News tagged ‘Germany’

Galaxy Tab 10.1N (top) vs. Galaxy Tab 10.1 (bottom)

Apple has reportedly filed a request for a preliminary injunction to prevent sales of the revised Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a design-tweaked variant of the original Galaxy Tab 10.1, in Germany. Samsung launched Galaxy Tab 10.1N last month in attempt to deal with the ban on Galaxy tab 10.1 sales in the country.

Apple has requested a preliminary injunction, and the Duesseldorf regional court has scheduled a hearing on the matter on Dec. 22, a spokesman for the court told Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday.

The move has no effect on sales and distribution of the product, Samsung said in an emailed statement, while Apple repeated earlier comments that it intends to protect its intellectual property.

Apple clearly believes that slight changes in design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 are not sufficient to overcome the ruling that the Galaxy Tab design is almost similar to the design of the Apple’s iPad, and that is why Apple has decided to claim a new injunction.

Samsung's attorney Neil Young claims that Australian judge Annabelle Bennett was wrong in granting Apple a temporary injunction against the Galaxy Tab. He stated at an appeal hearing that she made a series of errors and did not understand key elements of the case. The judge issued the ban on the basis of just two of the patents, but Apple’s claims are based on 13 company’s patent infringements. So the judge decided that they were enough to warrant a temporary sales ban until the full case will be solved. However, Samsung may lose their customers during the holiday sales season at least in Australia.

As far as we know, Apple is also suing Samsung in California and in some other countries.  A separate injunction on sales was won by Apple in Germany. Rather curious incident occurred in the US court. A judge, who held Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Apple's iPad in the air, asked Samsung's attorneys to identify which one is made by Samsung. Surprisingly, the attorney preferred to evade a question.

Of course, Apple's attorney Stephen Burley does not agree with Samsung's attorney. He believes that Bennett reviewed the infringement case in a detailed fashion. Moreover, he claims that Apple had good chances to win infringement.

According to FOSS Patent’s report, a pending legal case in Germany could have a profound effect on Apple with a possible injunction barring the iCloud service in this country over violation of Motorola Mobility patent.

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New Galaxy Tab 10.1N (top) vs. Galaxy Tab 10.1 (bottom)

Samsung tries to bypass patent infringement from Apple, modifying the design of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 touchscreen tablet in order to re-launch it in Germany. Moreover, Samsung decided to rename the device. The new product is known as the Galaxy Tab 10.1N. The most obvious difference from the front of the device is that the metal frame around the edges of the device now wraps around slightly toward the front along two of the edges. We are not sure that such device will definitely steer clear of infringement. Anyway, it’s up for the Court to decide.

"But without a doubt, Samsung has upped the ante fro Apple and its lawyers in case they wish to request a new injunction or allege that this constitutes an infringement of the existing one."

Germany seems to be a really important battleground in the fight between Samsung and Apple. Last week, Samsung filed a new complaint against Apple in the country. And it’s obvious that the company decided to redesign its device because of permanent ban from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany.

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.

Samsung has made a next step in its legal battle with Apple, having initiated new efforts to ban Apple’s 3G products in Germany. Now Samsung and Apple are arguing over what devices might be covered under the injunction Samsung seeks, which would include a prohibition of sales of iPhones and iPads with 3G features. Apple is now doing its best to protect the iPhone 4S from consequences of the injunction that might be granted. This time Samsung plans to use the same methods and patents that Motorola used recently. The German court granted Motorola Mobility an injunction against Apple covering its German sales.

Now Samsung raises questions that include whether Apple is infringing patents that were licensed by the component manufacturers.

At question is "patent exhaustion," whether Samsung can sue Apple for infringement in using Intel's version of the Infineon chips sold since January 2011, or whether Samsung's rights to sue over patents are "exhausted" after being licensed to a third party building the components.

The second issue in the case is standard-essential patents that Samsung uses. As far as we know, Samsung sued before trying to reach a licensing agreement with Apple. Apple noted that Samsung has never claimed infringement over any of its standards-essential patents "until it decided to retaliate for Apple's assertions of non-standards-related patents."

Today senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in Apple Philip Schiller said that iPhone 4S sales topped 4 million units during opening weekend surpassing the 1.7 million units sold during last year’s debut weekend. Also he said:

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Today Apple has begun selling its new iPhone 4S in seven countries: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia. The device is available in two colors (black, white) and three storage sizes (16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB).  As usual, lines have begun forming near Apple Stores worldwide and Apple Store employees were pulling overnight shifts to put up new displays and promo materials for the iPhone 4S launch.

The Japanese launch was hampered by registration slowdowns from Softbank, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The launch of the iPhone 4S in Japan was interrupted when Softbank – the main service provider for Apple products in the country—suffered a server glitch that temporarily suspended sales nationwide. A company spokesman said the servers were unable to process registration information.

