The judge in a highly-anticipated trial over smartphones and tablets sided with Apple on Friday over how a jury should look at four key patents. The ruling means the jury will act as “ordinary observers” instead of relying on detailed legal instructions to understand the patents. Read more »
Last week it was Android tablets, this week was about Android smartphones. Sprint announced a QWERTY keyboard version of the Photon Q with LTE, while Samsung’s Galaxy S III continues to set sales records. Can the leaked HTC One X+ slow Samsung’s momentum? Read more »
A U.K. judge who found that Samsung didn’t copy the iPad took the unusual step this month of ordering Apple to broadcast that finding to the British public. Now, Apple has won at least a temporary reprieve. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: the problem of the Mac App Store’s stringent rules; Apple and Samsung brandish evidence that each has copied others’ designs; the case for shared iCloud accounts; and the Facebook-Mountain Lion integration mystery. Read more »
Apple spends a whopping $28 billion a year buying semiconductors for the millions of tablets, phones and computers it produces according to estimates released from IHS iSuppli, a research firm. That puts Apple far and away the largest buyer of silicon. Read more »
Samsung’s Galaxy S III is the official phone of the 2012 Olympic Games and if you’re staying at the Holiday Inn near Olympic Park, you’ll see how a smartphone can improve the guest experience. The handset can control in-room features and is also a room key. Read more »
Samsung’s “one phone model for the world” strategy continues to pay off: The Galaxy S III has already topped 10 million sales since its May 29 launch. A rough estimate shows that figure to be nearly 20 percent of Android activations on a daily basis. Read more »
Beats Electronics, which sold half the company to Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp., for $300 million in August 2011, says it is buying back 25% of itself. For HTC it is a lesson that reinforces the importance of focus on its core business. Read more »
The legal showdown over the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab is set to kick off in a San Jose, Calif. courtroom at the end of July. The judge took steps Wednesday to ensure that quotes from Jobs’ biography are not a focus of the trial. Read more »
A British judge raised eyebrows last week when he ruled that Samsung’s tablets did not infringe Apple’s patents because they were not as “cool.” Now, the same judge has followed up with an unusual order. Read more »
Samsung’s Galaxy Note, the 5.3-inch smartphone (or is it a tablet?) will launch for T-Mobile’s U.S. network in the coming weeks, according to the company, which says 77 percent out of 1,031 surveyed U.S. smartphone owners want a device with a 4.5-inch or larger display. Read more »
After topping the mountain in February when the U.S. passed 50 percent smartphone ownership, It’s all downhill: Nielsen notes 2 of 3 new phone purchases in the U.S. last month were smartphones. Android and iOS continue to pull away from the pack while BlackBerry fades away. Read more »
That $199 Nexus 7 tablet Google sells directly to consumers costs $151.75 in materials, suggesting that Google is earning a profit on the hardware, supplementing sales of software, ads and services. With a low-cost tablet platform making a profit, others are sure to follow; even Apple. Read more »
Samsung’s “phamous phablet”, the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, continues to improve thanks to an update to Android 4.0 for AT&T device owners. T-Mobile has Galaxy Note support documents on line, so it’s likely to get the device soon. Maybe there’s a market for extra-large phones after all? Read more »
After escalating for the past two years, there could be relief in sight for the ongoing mobile patent wars, as the International Telecommuncations Union is planning an October meeting in Geneva with handset makers, platform providers and standards boards. It’s about time. Read more »
In one of the many fronts of the Apple-Samsung patent war, a British High Court judge has ruled in Samsung’s favour. But is it not time for this playground-level fight to stop clogging up the courts? Read more »
The smartphones of today suck up nearly 128 minutes of our daily attention. We use them to surf the web, play games, read books, as a camera and alarm clocks. What we don’t do – make phone calls. Should we even call it a phone? Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: Apple/Motorola judge questions the need for software patents, how the Windows PC advantage dwindled before the iPad, yet another patent suit in Apple’s second-most important market. Read more »
Between February and May, Apple’s iPhone saw a sliver of growth in U.S. smartphone market share at 1.7 percent. Android saw smaller growth (0.8 percent) but is still most prevalent and is on a little over half of all smartphones, according to a report released Monday. Read more »
For the Android crowd, this was an eventful week, thanks to the many announcements at Google I/O. Here’s my first look at the Nexus 7 tablet and Android 4.1 on the Galaxy Nexus, which is temporarily unable to be sold due to Apple winning an injunction. Read more »
