation may put Motorola Mobility at risk since it won an injunction against Apple based on essential-protected IP but hasn’t enforced it.

HP Commits to webOS Release Schedule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

Apple Quietly Appeals ITC’s HTC Decision

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 EST

Apple has taken the International Trade Commission’s month-old decision finding HTC’s Android gismos infringe only one of the patents it asserted and letting it ship the products while it fixes the problem to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The patent-watching Foss Patents blog says Apple quietly lodged the appeal on December 29. The blog learned from an Apple filing with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in a case against Motorola Mobility that the ITC’s administrative law judge had sided with Apple and found HTC guilty of infringing Apple’s US 6,343,263 real-time API patent but that that decision had been overturned by the ITC’s panel of six commissioners.

To AppStore, or Not to AppStore, That is the Question!

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

Nearly every web application that interacts with a user is faced with the dilemma of how to best support tablets and mobile devices. As entrepreneurs we can no longer put off supporting these platforms as a nice to have. The demand that is created by iPad users and the influx of Android tablets in the marketplace is significant especially for early stage companies. Zoomstra is no different and we are currently facing our biggest technology decision yet. What is our best option for supporting tablets?

InterDigital Gives Up Looking for a Buyer

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:30:00 EST

Remember InterDigital? That’s the Pennsylvania patent-licensing company that hired Evercore Partners and Barclays Capital last summer to sell its patents, raising punters hopes that Google would buy it to console itself for losing the $4.5 billion Nortel mobile patent auction to Apple, Microsoft and friends. Players bid its stock up 50 bucks to a high of $82.50 in three days on such speculation little suspecting Google would turn around and buy Motorola Mobility and its patents a few weeks later for $12.5 billion. Well, Monday evening InterDigital’s board announced that it was giving up the hunt for a buyer and would try to increase the firm’s cross-licensing and patent sales instead.

Apple Loses Samsung Tablet Appeal

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

A Dutch appeals court Tuesday rejected an injunction-seeking Apple bid to overturn a lower court’s decision last August that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 isn’t a copy of the Apple iPad and doesn’t infringe Apple’s design rights. Apple was also denied a preliminary injunction in the United States on a design-related patent equivalent to its European Community Design IP and is appealing the decision. FOSS Patents says the Dutch appeals court, like the US district court, narrowed the scope of the Apple IP based on prior art and so came to its conclusion. Apple got a preliminary injunction in Germany using the design IP last summer, a decision a German appeals court could lift for the same reason next week. Last Tuesday Apple filed two more design-related suits against Samsung phones and tablets in Germany but didn’t ask for injunctions.

RIM Replaces CEOs

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:30:00 EST

Research In Motion late Sunday named Thorsten Heins, 54, one of its co-COOs, president and chief executive, replacing co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in the hopes the move reverses the company’s dramatic nosedive and calms irate investors whose stock lost three-quarters of its value last year. Heins’ appointment is the succession plan Lazaridis and Balsillie presented to the board. Both Lazaridis and Balsillie, who reportedly weren’t pressured to hand over the reins, mean to stay on the board so there’s no clean break, which may be one of the reasons why RIM’s stock dropped more than 6.8% at the open to ~$15.83. Lazaridis, RIM’s co-founder and co-chair, will become vice-chair and head the board’s new innovation committee. He is supposed work closely with Heins “to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide.”

Apple Sues Samsung Again

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:30:00 EST

Apple has filed two new lawsuits in Germany citing 10 Samsung smartphones and five Samsung tablets with infringing its design IP, the kind of peculiarly European intellectual property it used to get the Galaxy Tab 10.1 outlawed in Germany last year. Apparently the Düsseldorf Regional Court will hear the phone case in August and tablet case in September. The FOSS Patents blog figures Apple’s design rights assertions may make it impossible for the two companies to structure a mutually acceptable settlement and that they “may just need the courts to clarify the boundaries of Apple’s exclusive design-related rights.”

