Apple is no stranger to lawsuits and with all the cash its been making the past few years, the lawsuits from patent trolls have been piling up. According to a new study on lawsuits from non practicing entities (patent trolls), Apple got slammed with more patent lawsuits (171 total) in the last five years than any other company.
An Apple iPhone event for September 10 has been all but confirmed in recent weeks, and we’re almost certain that we’ll see the unveiling of both the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C. But what about new iPads? There have been rumors that claim they won’t arrive until October, but according to a new Bloomberg report, they’ll be part of the September 10 event as well.
One of the key patents in Samsung and Apple’s neverending patent dispute was ‘381, the so-called “bounce back” patent. As you might recall, the patent describes the way in which an iPhone, when inertially scrolling a document, will bounce back when it reaches the top. It’s a little detail, but it’s one of the few patent infringement verdicts Samsung hasn’t been able to weasel its way out of.
Not that that has stopped Samsung from trying, but it looks like the dispute over the famous bounce back patent is finally over. On late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied Samsung a motion for a new trial regarding the ‘381 patent. Finally.
The high cost of Apple’s iPhone means that it struggles to compete in China, with rivals like Samsung offering a whole range of devices designed for different budgets. But a low-cost iPhone 5C could change that.
One analyst believes that as long as Apple prices it right, the device could help the Cupertino company become the number one smartphone vendor in China, crushing Samsung on the way.
The good people at Motorola will probably clock me in the head with a Droid Maxx battery for saying this, but shouldn’t Google open-source Moto X technology?
We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III event earlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.
They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.
Following reports that it was looking to open a new research and development center in Taiwan, Apple is now going on a massive hiring binge in China for talented engineers, having recently put up openings for over 300 new employees in Taiwan on the professional social networking site LinkedIn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM&feature=player_embedded
Over the last few years we’ve seen Apple’s competition start to really take it to Cupertino in TV ads. Sometimes it seems petty but according to Samsung’s marketing chief, Arno Lenior, the tsunami of ads mocking Apple fans were a huge boon for the company.
In an interview with AdNews, Samsung’s Lenior says that the ads were brilliant because they got Apple fanboys and Samsung fans to bash with one another over which beloved “brand” is better:
A printer is already pretty much disposable, thanks to the environmentally hateful practices of manufacturers; it’s almost cheaper to buy a whole new printer than it is to pony up for replacement ink. So why not go the whole way and make the printer out of cardboard? That’s the idea behind Samsung’s concept designs, which take the metal and plastic guts of the printer and put them — literally — into a cardboard box.
The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled in favor of Apple today by finding Samsung guilty of patent infringement in two cases. This marks the ITC’s final ruling from the original complaint Apple filed against Samsung back in 2011, reports FOSS Patents. Apple won a decisive victory against Samsung last year that involved over a half billion dollars in damages, and President Obama recently vetoed a sales ban on older Apple products that the ITC had awarded Samsung.
Apple’s Passbook feature in iOS hasn’t really taken off as quickly as people thought it would, but that hasn’t prevented Samsung from throwing developers into making its own Passbook clone. We first got our first look at Samsung Wallet back in February at MWC, but the the app is finally ready for primetime and available on Google Play.
The app is only supported on the Galaxy S3, S4, Note 1 and Note 2, and you have to sign-in with one of those silly Samsung accounts, but if you’re already nose deep in S Health, S Beam, Samsung Link and all the other half-baked Samsung apps you’ll feel right at home.
Here are the release notes:
Apple has been trying to be less dependent on Samsung components for years now, but ditching its rival has been a lot more difficult than imagined, mostly because there’s not a single company that can churn out displays and RAM like Samsung.
A new report from NPD DisplaySearch claims that Apple’s dependency on Samsung displays has only deepened recently, thanks to shortcomings by LG Display and other manufacturers as the iPad mini 2 launch looms ahead.
Vodafone U.K. has today announced that it will begin rolling out its new 4G network on August 29 — the same day rival O2 will launch its own 4G service. The company will reach 12 major cities across the country initially, with further expansion planned before the end of this year.
That means that by the end of this month, EE will no longer be the U.K.’s only 4G provider.
For a long time after its launch, the iPad was by far the best-selling tablet on the market, and no matter how hard they tried, rival devices didn’t stand a chance of stealing its market share. But that’s all changed, according to the latest figures from IDC.
