Google, which last week created a bit of chaos with the launch of a Gmail application for Apple iOS devices, has decided to put out discontinue its Gmail application for the BlackBerry.

As of Nov. 22, Google will no longer offer technical support to users of the application, nor will it allow people to download it anymore, the company wrote in a blog post.

However, people will be able to continue using it, although Google will put its development efforts on the version of the application for mobile browsers, available at gmail.com.

Source…

AMD To Slash A 10th Of Its Workforce

Advanced Micro Devices Inc revealed a plan on Thursday to save about $200 million of operating costs in 2012 by cutting 10 percent of its global workforce and streamlining internal business processes.

The layoffs mark the first major move by Chief Executive Rory Read, who took the helm in August to try to galvanize a microprocessor maker that has bled market share to larger rival Intel Corp, while missing out on the mobile device boom.

“It’s not too surprising given the operating background of the new CEO and this is exactly what you’d bring an outsider in to do, but their problems go far deeper right now,” said Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities.

The layoffs should be completed in 2012′s first quarter, AMD said in a statement. Savings generated could help bankroll research and expansion into areas such as low-power chips, emerging markets and cloud computing next year.

In late September AMD, a distant second to Intel in selling microprocessors that are the brains of PCs, warned of manufacturing problems manufacturing it new 32 nanometer Llano chips as well as older 45 nanometer chips.

Source….

Want A $19/Month Mobile Plan?

A new wireless operator is gearing up to launch next week with plans offering unlimited data, voice and texting for $19 a month and no contract.

Republic Wireless, a division of Bandwith.com, will provide the service through Voice over IP using the nearest available Wi-Fi hotspot starting Tuesday, Nov. 8, a spokesman confirmed via email.

When a wireless phone user is traveling, the service will be provided through traditional cellular connections, initially over the Sprint network.

One important catch: Republic will require that its users have a new Android-based smartphone equipped with hardware and software that supports automatic switching from Wi-Fi to cellular. The device must have single phone number that works on both networks.

Republic hasn’t disclosed further details on phones the network will support. The company said more details will be made available on the launch date.

Republic calls its Wi-Fi and cellular mixture “Hybrid Calling,” a strategy it said reduces the costs for network services and makes the $19 flat monthly “membership” rate possible.

Republic estimates that smartphone users are within reach of Wi-Fi over 60% of the time, said the spokesman, Kevin LaHaise.

Source….

Judge Oks Sprint’s Lawsuit Against AT&T

A judge in the U.S. on Wednesday gave the go ahead to parts of C Spire Wireless and Sprint Nextel’s lawsuits against AT&T’s proposed US$39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

AT&T and T-Mobile had moved for dismissal of the lawsuits arguing that the complaints by Sprint and C Spire, formerly Cellular South, failed to adequately substantiate that the merger would cause them “antitrust injury”.

The decision by District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia could complicate AT&T’s defense of the deal which has been already opposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in August to block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile, saying that the deal would significantly reduce competition, increase prices and stifle innovation. Seven state attorneys general have joined the lawsuit. That case goes on trial in February before Judge Huvelle.

Where private plaintiffs have successfully pleaded antitrust injury, the fact that they are defendants’ competitors is no bar, Judge Huvelle said before allowing Sprint and C Spire to proceed with their claim that the merger would make it difficult for them to acquire wireless devices. The companies had claimed that after the merger AT&T and Verizon would be in a better position to get exclusive handset deals, while foreclosing their access to the most innovative handsets and raise their costs.

Source…

Apple Loses Court Case

Apple has lost a patent lawsuit against a small Spanish company, allowing the firm to continue selling its tablet computer.

Apple filed the case a year ago when it obtained an injunction from a local court to ban imports of the NT-K tablet into Spain. However, according to court documents, the Spanish court has vacated the injunction, saying that there are no legal grounds to block sales of the device.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NT-K tablet is made in China and sold in Europe by Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala, based in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia.

The NT-K tablet runs a Spanish language version of Android written by Nuevas Tecnologias’ programmers.

Source…

Is Motorola Mobility A Patent Pimp Too?

Motorola Mobility has received $228m in patent licensing deals.

Motorola Mobility, which is in the process of being bought by Google, confirmed in its accounts that in June 2010 the firm signed a licensing deal with an unnamed company for which Motorola would receive $175m and future royalties. Those future royalties stacked up to an impressive $228m in just the nine months leading up to 2 October 2010.

Google’s attempt to buy Motorola’s handset division was generally regarded as a move to acquire the firm’s considerable patent portfolio. Motorola’s handset division is widely credited with being one of the major contributors to the development of mobile phones and while the firm’s smartphones might not be as fashionable as devices from Apple, HTC or Samsung, it clearly has patents that can bring home the bacon.

Although Motorola did not disclose the name of the other party in its licensing deal, there is a better than average chance that it is Research in Motion. The two firms came to a “long-term, intellectual property cross-licensing arrangement involving the parties receiving cross-licenses of various patent rights” in June 2010.

