News tagged ‘Europe’

John Browett will become Apple’s new Senior Vice President of Retail after leaving his current position as CEO of Dixons Retail, one of the largest consumer retailers in Europe with over 40,000 employees.

Apple today announced that John Browett will join the company as senior vice president of Retail, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Browett comes to Apple from European technology retailer Dixons Retail, where he has been CEO since 2007. Beginning in April, he will be responsible for Apple’s retail strategy and the continued expansion of Apple retail stores around the world.

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Today European Commission announced the launch of an investigation to determine whether Samsung has violated EU antitrust laws in its legal agreements with competing companies. The European Commission will focus on patents that must be licensed on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms.

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Apple has filed a new suit in the Dusseldorf Regional Court against Samsung. The suit cites multiple patented designs owned by Apple in Europe. This time the company asked a German court to ban the sale of the Galaxy S II and nine other smartphones, along with five tablet models, including the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and its redesigned version the Galaxy Tab 10.1N – Samsung's attempt to overcome ban on tablet sales. As far as you remember, Samsung redesigned the tablet and renamed it. Those changes were apparently enough for the court in Germany, which indicated last month that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is not likely to be banned from sale. The suit also targets Samsung's Galaxy S Plus in addition to the Galaxy S II.

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Research group Gartner released preliminary PC shipment results for the fourth quarter of 2011, showing that Apple climbed to third place among U.S. PC vendors as the rest of the top five vendors saw shipments decline year over year. Apple saw 20.7 percent growth of Mac sales in the U.S. market from the year ago quarter, and took the No. 3 spot behind HP and Dell.

However, customers shied away from the world's largest PC maker in the fourth quarter, causing a 26.1 percent decline year over year. Shipments fell from 5.6 million in the last quarter of 2010 to 4.1 million. Dell had a 4.5 percent decline in shipments from 4.2 million in the year ago quarter to 4.0 million in the most recent quarter.

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Italian news agency ANSA published on Thursday a report where it revealed that an the Milan-based Italian first-instance court for patent cases has denied Samsung's request for a preliminary injunction against the iPhone 4S, making it the third time the South Korean electronics maker has failed to obtain a ban on Apple's newest handset in Europe.

The Italian court's rejection marks the third straight loss for Samsung in its effort to curb Apple handset sales in Europe, and follows similar decisions by France's Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris in December 2011 and Dutch court Rechtbank's-Gravenhage's ruling in October.

Both companies are embroiled in a worldwide patent war, though thus far only Apple has seen success in its injunction requests and won bans against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, Australia and the Netherlands.

However, Apple is only slightly ahead of Samsung. The Cupertino Company will have to pay Samsung a significant amount in damages if courts in those states find that the preliminary injunctions were improperly granted. As you may remember, the patent war erupted when Apple filed a suit against Samsung in April 2011, alleging that the South Korean company blatantly copied the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad. The war now spans over 10 countries across four continents.

Research firm Gartner recently released its estimates of PC sales in Western Europe for the third quarter of 2011. Despite the overall decline of 11.4% for the market, Apple’s sales in Western Europe were up 19.6% year-over-year. In mobile PC market Apple showed the most significant performance of 28%, comparing to the last year performance.

Gartner especially paid attention to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, noting that in the UK Apple became one of five top vendors. Apple’s sales here increased up to 21.8% year-over-year. So now the company takes the fourth place in the United Kingdom with 7.8% of the market. Apple’s rival Samsung goes slightly behind with 7.3% of the market, despite the fact that Samsung’s growth there was 39%.

As for the U.S. PC market, Apple took 12.9% for the third quarter, demonstration significant increase in sales both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

Apple reported that the battery in the first-generation iPod nano may overheat and pose a safety risk. Although, Apple had previously said that less than 0.001 percent of first-generation iPod nanos experienced the overheating issue, Apple has recently initiated a replacement program for the first-generation iPod nano. The company recommended users of the first-generation iPod nano to stop using the device and replace it for free.