Samsung Touted as Possible RIM Buyer

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

An unattributed rumor put in play Tuesday by the Boy Genius blog has RIM interested in selling out and Samsung interested in buying it, or some piece of it, if RIM’s co-CEOs weren’t asking so much. The other possibility is that RIM will license its IP to other companies. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek thinks it more likely RIM will license its newfangled Blackberry 10 operating system for 10 bucks a pop to Samsung and HTC. He also thinks RIM might finally get an independent chairman, who could kick off a formal strategic review of the floundering company’s options and set in train a major hardware restructuring. BGR thinks the BlackBerry Messenger and several other Blackberry enterprise features would be a swell way for Samsung to differentiate Android, make it a bigger threat to Apple and lessen Google’s control. It said, “We have heard that [RIM co-CEO] Jim Balsillie is actively meeting with almost every company that might be interested in either a part or all of RIM, in addition to having talks about licensing. ‘Jim is going hard after Samsung,’ said a source with knowledge of the negotiations.’” The speculation tickled RIM’s stock price 8%-10%. RIM’s market cap is about $9 billion. BGR thinks RIM is looking for $12 billion-$15 billion or between $22.90 and $28.60 a share. Its stock, which closed at $17.47 Tuesday, lost 75% of its value last year. Meanwhile, Samsung is planning to merge its internally developed bada mobile operating software with Tizen, the open source successor to Intel’s Meego Linux OS, in the search for an alternative to Android. It might try to license the combo to other Android OEMs who might be interested since Google is buying hardware rival Motorola Mobility. The Linux Foundation is supposed to be putting HTML5 support in Tizen. Unavailable in the US, Bada owns 2.2% of all smartphones according to Garter.

Tablet Computing in Education?

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

I am already an avid believer of Mobility and Tablet computing in the Enterprise, so this week I decided to think about what could be achieved within Education. For the rest of my thoughts I will use my Converged Mobile Device of choice … the iPad. There is already a student web page on the Apple website saying why the iPad is ready for college/university. It obviously states its great features, the generally available apps and novel books but I think the next step will be beyond that and will leave us asking ourselves 'Why didn't we think of that already?'

LG Signs Android Patent Deal with Microsoft

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

LG Electronics Thursday became the latest Android and Chrome OS peddler to bow to Microsoft’s patent claims and sign a “patent agreement” that Microsoft said “provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for LG’s tablets, mobile phones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome OS Platform.” Usually Microsoft brags that it’s getting paid for privilege. This time it didn’t a word about royalties, merely noting that the “contents of the agreement have not been disclosed,” describing the deal as expanding on a pre-existing agreement. That license covered Linux and, as FOSS Patents points out, Android is a Linux fork. So, the new arrangement is assumed to be royalty-bearing.

Kodak Sues Apple and HTC

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

Eastman Kodak, the erstwhile American icon that’s been threatening to turn into road kill if it can’t sell off a chunk of its patent portfolio, sued Apple and HTC Tuesday in a New York district court for patent infringement. It also complained to the International Trade Commission claiming the device makers’ camera-enabled iOS and Android smartphones and tablets (iPods too) tread on its digital imaging technology, specifically in the way they transmit images. Kodak is already suing Apple for infringing a patent that covers technology related to a method for previewing images. Now it’s saying the same thing about HTC’s widgetry. Otherwise, the two are charged with infringing the same four patents. Kodak president and COO Laura Quatela said in a statement, “We’ve had numerous discussions with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement.” Although Kodak is asking for an exclusion order, Quatela said Kodak wasn’t interested in disrupting the availability of any product. It just wants to be fairly compensated. “We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating our pioneering patent portfolio,” she said. Motorola, Samsung and Nokia pay Kodak royalties. So do 30 other companies. The FOSS Patents blog figures the lawsuits are supposed to demonstrate to a strategic buyer that there’s enough value in the Kodak portfolio that it can be used to sue major wireless device makers. The patents-in-suit include US Patent No. 7,210,161 – “Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Camera to a Service Provider Using a Network Configuration File;” US Patent No. 7,742,084 – “Network Configuration File for Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Still Camera;” US Patent No. 7,453,605 – “Capturing Digital Images to be Transferred to an E-Mail Address;” and US Patent No. 7,936,391 – “Digital Camera with Communications Interface for Selectively Transmitting Images over a Cellular Phone Network and a Wireless LAN Network to a Destination.” Kodak added US Patent No. 6,292,218 (“Electronic Camera for Initiating Capture of Still Images While Previewing Motion Images”) to the HTC charges. It’s the same patent at issue in the pending ITC action initiated by Kodak in January 2010 against Apple and Research In Motion. Kodak estimates the Apple-RIM case could be worth a billion dollars. A decision isn’t expected before September. Meanwhile, Kodak said it has reorganized to cut costs, accelerate its transformation into a digital company and create shareholder value. The Wall Street Journal said last week that if it can’t raise cash by selling off upwards of 1,100 patents to fund a turnaround, it was going to have to seek bankruptcy protection. It’s also been looking for new financing to keep operating. Its new structure cuts its operating units from three to two: commercial and consumer. It may get kicked off the New York Stock Exchange if it can’t raise its share price. It closed at 60 cents Tuesday.

