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iPhone Narrows Gap With Android
January 26, 2012 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Apple’s iPhone gained major ground among recent buyers in its battle against smartphones running Google’s Android, but still lagged behind its OS rival, pollster Nielsen said today.
In a December 2011 survey of U.S. consumers who had purchased a smartphone in the previous three months, 44.5% chose an iPhone, a jump of nearly 20 percentage points from the 25.1% that Nielsen measured in October.
That represents a 77% increase in the iPhone’s numbers.
But Android maintained the lead in the recent-buyers game with a 46.9% share, down from October’s 61.6%.
A majority of the new iPhone owners — 57% to be exact — bought an iPhone 4S, the newest model in Apple’s line-up, said Nielsen. The iPhone 4S debuted in the U.S. on Oct. 14, 2011.
Nielsen said the iPhone 4S had an “enormous” impact on Apple’s huge jump in share among new smartphone purchasers.
Big Blue Still The Patent King
As technology companies start to stockpile patents so that they can see off their rivals IFI Claims Patent Services, a company that maintains global patent databases, has clocked the outfits with the most weapons in any patent war.
More than 224,505 utility patents were awarded in the U.S. last year, jumping two percent over the previous year’s record-breaking tally of 219,614 patents. IBM has always had the most patents, probably because it has been around the longest. The company was granted 6,180 utility patents, up nearly five percent from 2010. Samsung was the number two 4,894 patents, followed by Canon at 2,821 patents, Panasonic with 2,559 and Toshiba with 2,483 utility patents.
Microsoft, which held on to the third spot in 2010, is in the sixth place with 2,311 utility patents granted last year, According to IFI CEO Mike Baycroft global companies, and especially Asian ones, are collecting U.S patents at a dizzying pace, and now Asian firms hold eight of the top 10 slots in the 2011 ranking.
Ericsson Seeking To Cash In On Patents
January 19, 2012 by admin
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As wireless access is added to new types of devices, Ericsson is reorganizing its licensing department in an attempt to generate more revenue from its patents, the company said on Thursday.
The Swedish telecommunication vendor’s CEO Hans Vestberg wants to keep close tabs on the latest developments, and as part of its reorganization Ericsson’s chief intellectual property officer Kasim Alfalahi will now report directly to Vestberg.
The company’s IPR portfolio includes 27,000 granted patents. Today, any vendor that wants to use cellular connectivity in its products needs a license from Ericsson, which is offered under so-called fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
Licensing patents under those terms should be fairly straightforward. But that isn’t always the case; in the Netherlands Samsung and Apple, as part of their global legal battle, are arguing in court over what fair and reasonable means.
Ericsson has largely stayed out of the telecom legal battles, but announced it had sued ZTE, which then counter-sued, in April last year. The case is still pending, according an Ericsson spokeswoman.
Motorola, Lenovo To Offer Intel-Smartphones
January 17, 2012 by admin
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Intel announced multi-year deals with Motorola Mobility and Lenovo to create smartphones and tablets, and said the first Google Android phones using the top chipmaker’s processors would go on sale this year.
Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said Lenovo would launch a smartphone for the Chinese market using Intel’s newest chip in the second quarter of the year, while Motorola will release its phone in the second half.
The agreements with the U.S. and Chinese consumer electronics makers help shore up Intel’s boldest foray into the mobile arena. The company is hoping its new “Medfield” chip conserves enough power to compete with rival smartphones using ARM Holdings’ more energy-efficient architecture.
The world’s largest chip maker is also making a concerted push for the likes of Hewlett Packard to go big on super-slim, Apple Macbook Air-like laptops called Ultrabooks, which it hopes will preserve its dominance of the PC market as tablets like the iPad draw consumers away.
“It is a multi-year, multi-product strategy that will bring both phones and tablets to the (U.S.) marketplace starting with a phone in the second half of 2012,” Dave Whalen, a vice president in the Intel Architecture Group, said of the agreement with Motorola.
“You’re going to see us working very closely with them on technologies,” Whalen told Reuters in an interview.
Kodak Goes After Apple
January 16, 2012 by admin
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Kodak has sued Apple and HTC for allegedly infringing patents related to camera imaging.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the camera firm is alleging infringement of four patents by both companies as well as a fifth by HTC. It also filed a related complaint against both companies with the US International Trade Commission (ITC).
Kodak said it obtained its patents because it decided that people would like to easily share pictures from their digital cameras before putting them on their PCs.
