Apple Squashes Rumors

Apple will not develop a new, inexpensive iPhone just for the sake of offering a cheaper alternative, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a speech on Tuesday.

The company’s focus is on creating great products, and it will not make a smartphone that does not past the quality test, Cook said during a webcast from the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference, which is being held in San Francisco.

“There are other companies that do that, that’s not who we are,” Cook said. “Our North Star is great products.”

Instead, the company is now dropping prices on the older iPhone models. That has been successful, and the demand for iPhone 4 models in December was greater than supply, Cook said.

“It surprised us as to the level of demand we have for it,” Cook said.

Lowering the price on older models is just one of the approaches Apple is taking to reach out to price-sensitive buyers. It’s not easy to balance quality and price, and that’s when innovation comes into play and new products could be created to meet consumer demand, Cook said.

“Sometimes you can take the issue … and you can solve it in different ways,” Cook said.

For example, the first iPod that shipped in 2001 was priced at $399, and now users can buy an iPod Shuffle for $49. There was also a big demand in the past to drop the price of Macs to under $500, and Apple tried and couldn’t do it, so it created the iPad tablet.

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Blackberry Makes A Comeback

Research In Motion has hinted that it will unveil two new handsets early next month to accompany the release of its BlackBerry 10 operating system.

RIM is expected to unveil the phones at an event in New York City on Wednesday and will begin promoting BlackBerry 10 to consumers the following Sunday, Feb. 3, when it will air a TV commercial during the Super Bowl.

The sporting event attracts one of the largest TV audiences of the year in America, and companies pay millions of dollars for a 30-second advertising spot, underscoring how important it is for RIM that its new BlackBerry platform will be a hit. The same commercial will also air in Canada, RIM’s home country.

In announcing its publicity plans Friday, RIM also hinted at when the phones will be available to consumers. It said the TV spot “kicks off a week of worldwide launch activity for RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform, along with the first two devices to run on the new platform.”

If the commercial marks the start of a weeklong buildup to the launch, that would put the North American release of the phones at roughly the start of the second week in February.

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Motorola To Close More Locations

Motorola Mobility will shut down most operations in South Korea in 2013 as part of an ongoing restructuring under Google ownership.

The decision is estimated to displace about 500 jobs in South Korea and follows a decision made a month ago to close down most international Motorola websites and to lay off about 4,000 workers.

Motorola Mobility said in a statement that it began telling staff in South Korea on Monday about “plans to close most of our operations in Korea, including our research and development and consumer mobile device marketing organization.”

The statement said the changes “reflect our plans to consolidate our global R&D efforts to foster collaboration, and to focus more attention on markets where we are best positioned to compete effectively.”

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GreenPeace Still After Apple

A Greenpeace study has revealed that Indian outsourcing firm Wipro made the biggest strides to becoming a greener company this year, while Apple continued to lag behind.

Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics” is a 16 company ranking that sets out to discover what leading electronics firms are doing to reduce their impacts on the environment.

This year’s study found that Indian firm Wipro, which has a consumer electronics division, was making important progress toward becoming greener.

“There is not a single reason why companies like HP, Nokia and Apple can’t do what Wipro is doing,” Greenpeace’s IT analyst Casey Harrell said.

Wipro was ranked number one in Greenpeace’s survey because of its efforts to increase its use of renewable energy, bring energy efficient products to market, nail down an effective product take back strategy and advocate for better governmental energy standards.

Harrell said that advocacy is an important step companies should take to becoming more environmentally aware. However, he believes that many companies are not doing enough to get the government involved in green initiatives.

“These companies invest a lot of money in advocacy, just not for energy,” continued Harrell.

“They invest in advocacy for things like IP reform and tax reform, just not for energy policy reform.”

Greenpeace’s study criticized Apple for its lack of advocacy efforts. The environmental agency gave the Iphone maker a ranking of zero when it came to environmental protection advocacy.

Apple has previously been slammed by Greenpeace for its decision to use glued-in batteries in its latest Macbook devices.

While many US companies rated poorly on environmental advocacy, Harrell still held out hope that some firms will try to do more going forward. As an example for his optimism, Greenpeace’s IT analyst said that in 2010 HP came out against the controversial California Proposition 23.

Another key area that Greenpeace thinks electronic firms need to improve upon is the lack of proper warranties on devices. Harrell said that companies can make the most energy efficient products in the world but if consumers have to buy a new product each year it won’t matter.

“It is a huge problem,” said Harrell.

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Does 4G Pose A Security Threat?

Could 4G Networks give way for more high-risk mobile security implications; Symantec is warning of such a wave of threats.

“We could see a move to the sort of threats that we already see on the wireless and fixed connected network,” John said. “Malware that you usually have on fixed networks, like botnets.

“There aren’t many botnets on mobile devices because the bandwidth’s not there to support it, once you go on to 4G [hackers] could start infecting systems.”

To ensure that enterprises avoid these these security threats, John advised that businesses need to be on their toes more than ever, look closely at everything that’s coming into the network, and not trust anything.

“Companies need to make sure that where traditionally it’s been a firewall with a perimeter with everything in a timeline environment,” John said. “What they need to look at is ‘what are my employees doing’, ‘what information is being shared’ and ‘how do we ensure our information is being protected no matter where it may be’, whether its mobile device, across networks or sitting in a cloud service.”

“This is a change we are going through, but 4G is going to push the need for that change even more so,” she added.