Genuitec's MobiOne Eases Way for Windows Development of iOS Apps

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:56:39 EST

Genuitec, LLC has revamped its MobiOne development tool to allow Windows operating system users to design and build App Store-ready iOS apps without using a Mac. This means there is no longer an additional expense to buy a Mac machine or learn Objective-C to design apps that operate natively on iOS devices. “By removing the barriers to entry for iOS app design and building, MobiOne is truly at the forefront of making mobile technologies accessible to the masses," said Wayne Parrott, vice president of product development. "If a Windows users has enough skill to design a PowerPoint slide, they can design and build iPhone and iPad apps with ease. Web developers with HTML5 and CSS3 skills will see even greater productivity.”

2012 the Year of the Tablet and Mobile Developer

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:45:00 EST

Today I noticed two very separate articles, though to me they are both interrelated and on a subject that I feel very strongly about, Tablet Devices and Mobile App Development. It is no secret that I am a total iOS convert in my personal life, living with my iPhone and iPad, but as a businessman and technologist I am just as much of a convert to Enterprise Mobility and Development, so much so that I have predicted that 2012 will be the year of the Mobile Developer, Enterprise Business App and Tablet Device… more than 2011.

Samsung Denied iPhone 4S Ban in Italy

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:15:00 EST

Samsung’s bid to get a preliminary injunction outlawing the sale of Apple’s iPhone 4S in Italy has failed, according to ANSA, the Italian wire service. The decision is Samsung’s third failure in Europe. Last month a similar attempt was shot down by a French court and before that Holland said no. Apple, on the other hand, is appealing the rejection of its bid to get four Samsung widgets outlawed in the United States to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and the temporary injunctions it managed to get against Samsung in Germany, the Netherlands and Australia are being reviewed. If the courts find they shouldn’t have been granted Apple could wind up owing its nemesis money.

webOS Doomed from Conception: NYT

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:15:00 EST

The TouchPad tablet that HP brought to market last year only to kill it a few weeks later for lack of sales was doomed to fail according a story in the New York Times Tuesday. HP subsequently wrote off a nasty $1.6 billion to cover the cost of its folly. It had paid $1.2 billion in mid-2010 to buy Palm and the webOS operating system running the tablet. The Times’ story, which quotes the former senior director of software at Palm Paul Mercer by name as well as several other anonymous ex-HP and Palm employees, claims the widget – like the Palm phones HP also discontinued – didn’t have a pray of cutting it against Apple and Android because webOS is based on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that browsers use to display web pages and WebKit, which was supposed to make writing apps easier, is just too slow to run applications on a par with iPad and iPhone.

RIM Has a Bad Case of Yahoo-itis

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:45:00 EST

Amazon, which hired an investment bank for the purpose, according to Reuters, and Microsoft together with its buddy Nokia, according to the Wall Street Journal, have kicked the tires at RIM. Reuters says RIM “turned down takeover overtures from Amazon.com Inc and other potential buyers” without knowing who those others might be before the Journal waded in. It still thinks Amazon and RIM are talking. RIM’s board and its co-CEOs, behaving like Yahoo’s, apparently prefer to try to catch the falling knives by themselves. No formal bids were supposedly made by anybody and the Journal says it’s “unclear how extensively RIM has been involved in any takeover discussions with Microsoft and Nokia.”

Schmidt Hints Google’s Own Tablet Coming

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST

After lauding Steve Jobs as the “Michelangelo of our time,” combining visionary genius with extraordinary engineering smarts, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that Google means to bring its own tablet to market in the next six months as good if not better than the iPad. “Noi nei prossimi sei mesi contiamo di mettere sul mercato un tablet di altissima qualità.” Now if that’s true, do you suppose such a thing will come from Google as the failed Nexus One did or from Motorola Mobility or from Android OEMs generally? He also said competition between the iPhone and Android will be “brutal” because that’s capitalism.

HTC’s German Resellers Sued for Selling Its Phones

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST

Reuters says IP firm IPCom has sued maybe 30 German retailers so far for patent infringement for selling HTC phones. HTC last month dropped an appeal of an injunction IPCom got from a German court in 2009. That made the injunction enforceable. The phones enjoined are any devices using UMTS technology, which is everything HTC sells. IPCom subsequently sent maybe 100 retailers a notice to stop selling the phones by December 20. They didn’t cooperate so it started suing. The penalty is supposed to be a fine of up to €250,000 ($326,000) for each violation. To head off IPCom HTC rushed into a court in Düsseldorf last week and got a preliminary injunction to stop IPCom from sending retailers the cease and desist letter. IPCom told Bloomberg the amended language doesn’t stop it from threatening legal action.

