Apple and Samsung, the two leaders in mobile devices now suing each other in nine countries over Android, have agreed to sit down and try to settle a couple of US patent suits ahead of a trial due to start in late July. It’s not their idea. It’s the idea of federal court judge Lucy Koh, who drew the two Apple v Samsung patent infringement lawsuits, according to the FOSS Patents blog, which has been diligently following all the litigation. To at least look cooperative, the companies agreed to send their respective CEOs Tim Cook and Gee-Sung Choi along with their chief counsels to the San Francisco courthouse sometime in the next 90 days for settlement talks mediated by Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero.
In the past few weeks, bloggers from BetaNews, Gizmodo and TechCrunch have ripped apart the Galaxy Note (and devices like it). You can find their posts here (1, 2, and 3). They have gotten slammed in the comment sections, but I am feeling the need to pile on a bit. Here’s my problem with it; when you write, personal/anecdotal evidence can only get you so far. At some point, you have to look for real, provable facts. 5M people have bought the Samsung Galaxy Note, it’s available worldwide (just like the iPhone) and is only available on a few networks. I personally have one, and it is completely different than any other smartphone I’ve ever used.
A little background so you know what type of experience I have. I have been a Microsoft .NET architect and developer since the first beta release. Before that C, C++, ColdFusion, ASP, JavaScript and of course HTML. Being a .NET developer has many advantages, but the one major disadvantage we suffer has driven me to Java and Objective-C over the past year. That one disadvantage? Microsoft themselves. They come off as completely lost and have wreaked havoc on .NET developer community the past few years.
The Justice Department sued Apple and five prominent book publishers Wednesday morning for colluding to fix the price of iPad-borne e-books. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan. Sixteen states have filed separate civil suits so far looking for money. Those charged include Macmillan, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins. Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins immediately agreed to settle and terminate their arrangements with Apple, clear any joint e-book ventures with the government and report any communications with other publishers to the DOJ for the next five years.
The Justice Department is fixing to sue Apple, Macmillan and maybe Penguin for antitrust maybe as soon as Wednesday by all reports. The iPad-centered charges are supposed to be collusion and fixing the price of that newfangled invention, e-books. The DOJ essentially destroyed Microsoft at the height of its powers a generation ago with its antitrust suit. Ironically Apple hit an all-time high Tuesday and for one bright shining moment had a market cap worth $600 billion. The DOJ’s got a burr under its saddle because Apple and Macmillan won’t settle – or even talk anymore about settlement.
Here is #5. Five points the Mobile Information Worker expects from their Mobile Enterprise Data. 1. Always available and on-demand access to information (off-line and on-line). 2. New ways to interact and display data. 3. Reduce data re-entry error, by synchronising data. 4. Capture new forms of data not available before. 5. Custom and or on demand reporting, for example Mobile Analytics.
Taking a stance of 'Build it and they will come' has never worked in IT and especially now with the Consumerisation of Mobility and the Prosumers (Professional + Consumer) in your Enterprise, whom are expecting or even demanding the same experience as Mobile Apps on the App Stores/Markets. These employees have been covertly educated to expect the best mobility experience and are now turning their thoughts to solutions in their daily tasks, on the go! Just look at the best ranking mobile apps within the App Stores/Markets and the Apps that are being acquired for large sums of money… they would have all done their homework to ensure maximum effect and this is now the target where Enterprise Mobility is expected to shoot for! In-House Mobile Application Development is the key going forward for the Enterprise and many companies nowadays have a Chief Mobility Office (CMoO). It is the CMoO's top responsibility to Co-ordinate Mobility Trends and Directions, reducing any wasted time and effort and ultimately empowering the Enterprise with the benefits of mobility that I have mentioned in previous articles, such as streamlining business processes, rapid response, ultimately gaining a competitive advantage.
Here is #2. Five points on how Enterprise Mobile Developers can improve the Relationships with their End Users. 1. Live several days in the life of your user observing work locations and patterns. 2. Have end users in on the design panel as well as the usability and testing. 3. Get buy in from key stakeholders that are part of the end user team. 4. Learn from consumer applications that are popular with users. 5. Listen... The End User has the business expertise.