According to John, 4G will also be detrimental to businesses in the way it will add a greater burden for them to ensure that cloud services and mobility – what she calls “two of the biggest security challenges for enterprises and their employees” – are up to scratch.

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Is Nokia Sitting On A Gold Mine?

Mobile phone company Nokia might be suffering, but the big technology companies are hoping that it does not wake up to the fact it is sitting on a troll’s gold mine.

Recently Nokia flexed its muscles and orderied Apple to pay Nokia a royalty fee for each iPhone sold. Logically it could clean up if it hit Google with something similar over its Android operating system. According to IP expert Florian Mueller, Nokia holds the most patents relating to the cutting-edge 4G/LTE technology.

This puts it in a position similar to what Microsoft had with its 2G/3G technology which allowed them to collect half of all the profits of each Android device sold. This gave Microsoft more than $3.2 billion per year so this indicates that Nokia will make triple this amount in the future. Nokia has sued HTC, RIM and View-sonic and their defence against Nokia is weak.

To make matters worse Nokia signed a 2010 cross-licensing agreement with Motorola which precludes Google from transferring the numerous patents it recently acquired from Motorola Mobility. This means that any protection that Google might have gained from owning Motorola Mobility are not counted. But this is only the tip of any iceburg and indicates how the entire mobile phone industry can be stuffed up by patents.

Recently a Google executive claimed that a standard smartphone contains more than 250,000 separate patented technologies. All of these have to be paid before a product can be released. What is worrying is that Nokia own a vast majority of this patented technology.

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Sprint Will Support Mozilla’s Mobile OS

A new operating system for mobile phones, similar to the Mozilla Firefox internet browser has got the backing of several major telecom companies, turning up the heat on Google and Apple in the smartphone market.

Mozilla said on Monday that mobile network operators Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, Smart, Telecom Italia, Telenor and Etisalat are backing the Firefox platform.

The non-profit organization which evolved from Netscape after the internet browser wars 14 years ago, said phone makers ZTE and TCL Communication Technology will roll out the first Firefox OS phones using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in early 2013.

Mozilla, which fosters the collective development of open-source Web applications, currently generates most of its income from a contract which makes Google the default search provider for Firefox users.

Broad support from telecom companies and handset makers is crucial for any new smartphone platform to take off in a market increasingly dominated by Google’s Android software, which has a market share of around 60 percent, while Apple’s iPhones run on its proprietary iOS software.

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Windows 7 Most Used OS

Windows 7 is now the leading operating system (OS) for PCs, according to figures from web traffic analysis firm Statcounter.

The report claims that in June more than half of all internet connected PCs, or 50.2 per cent, ran Microsoft’s most recent Windows 7 OS.

Statcounter’s statistics show that Windows XP was the next most popular operating system, used by 29.9 per cent of users.

This might be the first time that Windows 7 has had more market share than the other operating systems put together, but with the launch of Windows 8 looming, it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft will begin pushing Windows 7 users to make the switch to its next operating system.

That’s already started happening with XP. Launched back in 2001, the OS was a massive hit for the software giant and for this reason it’s finding it hard to wean users away from Windows XP – especially considering how rubbish Windows Vista was. However, Microsoft has said that it’s time to move on, and it will end business support for Windows XP in the next two years.

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Intel Buys Patents

Intel on Monday spent US$375 million to purchase nearly 1,700 wireless networking patents from subsidiaries of digital communications company Interdigital.

Intel will get patents that cover a range of 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi technologies from Interdigital. The patents should boost Intel’s product mobile product portfolio as the company establishes a presence in the smartphone and tablet markets, which is currently ruled by ARM.

Intel has said it will integrate 3G and 4G LTE capabilities along with its Atom microprocessor in devices like smartphones and tablets. Intel made its first entry into the smartphone market earlier this year with its Atom chip code-named Medfield, which is being used in handsets from Lenovo, Orange and Lava International.

Intel later this year will release a dual-core Atom Z2580 processor with 3G, 4G and LTE capabilities. Intel’s upcoming Atom chip for tablets, code-named Clover Trail, will also come with mobile broadband options.

Intel started building its wireless business following the acquisition of Infineon Wireless for $1.4 billion, which was completed last year.

Wireless is a fast-changing market, and the company is making this investment to support the business, according to Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman.

“This was an opportunity to add some value to our patent portfolio. That’s over and above what we have,” Mulloy said.

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Is It “Game Over” For RIM?

Research In Motion’s share price on Monday fell to less than $10 on Nasdaq, a breach that technical analysts say could prompt even further declines, after an analyst warned that the BlackBerry maker’s sales were dismal last month.

The stock, which is trading at its lowest since 2003, has fallen nearly 15 percent in the past week alone.

After an announcement last week that RIM expects to post a quarterly operating loss, sentiment is extremely bearish on the stock, said Elvis Picardo, a strategist at Global Securities in Vancouver.

To make matters worse, Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette said in a note to clients on Sunday that RIM sales deteriorated further in May.

On Monday, RIM’s shares fell 5.8 percent to $9.66 on the Nasdaq, while its Toronto-listed shares closed on Monday 6.1 percent lower at C$10.03.

“You would have expected the C$10 level to have provided pretty strong support, but if it cracks through that it’s really hard to say where this decline will stop,” said Picardo.

RIM, which almost invented the concept of on-the-go email with its first BlackBerry device in 1999, has seen its once dominant position fade in the face of competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices from the likes of Samsung Electronics Co using Google Inc’s Android software.

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