Source…

Blackberry Delays Update

Last week at its BlackBerry DevCon conference, Research in Motion tried to get developers excited about the upcoming PlayBook OS 2.0 mobile operating system, to spur developers to create applications for RIM’s BlackbBerry PlayBook tablet, released last spring to poor reviews and low sales. But yesterday, RIM wrote in a blog post that it was delaying the release of the PlayBook 2.0 OS “until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers, and users.”

PlayBook OS 2.0 was originally promised for October 2011, but RIM has now set a target of February 2012. To meet the new February 2012 release date, RIM said it was dropping a key feature originally promised for PlayBook OS 2.0: its popular BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service.

Developers were looking forward to the promised October PlayBook 2.0 OS release in hopes it might spur sales of the poorly selling tablet, especially as the original timing would have taken advantage of the holiday sales season that will also see the release of the unified tablet/smartphone Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system and a bevy of new smartphones using Microsoft’s recently released Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” operating system, in addition to Apple’s strong-selling iPad and new iPhone 4S, both featuring the recently released iOS 5 operating system.

The PlayBook OS is based on the QNX operating system that RIM bought in spring 2010 to be the basis for its tablets and, sometime in the 2012-13 timeframe, be the basis for a new operating system for its BlackBerry smartphones. Last week, RIM said that it will provide a unified tablet/smartphone operating system called BBX, based on the QNX/PlayBook platform. It said that applications developed for the PlayBook OS would be compatible with BBX, but did not make the same promise for BlackBerry OS apps.

Source…

RIM’s Troubles May Not Be Over

Law firms in the United States and Canada are considering possible consumer lawsuits against Research In Motion Ltd for last week’s BlackBerry outages, which for three days crippled email and messaging for tens of millions of users around the world.

Consumer lawyers say they are investigating whether customers have common claims against the BlackBerry manufacturer and might be able to band together in a single lawsuit.

While the outage did not rise to the level of seriousness comparable to a dangerous medication or tainted food, it inconvenienced and angered customers. Frustrated BlackBerry users, turning to blogs, message boards, Twitter and Facebook, complained about losing important emails and missing meetings last week.

Law firms are considering breach-of-contract or consumer-fraud claims, attorneys said.

A breach-of-contract claim could argue the company failed in its obligations to provide service and could include carriers for BlackBerry service as additional defendants, said attorneys exploring litigation against RIM.

Source…

Apple Scores A Victory

A court imposed a temporary ban on the sale of Samsung Electronics’ latest computer tablet in Australia on Thursday, delivering rival Apple another legal victory in the two firms’ global patent war.

Resolution of the case could take months — unless Samsung takes the potentially risky option of an expedited hearing — which, in the fast-moving industry, could mean the new Galaxy tablet is never launched in Australia. The Galaxy is the hottest competitor to Apple’s iPad, which dominates global tablet sales.

“The ruling could further extend Apple’s dominance in the tablet market as it widens a sales ban of Samsung’s latest product,” said Lee Seung-woo, an analyst at Shinyoung Securities in Seoul.

Whilst the ruling is a blow for Samsung, the Australian market is not large. A more important legal battle starts later on Thursday, when a Californian court begins hearing Apple’s bid to ban sales of Galaxy products in the United States.

The two technology firms have been locked in an acrimonious battle in 10 countries involving smartphones and tablets since April, with the Australian dispute centering on touch-screen technology used in Samsung’s new tablet.

The Federal Court in Sydney, in granting the temporary ban, ruled Samsung had a case to answer on at least two of Apple’s patents. The ban applies on sales of Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet until the same court rules on the core patent issue.

Source….

Motorola Being Dragged Into Patent Lawsuit

Intellectual Ventures has set its sights on Motorola with a new lawsuit alleging that the mobile device maker has infringed on six of their patents.

The patents cover a variety of technologies related to text messaging, docking stations and pushing software out to devices.

Intellectual Ventures, which owns 35,000 patents, said it approached Motorola in January about licensing patents, including several named in the case, according to the lawsuit. Motorola refused to license the patents, Intellectual Ventures said.

Motorola, which is the subject of several other patent lawsuits, declined to comment on the dispute.

The suit names a number of Motorola products as infringing, including the Atrix, Photon 4G, Milestone, Triumph and Brute i680.

Though Intellectual Ventures said it first approached Motorola in January, records at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show that all but one of the patents were transferred to the company in July and September.

It’s up to patent holders to file documents showing transfer of ownership with the patent office, so the discrepancy of timing probably means only that the company was slow in doing its paperwork, said David Mixon, a patent attorney with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.

While patent lawsuits have become commonplace in the mobile industry, this one has a unique twist. Google, which recently announced plans to acquire Motorola, is an investor in Intellectual Ventures, patent expert Florian Mueller noted in a blog post Thursday.

The source

« Previous Page — Next Page »