It claimed Apple and HTC are infringing the patents by selling and importing mobile camera phones, tablets and other devices. The federal lawsuits were filed in Kodak’s home town of Rochester, New York.
The firm wants to stop Apple and HTC from selling products such as the Iphone and Ipad and is seeking compensatory and triple damages.
Kodak also has patent litigation ongoing against RIM, and legal proceedings have been taking place for more than a year.
Apple Goes Down In Court
Apple has lost a move in US District Court in San Francisco to keep some of its software ‘secrets’ out of view of the public.
It had asked Judge William Alsup to keep documents sealed that had surfaced in its lawsuit against Psystar, Bloomberg reports. The information about Apple’s Mac OS X operating system covers topics such as technological protection measures, system integrity checks and thermal management techniques.
The court turned down Apple’s request, however, noting that the company didn’t deny that the information was already public or claim that it had been misappropriated. Apple had argued that it still deserved trade secret protection because it didn’t release the information and had never confirmed it, but that didn’t convince Judge Alsup.
The information at issue is available on a web site about the Mac OS X operating system, the judge noted, adding that Apple’s decryption key haiku is available to any user that compiles and runs publicly available source code on a Macbook Air laptop.
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Windows Phone 7 Roadmap Leaked?
January 6, 2012 by admin
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A purported Microsoft slide showing the 2012 Windows Phone roadmap seems to indicate that we could see the next major update by mid-2012.
The Tango update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012, but it won’t be aimed at high-end phones. Instead, Tango is supposed to bring Windows Phone to dirt cheap devices, or “products with the best prices” as Microsoft calls them. This seems to indicate that it will be even better at resource management than Mango, which is already far ahead of iOS and Android in terms of its OS footprint.
The big new, of course, is Apollo. The new OS is scheduled to appear in Q4 and it should enable Microsoft to offer competitive superphones. Currently Windows Phone devices max out at WVGA resolutions and single-core Qualcomm chips. Apollo could change all this and pave the way for dual-core designs with high resolution screens, probably 720p.
Windows 8 Tablet Being Developed By ASUS
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Chinese newspapers have indentified Asustek as one of five international PC brands that will work with Microsoft on the “Windows on ARM” (WOA) architecture.
Microsoft is to release its first operating system that supports chips from Arm next year. Only five PC brands have been invited by Microsoft to join WOA, a development project that shows its aggressiveness in tapping the burgeoning tablet PC market. Asustek is the latest announcement. So far Samsung, Toshiba, HP and Lenovo have been identified as working with Microsoft to develop notebooks and tablets that run on WOA architecture.
Is Qualcomm A Threat To Intel?
Intel tried to do gaming graphics cards and it failed, but when it comes to CPUs for desktop and notebooks, it is currently dominating the market. Even the graphics used in Intel’s latest integrated CPUs these days are quite decent for multimedia and even some basic gaming.
Still, Intel is now shifting its focus and it sees Qualcomm as its main competitor in years to come. We heard this from high ranked sources from within Intel who believe that Qualcomm is the only ARM company that has it all, and Intel wants to take it on.
Intel is carefully watching Nvidia and Texas Instruments, again two strong ARM players, but it still thinks Qualcomm has better time to market, more customers and a much stronger portfolio.
Intel should start shipping Medfield just in time for Windows 8, and in case you’ve missed it, Medfield is a SoC (System on Chip) platform that should find its place to a few tablets and probably even some phones next year. Since Intel is trying to speed development up and put as much pressure on ARM players as possible, its next generation SoC will also come before the end of 2012, and it will use the advanced 22nm process, something we won’t see in ARM chips next year.
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Google Buys Clever Sense
December 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Google has purchased Clever Sense, the developer of Alfred, a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app, for an undisclosed amount, both companies stated.
The Internet giant has been strengthening its local offerings. It acquired in September for example a restaurant ratings publisher Zagat to boost its online maps and local business listings with trustworthy reviews and recommendations.
Alfred, which currently provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, and night life in the locality where the person is, could however down the line broaden its scope, potentially making it the Android alternative to the Siri personal assistant on Apple’s iPhone 4S.
Clever Sense’s co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan suggested in a notice on the company’s website that Alfred may include other information sources and services.
Discovering local information is extremely important to both users and businesses, and the acquisition of Clever Sense will benefit both, Pahlavan said. “With Google and Clever Sense working together, our entire team looks forward to building more intelligent, serendipitous and magical services!”, he added.