Apple’s German Galaxy Tab Ban Looking Doomed

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

The Düsseldorf court that blocked Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Germany in September said Thursday that the changes Samsung has made in the modified Germany-only Galaxy Tab 10.1N are enough to distinguish it from the iPad and that Apple is unlikely to win a ruling against it on February 9. Apple had complained to the court that the re-worked “N” was still a dead ringer for its widget and wanted it blocked too. Apple objections are based on its European design IP. The “N” tablet has a thicker bezel design and the speakers are now on the front. Samsung’s label is also reportedly bigger.

ITC Says Motorola’s Android Widgets Infringe Microsoft IP

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST

Maybe Android won’t be vaporized in the thermonuclear war that Steve Jobs promised to fund before he died; maybe it’s doomed to suffer a thousand cuts. After the International Trade Commission decided Monday that HTC’s Android phones definitely infringe an Apple patent, it said Tuesday that Motorola’s Android widgets infringe a Microsoft patent and that US sales could be blocked. Like HTC, Motorola is playing the verdict as a victory since it’s not as bad as it might have been. It’s a preliminary decision by an administrative law judge that the ITC’s commissioners could overturn by April 20 and Microsoft originally went after MMI with nine patents but only wound up nailing MMI on four claims of one patent called ActiveSync that lets users schedule group meetings across mobile devices. Microsoft dropped two patents and the judge threw out six. Motorola is in a better position than HTC. At least Microsoft is willing to license its IP for a price. The same cannot be said for Apple.

Apple Gets HTC Android Phones Banned in US

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 08:30:00 EST

After a couple of delays, the International Trade Commission finally decided Monday that HTC and its Android phones infringe an Apple patent and will be banned from sale in the United States. But the ruling is so narrow that it may not make much of a difference. In fact, HTC is playing the decision as its victory. Apple started with 10 patents but won on only two claims in one patent and, in a concession to carriers, the ban won’t start until April 19, giving HTC more time than usual to come up with a workaround that it claims it already has or at least is working on. Meanwhile, it said it intends to comply with the order “as soon as possible and sell non-infringing products.” Presumably it needs to avoid any slowdown in carrier orders. It’s already pulled in Q4 guidance because of competition.

Intel Reorgs Search for Mobile Holy Grail

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

Caught between the mobile wave that may swamp its boat and the slowing PC market that may leave it marooned, Intel has set up a new Mobile and Communications Group to chase after ARM and its minions and crack the smartphone and tablet markets. The unit combines four existing divisions: netbooks and tablets, ultra mobility (smartphone processors), mobile communications (baseband) and mobile wireless (Wi-Fi). The idea, it said, is to “speed up and improve the development process.” At least there’ll be less duplicated effort, but what Intel needs and quickly is a winning energy-efficient design. It’s supposed to have a new Atom mobile chip code named Medfield early next year. The widget and Intel’s alliance with Google to optimize Android for the Atom may or may not improve its traction (while its old buddy Microsoft cozies up to ARM and ports Windows 8 to its architecture).

Amazon to Fix Some Kindle Fire Problems

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:45:00 EST

In the next two weeks Amazon said Monday that it’s going to update the software in its $199 Kindle Fire over-the-air to address buyer complaints about the performance of the vaunted seven-inch Android tablet. It’s supposed to make the balky touchscreen easier to navigate and let users erase recent activity as well as choose what items are displayed. If that’s all, it won’t address all the gripes including scrolling, Wi-Fi and Internet access and stodgy apps. Some of the widgets have reportedly been returned. TechCrunch says the Fire is just fine inside Amazon’s “walled garden.”

The Mobile Business Object... Your Mobile Way Forward

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:15:00 EST

As you probably know the Mobile Business Object (MBO) is at the heart of Sybase's UnWired Platform, which is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform used in turn as part of the SAP Mobility Platform. Once defined the MBO can be used in Native (such as iOS) as well as Hybrid Web Container Applications. It can be described in four points. Defines the data you want to use from your backend system and exposes it to be used for your mobile application /workflow. Created using our simple, graphical tooling inside the Eclipse development environment. Re-usable, allowing you to leverage across multiple device types. Future proofing of your application, when new device types are added your same MBO can be used.

ITC Delays Android Import Ban Decision Again

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

The US International Trade Commission, which was supposed to deliver its final decision on whether or not HTC infringes two Apple patents on Wednesday, has pushed back its commissioners’ verdict until next Monday, December 19. It is the second time that the ITC has delayed its decision. It was originally supposed to say whether HTC will be allowed to keep on importing its Android phones into the United States on December 6. The ITC’s reasons are unknown; word of the delay came overnight from HTC, which told Reuters it had gotten a notice of the postponement but that the ITC didn’t say why. Patent watcher Florian Mueller thinks it’s likely due to the ITC’s workload and that it doesn’t suggest anything good or ill for either side.