Apple is having a heady time on Wall Street. Its stock pushed past $630 for a while Tuesday morning after its ax Gene Muster, the respected Piper Jaffray analyst recognized as having the most clout in the stock, pushed his 12-month price target from $718 to $910 a share. His call, which said Apple could go to a thousand bucks or better in 2014 and make Apple the first trillion dollar stock in history, came a day after Brian White, a “who’s he ?” analyst with Topeka Securities, thinking Apple TV and China, said Apple’s good for $1,001.
Apple’s new iPad was named the best tablet computer in a ranking by Consumer Reports, two weeks after the magazine said the device runs “significantly hotter” than previous models. The new iPad’s high-resolution screen provides the best detail and color accuracy of all tablets Consumer Reports has seen, the publication said today on its website.
Smartphones are trending up, they now account for almost 50 percent of mobile phones in the United States. And, not surprisingly, feature phones are trending down – four out of five new mobile phone purchases are for smartphones. The clear winner is Google, about 48 percent of smartphones are Android devices. iPhone is second with [...]
The Fair Labor Association (FLA), which Apple hired to look into working conditions at Foxconn plants in China a few months ago, said late Thursday that it had interviewed 35,000 workers and found no instances of child labor or forced labor. What it did find was people working an unsafe 60 hours or more a week in violation of even China’s labor laws (49 hours) to make “quick money.” Foxconn has reportedly pledged to reduce overtime and hire and house tens of thousands more people by July of 2013, which the FLA called “an unprecedented commitment.” Workers weren’t always paid fairly for the overtime and 64% of the workers said the basic wage of a few hundred dollars a month was insufficient although more than the Chinese minimum wage.
Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) filed a legal complaint against Apple Wednesday charging it with misleading consumers in promoting its new iPad. It said Apple suggests the iPad with Wifi+4G can connect to an Australian 4G mobile network with a SIM card when it can’t. The regulator wanted financial penalties, corrective advertising, refunds for the consumers affected and possibly an injunction. The one 4G network in the country is reportedly part of the spectrum the iPad can’t reach but Apple is pushing to retain its 4G branding.
Apple’s contract manufacturer Foxconn and its Taiwanese avatar the Hon Hai Group are buying 9.9% of struggling Osaka-based electronics conglomerate Sharp. They’ll get $1.6 billion worth of new Sharp shares. It’s the biggest investment a Taiwan company has ever made in a Japanese company and Hon Hai will be Sharp’s largest stockholder. It’s a big comeuppance for Japanese industry. Sharp expects to lose $3.49 billion this fiscal year, which ends March 31. Hon Hai will also take half of Sharp’s 92.96% position in its losing LCD panel unit. At least until September Sony owns the rest but won’t put any more money in it. The failure of the four-year-old Sharp-Sony alliance is said to be the reason Sharp turned to Hon Hai, whose LCD operation is also losing money. Sharp’s IGZO screen technologies and production facility are leading-edge.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is in China, the company’s second-largest market, meeting with unnamed government officials as well as Vice-Premier Li Keqiang, who may be running the country next year. The Chinese said they chatted about IP issues and greater cooperation. Seems China wants to enhance its “innovation capacity,” nurture and develop “emerging strategic industries” and speed up “the building an innovative country.” Bloomberg says Apple in the last couple of days has been talking about “greater investment” in the country. The news service imagines that might mean catching up with its retail store plans. Apple’s behind its own forecast. It’s got two stores in Beijing, three in Shanghai and one in Hong Kong. It should have 25 according to a two-year-old plan. It could reportedly support 100.
OpenXava is a framework for Rapid Development of Web Applications for iPad, well-suited for business and database oriented applications. OpenXava allows you develop applications just by writing simple domain classes with Java or Groovy. The user interface is generated automatically in runtime, without code generation. OpenXava 4.4 has some new interesting features such as: Totals, row count and add action in the collection frame when the collection is folded. The frames are folded using a slide effect. It's possible to filter by range in list and collections. Support for Java 7.