Android-powered slates saw a staggering 163% increase in the last year, and they’ve now overtaken the iPad and opened up a rather large gap in market share.
Over the weekend, President Obama weighed in on the famous Apple vs. Samsung patent disputes by vetoing an import ban proposed by the International Trade Commission that would have prevented Apple from bringing iOS devices older than the iPhone 4S and iPad 3 into the country.
An avowed fan of Apple’s products, it was the first time a U.S. presidential administration had vetoed a product ban by the ITC since 1987, and seemed to signal that the Obama Administration was not going to penalize an American company like Apple in favor of a foreign company like Samsung.
Financial Markets took notice. Samsung’s market cap is down a billion dollars since the vetoing.
Motorola has finally revealed all most of the details of the Moto X after months of leaks, and while the handset looks great and is customizable to a fault, what we really want to know is how its specs stack up against the best smartphones out there.
Specs aren’t everything, but it is important to keep in mind whether the Moto X will still be able to run the best apps after 12-24 months. Here’s a chart that GigaOm cooked up that compares the Moto X’s specs to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S 4.
Samsung has admitted that a Korean PR agency did offer money to app developers to promote a competition on the popular developer question and answer website Stack Overflow. The electronics giant insists that this is “clearly against” its cooperate policy, and says that it cancelled the plan as soon as it was made aware of the situation.
Will it or won’t it have a Retina display?
That’s the big question everyone is asking about the second-generation iPad mini, and we’ve been seeing conflicting reports about it for several months. But according to sources “familiar with the matter,” who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal, it’s “likely” the answer to that question is yes.
Despite the cornucopia of different smartphones available to consumers, the battle for global smartphone domination comes down to just two companies: Samsung and Apple.
Samsung posted record results in Q2 and even though a new iPhone hasn’t been announced, Apple still managed to beat Wall Street’s iPhone sales estimates last quarter, leaving Nokia, HTC, LG, and all the other major OEMs with nothing but table scraps to feast on.
Source: Benedict Evans
Via: BGR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wHwKGw0Yno
With features like Easy Mode, Smart Switch and that hand-waving feature thing, you’ll totally ditch your “simple” iPhone after spending a three hour flight crammed next to a hipster with a Samsung Galaxy S4.
At least, that’s what Samsung wants you to think with their new ad that shows a bunch of nerdy middle-aged iPhone users instantly converting to the Galaxy S4 after some hip dudes start showing off Samsung’s gimmicky features.
Source: YouTube
Via: MacGasm
Apple’s “pinch to zoom” patent, which features prominently in a patent dispute against Samsung, has been dismissed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to documents filed by Samsung in a U.S. federal court, all 21 claims of the patent have been rejected in a “final office action.”
T-Mobile’s new summer smartphone promotion is a scorcher: The carrier has eliminated down payments entirely and dropped the price of all devices to $0. Even the latest handsets like the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Sony Xperia Z are included in the hot new deal, which the company announced today.
But there is a catch.
Apple’s fifth-generation iPad will feature a new touchscreen technology that will help it become thinner and lighter, according to industry sources. The device is expected to adopt a new form factor much like the iPad mini’s, with thinner bezels and a smaller frame — and Apple will have to make a number of changes to its internals to enable that.
Apple just released it’s Q3 2013 earnings report and even though iPhone sales were up to 31.2 million units in the quarter, compared to 26 million last quarter, the company only posted a net profit of $6.9 billion. Samsung on the other hand reported that it made $8.33 billion in profit during the same quarter.
Apple reported a profit of $8.8 billion and $35 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2012, so profit is still down and revenue growth is flat. The company’s year-over-year net profit shrank for the first time in a decade last quarter.
Source: SAI
After refreshing its iPad lineup in the fall last year, rather than summer, Apple set itself up to go through a June quarter without a new iPad launch for the first time since it was introduced in 2010. Analysts are expecting Apple to announce that year-over-year iPad sales last quarter were down, but one thing that’s still up is iPad usage.
According to the latest stats from the Chitika ad network, iPads now account for 84.3% of all web traffic from tablets in June. That’s just a slight bump up from the 82.4% Apple hit in May, but it’s the iPad’s highest share of tablet web use this year.
