News tagged ‘Nokia’

The new report claims that Apple has transferred several patents to the patent-licensing firm Digitude Innovations and accuses the company of aiding a so-called "patent troll." Digitude Innovations filed suit against tech giants this week, including Research in Motion, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon and Nokia. Having investigating the lawsuit, TechCrunch found out that two of the patents mentioned in the lawsuit had belonged to Apple earlier this year.

Apple is claimed to transfer a dozen of patents to the company called Cliff Island LLC earlier this year. Noteworthy, the company's address is the same as Digitude investor Altitude Capital. Cliff Island apparently transferred the patents to Digitude.

In June Forbes reported that Digitude Innovations was established by Altitude founder Robert Kramer. Digitude is in the business of acquiring patents to sue others, the company has been labeled a "patent troll." The company is utilizing a new investment strategy of allowing investors to contribute patents instead of money. Participating companies would then receive a license for all of the firm's patents.

It is not clear whether Apple entered into an agreement with Digitude, but Apple may use the company as a "hired gun" in its patent battles.

"The idea that the company didn’t have any options other than handing over valuable patents to a patent troll — knowing full well that it would then use those patents to sue other tech companies — seems ludicrous."

Early today, we have reported that the U.S. judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction barring Samsung from selling several of its Galaxy smartphone and tablet devices in the United States. We have also mentioned the court order that had been redacted and which revealed that Apple had licensed one specific iOS interface patent to both Nokia and IBM. Now Reuters reports how this court order came to light.

In her 65-page ruling denying Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung, Koh attempted to redact nearly two dozen sentences or short fragments. But because of a formatting characteristic in the prior electronic version, the redacted material can be viewed by copying text from the PDF and pasting it into another document.

In the court order Koh cites as part of her rationale Apple's admission that Samsung is more likely to take market share from other Android manufacturers than it is from Apple.

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Late last week, a U.S. judge Lucy Koh declined to award a preliminary injunction over Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets in the United States. The Judge admitted that Samsung infringed some of Apple's patents, but she declined to issue a ban, because of a lack of evidences.

In her ruling, Koh wrote that for some of the smartphones, "Apple has established a likelihood of success on the merits at trial."

Koh added that Apple would likely prove Samsung infringed one of its tablet patents. However, Apple had not shown that it was likely to overcome Samsung's challenges to the patent's validity, Koh wrote.

Apple must demonstrate both infringement and validity to succeed in its lawsuit.

Interestingly, Apple has licensed to third parties one key iOS patent covering the "scrollback" feature displaying the linen texture when elastically scrolling beyond the end of a document or webpage. Licenses for the patent were obtained by Nokia and IBM, and Apple offered a license to Samsung.

Apple asserted this patent against Samsung as part of its failed attempt to get an injunction against Galaxy devices, and the court order denying the injunction includes general discussion of how past licensing behavior affects the decision of whether or not to grant an injunction. The discussion is nestled among two redacted statements shown to The Verge that confirm the '381 patent was licensed to IBM and Nokia, and that Apple offered a license to Samsung in November of 2010 as part of settlement negotiations.

The fact that Apple has been willing to gain profit from a license offered to other companies undermines its argument that it is being irreparably harmed by Samsung's alleged infringement.

During the last several days, there have been many reports on the findings of Trevor Eckhart revealing that logging software is present on many BlackBerry, Nokia and Android phones. The software called "IQRD"  was developed by the company Carrier IQ. The PCWorld summarized the video showing the scope of logging.

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According to the results of worldwide mobile phone sales for the third quarter of 2011, released yesterday by the research firm Gartner, Apple's share of the total mobile phone market came in at 3.9% for the quarter, down from 4.6% in the previous quarter. However, Apple still takes fourth place behind Nokia, Samsung, and LG.

Apple shipped 17 million iPhones, an annual increase of 21 percent, but down nearly 3 million units from the second quarter of 2011 because of Apple's new device announcement in October. Gartner believes Apple will bounce back in the fourth quarter because of its strongest ever preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first weekend after its announcement. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China are becoming more important to Apple, representing 16 percent of overall sales and showing that the iPhone has a place in emerging markets, especially now that the 3GS and 4 have received price cuts.

iOS share slipped from an 18.2% in the second quarter to 15.0% in the third quarter. Android and Nokia with its soon-to-be-defunct Symbian platform are now leaders of the market. During the quarter, Android’s share increased by 52.5%, more than doubling year-over-year.

But Android dominates the worldwide smartphone market by units while Apple by profit. Some researches show that Apple now takes more than a half of the industry's profits.

Greenpeace ranked 15 companies across three areas: energy, greener products and sustainable operations and released its "Guide to Greener Electronics" on Wednesday. This time Apple took fourth place in the rating up five places from the previous report. Nokia (4.9/10), Dell (5.1/10), and HP (5.9/10) were on the third, second and first places respectively. Immediately below Apple were Philips (4.5/10), Sony Ericsson (4.2/10), Samsung (4.1/10) and Lenovo (3.8/10).