Apple has already received more than one million pre-orders for the iPhone 4S. Analysts are predicting that weekend sales will exceed the iPhone 4 which were sold 1.7 million units its opening weekend. Estimates range from 2 million to 4 million.

The Federal Court in Australia has issued a preliminary ban on sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the country. The Justice believed that Apple had presented sufficient evidence conforming violation two of its touchscreen- and multitouch-related patents by Samsung. Previously the Korean company had agreed to delay launch of their new tablet in Australia, waiting for the Court’s decision. Samsung even offered Apple a compromise deal that would allow the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to launch with minor concessions. But Apple was not accepted that offer.

In September Apple won the proceedings in Germany, where the Galaxy Tab 10.1’ sales were also preliminary banned. The legal battle between the companies has grown increasingly fierce since it began in April of this year, when Apple accused Samsung of copying the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad. Apple reported that they had tried to solve the problem not suing to the Court, but negotiations were not successful.

As Apple promised, pre-orders of expected iPhone 4S is become available. Now it is possible to pre-order new iPhone through Apple’s website in Australia, Germany, France, Canada, the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. Besides, pre-ordering is also available through the websites of carriers in these countries.

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Yesterday during the expected media event Apple announced the new iPhone 4S, an upgrade to the existing iPhone 4 with improved A5 processor, new 8 MP camera with better optics, faster download speed on 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, and more. Media members who attended Apple's iPhone 4S event had the opportunity to spend some time with the new hardware following the presentation, and immediately started posting their first impressions about the iPhone 4S.

Engadget highlights the improved internal specifications of the new iPhone 4S, noting that it is faster than the previous model, with faster navigating between pages and opening the camera application. Engadget was also able to test the new voice assistant, Siri:

The most impressive part was the demo of Siri, the new assistant that lets you do just about anything you can do on your phone — but with your voice. We tried to psych it out with a bunch of random requests... Siri never faltered, never missed a beat… There’s nothing better to say than that. We even sent ourselves a few text messages, which Siri transcribed to a T. Of course, the lady on the other end still sounds eerily robotic, but we’re hoping for smoother responses from the alien within in a future update.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop covers the differences in antenna design:

The current model has three bands — one on each side on the bottom, and one on the top. The iPhone 4S has four bands — two on the top and two on the bottom. The bands are where Apple houses the antennas for the device. The Wi-Fi, wireless and Bluetooth technologies use these areas. It’s not clear at this point if Apple moved any antennas or what they added the extra band.

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Tim Cook just announced much anticipated iPhone 4S. On the outside the iPhone 4S looks exactly like its predecessor iPhone 4, but on the inside it's "all new." Apple has put inside a dual-core A5 CPU, a new dual-core GPU that boosts graphics performance by up to 7x. The display is the same 3.5-inch Retina with VGA front camera.

The back camera got much better. It features 8MP sensor, backside illuminated CMOS sensor for better low-light performance, 5-element lens with a hybrid IR filter and apertures down to f/2.4. The 4S can record 1080p video and has a new image signal processor for image stabilization and facial recognition. The camera is also quite a bit faster than many other smartphone shooters. It needs just 1.1 seconds before being ready to take the first shot and only half a second between successive images.

The antennas on the sides have been rebuilt and iOS will intelligently switch between two different sets on the fly to avoid dropping calls no matter how you hold it. Those antennas are connected to a dual-mode GSM and CDMA radio that will let Apple's handset roam the globe while enjoying either 14.4Mbps HSPA+ or EV-DO Rev. A.

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During past weeks, we have heard lots of reports of next generation iPhone models that appeared in various inventories. And now German website iPhone-Ticker.de  has reported that it found other prove of the iPhone 4S release. German mobile carrier , the Apple’s partner in Germany, Vodafone is now offering a bumper for the new smartphone on their website. The next-generation iPhone, the so-called iPhone 4S, is available in three capacities both in black and white colors as well as the black/white iPhone 4 8 GB. This particular screenshot (above) was made from the iPhone 4 Bumper Vodafone shop page which claims compatibility with all these devices. The Vodafone listings confirm our expectations of a lower cost 8GB iPhone 4, and three iPhone 4S models (16GB, 32 GB, 64 GB). However, tomorrow, on October 4th, Apple is hosting a media event and all rumors will be dispelled.

This week Apple continues to carry out its plan for opening over 30 new stores by the end of September. Tomorrow Apple will open a new Stratford City store (image above) in Westfield Stratford City mall located in the northeastern part of London. The unusual mid-week opening coincides with the opening of the shopping center itself, the facility covering nearly 2 million square foot, which will be the largest urban mall in Europe and will be one of the key components in hosting next year’s London Summer Olympics.

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