Apple enjoyed a triumph this week when it persuaded a federal judge to ban a tablet computer that Apple claims was “slavishly copied” from its famous iPad. Is this a game changer that will allow the iPad to dominate for a long time to come? Here’s a simple explanation of what happened and what comes next. Read more »
Google tipped its hand early this week, outing the news that Android 4.1 — Jelly Bean — will soon be on the GSM Galaxy Nexus. The Galaxy S III impressed so many that it’s playing hard to get while not one, but two, Android keyboards improve. Read more »
Looking to buy a Samsung Galaxy S III in the U.S.? You have a choice among five different carriers, but you’ll either be waiting or paying more than you thought: There are stock shortages at two carriers, and the smartphone is priced much higher at another. Read more »
Starting in July, eight different Samsung Galaxy Tab models will see a software upgrade to Google Android 4.0; a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich. The Touch Wiz user interface is surely part of the upgrade, but might some software features from the Galaxy S III be included too? Read more »
Here’s our pick of stories about Apple from around the web you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: The Surface flips Microsoft’s expensive software model on its head, Samsung wins a legal point against Apple, Moto and Apple face off today, Siri in cars and FaceTime over cellular. Read more »
Taking a play out of Apple’s book, Samsung has introduced one phone model for the world: The Galaxy S III. With just a few days of testing, I’m confident in saying that Samsung has set the bar for Android, as this smartphone is outstanding. Read more »
What a week for Samsung: First, Amazon lists its upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 as available for pre-order, and now a video surfaces that shows it in action for a whole whopping five minutes. The only way to top this might just be releasing it already. Read more »
Samsung is trying to champion near field communication and is introducing new programmable NFC tags called TecTiles that work with a new mobile application on NFC-enabled Android devices. Users can program that tags to do 25 different tasks. Read more »
So I dropped $449 for a new Samsung ChromeBook 550 last week. And I can’t put it down! Why? Because once you don’t have native or third-party apps to rely on, you start to see a web that’s more powerful, and fun, than you thought. Read more »
Unlike last year’s product launch, the Galaxy S III will hit the U.S. on multiple carriers soon after the product debuts internationally. Five carriers are ready to sell Samsung’s flagship; a single model for all. HTC’s patent woes continue and Toshiba’s new small slate shines. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: Samsung’s new CEO, Apple asks a judge to block the import of the latest Samsung Galaxy, Apple’s contribution to Google revenue, iOS’s popularity among mobile developers, and more. Read more »
German e-reading service txtr hopes to take on Amazon and Apple by becoming the biggest provider of third party reading apps — and a deal with four major American publishers and a New York office could be the latest steps in that journey. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: Your personal calendar info might be sitting on LinkedIn’s servers, why Samsung fights, Apple looks to expand its network of stores in China, and Apple starts decorating for WWDC. Read more »
The ongoing saga between Apple and Samsung over the latter’s Galaxy 10.1 tablets took another twist this week as US District Judge Lucy Koh refused to grant a preliminary injunction banning the devices. Read more »
Starting in June, five U.S. carriers will begin selling Samsung’s Galaxy S III: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular. Samsung’s entire strategy for its new phone is very Apple-like, including one model, which should help constrained production: The company can build 5M per month. Read more »
The second U.S. operator to launch Samsung’s Galaxy S II last year appears to be the first to upgrade the smartphone to Android 4.0. T-Mobile tweeted the news, saying the software update for the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android will be available on June 11. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Samsung has launched Music Hub on its new Galaxy S III in five countries. The service is touted as the “first completely integrated, all-in-one mobile music service” but it’s not exactly new. Samsung’s Music Hub debuted in 2010 and the company keeps trying to improve it. Read more »
Samsung’s latest ad promoting the gesture controls for its Smart TV line are the perfect combo of hilarity paired with sexiness — and not just of the TV itself! Watch what happens when dozens of men see a pretty girl gesturing at them through a window. Read more »
If you haven’t yet head of “phablets,” you might want get familiar with them because ABI Research expects 208 million of them to sell in 2015. Thanks to more media consumption and web browsing consumers may shift from one- to two-handed use for these larger devices. Read more »