The organization criticized Apple for the fact that Apple has not specified any target to reduce emissions. Nevertheless, Greenpeace gave the company credit for use of renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. Apple is also very demanding for product criteria. So all of the company's devices are free of PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants.

But Apple’s relationships with Greenpeace are not limited by positive experience only. "For years now Apple has pushed the environmentally friendly aspects of its products, countering a dispute that began with Greenpeace in August of 2006, when the organization issued a report condemning Apple for the use of toxic chemicals in its devices. Greenpeace also pulled a number of publicity stunts, such as a "Green My Apple" campaign in London in October of 2006, and a "greening" of Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue glass cube in January of 2007."

Despite Apple has seen sequential decrease in iPhone sales in the third quarter of 2011 as customers waited for the iPhone 4S launch, the company again raked in more than half of the profits produced by the largest mobile phone manufacturers over the quarter, according to a research report (via Forbes) by analyst T. Michael Walkley.

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Today research company Nielsen published its survey on mobile users for the third quarter, which confirmed that Android and iOS remain two main player on the smartphone market. Android platform increased its share of the US smartphone market by 4%, from 39% to 43%. During the same period iOS remained flat with 28% share.

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Chinese customers prefer to buy Apple’s iPhone than Nokia’s smartphones, according a report published by the investment bank Morgan Stanley. As more than a third of 2,050 surveyed urban Chinese mobile phone users express a preference for iPhone, twice that for Nokia's models.

Apple presence on Chinese smartphone market grew significantly in 2011. Not surprisingly that over fiscal 2011 the company managed to earned as many as $13 billion, comparing with $3 billion in fiscal year 2010. Morgan Stanley says it believes "China could surpass the US as Apple's largest market in about three years, adding nearly $30 billion more per year to the top-line along the way." The firm notes that sales of iPhones are also driving purchases of related Apple products, noting that Mac use is nearly four times higher among iPhone users, where Mac user share jumps to 35 percent from the standard 9 percent of the general population.

Morgan Stanley’s survey demonstrates that Apple increased its share by 6 percentage points to reach 34 percent of planned purchases in the region. Nokia dropped 8 percentage points to make up just 16 percent of the nation's planned purchases.

In the third quarter of 2011 Samsung gained the lead and China’s ZTE became the fourth-largest cell phone manufacturer moving Apple to fifth place. Cupertino-based company for the first time fell short of expectations and shipped 17.07 million iPhones in the third quarter, a 16 percent quarterly decrease in sales. As you remember, in June quarter Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones, which allowed the company to beat Samsung and Nokia and become the leading smartphone manufacturer in the world.

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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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We already reported that in the second quarter of 2011 Apple had passed Nokia as the world's largest smartphone vendor as measured by shipments. But Nokia still excelled Apple in sales to end user. Digitimes Research now projects that Apple will be a top smartphone vendor of 2011 with nearly 19% of the market at 86.4 million units.

Apple is expected to overtake Nokia as the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume in 2011, while Huawei Technologies will enjoy robust growth in shipments enabling the China-based company to close its gap with Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

Apple's smartphone shipments are projected to top 86.4 million units in 2011, up 82% from 47.5 million units in 2010. In contrast, Nokia's smartphone shipments in 2011 will decline to 74.4 million units from over 100 million in 2010, said Luke Lin, analyst for Digitimes Research.

According to Asymco's Horace Dedie report, Apple is a king of the hill in smartphone sales and is on LG heels for the third place in cell phone sales worldwide.

Samsung that revealed its profits for the second quarter is the second-largest smartphone manufacture globally in terms of units, however the company refuses to reveal its sales data explaining that by fierce competition with Apple.

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According to Bloomberg’s report, HP is interested in licensing its mobile operating system webOS to other companies, which may open the door for yet another competitor in the tablet and smartphone market.

"We are talking to a number of companies," Apotheker, president of the company, stated in Beijing, refusing to give more details."I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations."

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According to Business Insider analyst Chris Whitmore reports that Apple plans to release not only the iPhone 5 this fall, but they will also release a cheaper version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4S.

This means that Apple will release a minor update to the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S, as well as a major update called the iPhone 5.

"With Nokia and RIMM struggling," he writes, "the time is right for Apple to aggressively penetrate the mid range smart-phone market (i.e. $300-500 category) to dramatically expand its [total addressable market] and market share."

As Whitmore sees it, an iPhone 4S that is unlocked, priced around $349, and comes with a pre-paid voice plan would "drive significantly greater penetration" into an addressable market that has grown to include 1.5 billion potential customers in 98 countries, two thirds of whom prefer pre-paid plans.

The rumors about cheaper iPhone have been reports floating around for a long time. It's a pity that Whitmore only offers us his prediction without any evidence or inside knowledge.

Here is a summary of what we have in mind right now:

iPhone 5:

• 4" screen
• new design
• dual core
• 8MP camera
• possible dual LED and/or dual camera
• 64GB
• 1080p video

iPhone 4S:

• 3.5"
• old design
• single core
• 5MP camera
• 4GB Storage
• 720p video