The defect was firstly traced in 2008, when several customers experienced overheating on their first-generation iPod nano. South Korea, Japan and Europe international government agencies even initiated a special investigation and as a result the trade ministry in Japan ordered Apple to publicize the replacement offer on its Japanese website in 2010. Now Apple is notifying purchasers of the first-generation iPod nano about the replacement program, sending out emails.

"Apple has determined that, in very rare cases, the battery in the iPod nano (1st generation) may overheat and pose a safety risk. Affected iPod nanos were sold between September 2005 and December 2006," the company wrote. "This issue has been traced to a single battery supplier that produced batteries with a manufacturing defect. While the possibility of an incident is rare, the likelihood increases as the battery ages."

Soon after Apple proposed a smaller SIM card standard, a German company Giesecke & Devrient made a proposal of its own standard. The German company that developed the first SIM card in the world has proposed a standard for “nano-SIM ” cards that are 15 percent thinner and one-third smaller than the current smallest micro-SIM cards used in the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and 3G iPad.

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that despite the injunction prohibiting the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet in Australia, several Australian retailers have ignored Apple's threats and continue to profit from demand for the barred Samsung tablet.

At least one, dMavo, said it had created a separate entity in Europe to place it outside the jurisdiction of Australian courts, with the tablets delivered to customers from Asia.

"We have a new entity established and a separate server - just to deal with the tablet orders - that is undergoing testing as of last Saturday," dMavo managing director Wojtek Czarnocki said.

"Was Apple just bluffing or do they really want to play the cat and mouse game? We're up for it."

Melbourne law firm Watermark's senior associate and patent specialist Mark Summerfield suggests, however, it would be relatively simple to extend Apple's injunction to individual online resellers because it already applies to device maker Samsung. The only thing Apple will have to do is to apply to the Australian Federal Court for further injunctions. But it would be difficult for Apple, because the company is based overseas.

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According to legal documents filed by Apple, the European Commission is investigating Samsung's patent litigation to determine if its use of 3G-related patents violates competition laws. Apple has argued that those patents are essential to basic device operation and must therefore be licensed under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.

Samsung has launched an aggressive, worldwide campaign to enjoin Apple from allegedly practicing Samsung's patents. Samsung has sued Apple for infringement and injunctions in no fewer than eight countries outside the United States. Indeed, Samsung's litigation campaign and other conduct related to its Declared-Essential Patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung's behavior violates EU competition laws.

Moreover, the European Commission issued a statement related to the investigation, noting that it asked both Apple and Samsung to provide it with information on patents.

The Commission has indeed sent requests for information to Apple and Samsung concerning the enforcement of standards-essential patents in the mobile telephony sector. Such requests for information are standard procedure in antitrust investigations to allow the Commission to establish the relevant facts in a case.

Yesterday US Patent & Trademark Office published (via PatentlyApple) an Apple’s patent application detailing how a future iPhone could use a virtual SIM card which based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has been dethroned by Samsung one quarter after the company became the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. As a person familiar with the situation said, Samsung shipped over 20 million smartphones in third quarter, beating Apple as well as the largest cellphone manufacturer Nokia.

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In London Apple’s Covent Garden has been robbed early today. A gang of seven thieves on motorbikes has raided this retail store in an attempt to steal Mac notebooks and iOS devices.

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Apple will start to sell the unlocked version of iPhone 4S in November. The price will be $649 for 16GB, $749 fro 32GB and $849 for 64GB model. This is less than prices in Europe.

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There is still no information on unlocked iPhone 4S availability in the US. However there are some news from Europe. According to Apple, in France you will be able to buy unlocked iPhone 4S 16GB for 629 EUR (~$836). You can get tax free if you don't live in Europe, so the price would be around 550 EUR (~$732).

Unlocked iPhone 4 16GB will cost 519 EUR ($690), which is ~455 EUR (~$605) after tax free. The cheapest unlocked iPhone 3GS 8GB is just 369 EUR (~$490), which is ~320 EUR (~$426) after tax free.

UPDATE: Unlocked iPhone 4S will be available in November