Apple has failed to shake coveted information about Google’s development of Android and its $12.5 billion planned acquisition of soon-to-be Google satellite Motorola Mobility out of MMI. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner, who will hear Apple’s patent complaints against Motorola this summer, said in a ruling the other day that Apple’s discovery motion was “vague and overbroad and Motorola’s objections are persuasive.” Apple will have to “narrow its request to a manageable and particularized set of documents” if it wants a new court order.
The butcher, the banker, the drummer… everyone can create apps, and so many are saying, ‘why not?!’ and giving it shot. Everyday people all over the world from all different backgrounds are going beyond simply being an app consumer to being an app creator. A fundamental change in power and organizational structures is currently taking place; it’s an exciting revolution. It’s fast-paced, too. At the beginning of January, my #1 top prediction for apps in 2012 was that, “By the end of 2012, people will begin to switch from being App Consumers to App Creators!” Well, it’s already begun! It’s APPENING, now.
After Apple said early Monday that it would start paying a $10.60-a-year dividend and buy back stock to spend down its massive cash horde – something some people say Steve Jobs would never have done – and after its stock closed at over $600 for the first time ever – you watching this up there, Steve – the company put a figure on the initial sales of the new iPad, something it wouldn’t do during the dividend call. It said it sold three million of the slabs since they went on sale Friday. Worldwide marketing chief Philip Schiller called it a “blockbuster – the strongest iPad launch yet.”
Breaking with tradition – and changing the definition of a growth company in the process – Apple Monday morning said it would start paying a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in the September quarter. At $10.60 a year that would currently be about a 1.8% yield, putting it among the highest dividend payers in the US, but disappointing analysts who thought it could easily afford 3% or more. It will also start buying back shares in the December quarter. It means to buy back $10 billion worth of its shares over three years. Many people regard buybacks as a waste of money. Apple’s got more than $100 billion in the bank – twice what Google had at the end of last year – and equal to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 a share – but two-thirds of it is offshore in the Cayman Islands where it’s paying next to nothing in taxes.
In the chattiest Apple’s been about the iPad trademark mess it’s in in Mainland China it said Tuesday that the financially squeezed Shenzhen Proview Technology, which claims to still own the mark there, insisted on selling the IP in 2009 through its Taiwan affiliate so its many creditors wouldn’t know it got the money. Apple claims it was snookered into dealing with the Taiwan subsidiary, which represented that it controlled two iPad marks in China even though they technically belong to Proview Shenzhen.
A Dutch court Wednesday told Samsung it couldn’t have an injunction against Apple’s iPhone 4s based on patents it pledged to ETSI and 3G/UMTS standards. Not when Apple is willing to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. It especially can’t have an injunction or otherwise call Apple to account because it’s already getting paid by Qualcomm for the patents; Apple’s just buying covered baseband chips from Qualcomm; it’s covered by extension. Samsung’s trick of terminating its Qualcomm agreement as far as Apple goes didn’t work in Holland because the widgetry was irrevocably pledged to ETSI.
For some reason that isn’t clear, Apple and Motorola Mobility took a shot at negotiating a cross-license that might have covered all the Android OEMs late last year. So says the European Commission’s decision to clear the Google-MMI merger that Bloomberg pointed to Monday. The 38-page document indicates that Apple demanded what the EC called “carve-outs,” and FOSS Patents thinks that means exclusions on any portfolio-wide cross-license so Apple can keep its special distinguishing features to itself.
The Mac Blogosphere has the new iPad going on sale in retail stores at 8am Friday morning March 16. 9to5Mac has got pictures of some Apple signage showing the time.
It was just a matter of time before this elephant stomped into the room. The big Chinese banks that Proview Technology Shezhen – the Chinese company that claims to own the iPad trademark – owes a pot full of money to claim they relieved Proview of the Chinese rights to the mark in early 2009 when they seized its assets. That was nine months before Apple says it bought the trademark off a supposedly authorized Proview (Taiwan). This message comes from a consulting company called Hejun Vanguard Group that claimed to speak for the banks in an e-mail to press.