We reported in May on Google closing the purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion as well as the appointment of Dennis Woodside as CEO. Later that month Google filed its 2012 SEC conveniently breaking down what the $12.4 billion was for.
At the time, Larry Page wrote on Google’s blog:
“Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition (more…)
Both Apple and Samsung have scored partial court victories in Germany Tuesday. While the initial ban of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 has been upheld and extended to the entire European Union. Samsung’s redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1 N was ruled sufficiently different to the Apple iPad, making it acceptable under competition law. But this is just one in a series of legal cases causing headaches for both companies and consumers.
The two technology giants are entangled in legal battles over dozens of patent disputes worldwide, struggling for dominance in the lucrative smartphone and tablet computing market. All told, the two companies have filed at least 30 lawsuits against one another. Most recently, Apple is demanding $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung for infringing on its patents, according to Apple’s latest filing in the ongoing patent (more…)
HTC announced earlier this week that three of their devices, the One X, One S, and One X would be receiving the upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It has also been reported that the Samsung Galaxy III is slated to receive Android 4.1, which is following their June update of the Galaxy II, to Android 4.0.
Nearly a month has passed since the Google introduced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. With the new OS’s source code being released a couple of weeks back, so it’s only natural for users to expect official Jelly Bean updates to be flowing.
Good news for RIM, shortly after a $147 million fine for patent infringement the Blackberry maker has been granted a patent for a predictive text keyboard, which will be featured on its new BB10 operating system.
While predictive text has long been a part of smartphone typing, this would seem to take it a step further. According to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, the new keyboard will predict not only what word you’re trying to type, but what word will come next, based on the context, and a database of common expressions.
“The output is based largely upon the frequency, i.e., the likelihood that a user intended a particular output,” said U.S. Patent No. 8,224,393. “The device … also provides a learning function that allows the disambiguation function to adapt to provide a customized experience for the user.”
Even while Samsung celebrates its rising market share and record-setting Galaxy smartphone sales, Apple [AAPL] breaks cover with yet more rumors of the forthcoming iPhone 5, which will the Wall Street Journal today confirms will be thinner than ever through confirmed use of in-cell display technology.
The report claims Apple’s partners in the component supply industry have already begun manufacturing parts for the device. That’s in line with other claims across the last few weeks.Apple will use so-called in-cell technology to keep the screen of the next iPhone thin, the Wall Street Journal reports.
If industry experts still feel like the barriers to gain investments are still high, no one told that to venture capital investors, with a 37 percent increase in funding and 3 percent increase in deals over the previous quarter.
The period also saw strong emphasis on mobile investments and seed funding, according to a report released by CB Insights. There was a total of $8.1 billion in financing for 812 companies, the highest totals since the dotcom boom of Q2 2001.
The CB Insights Q2 report expressed that this growth in VC funding could be due to delayed IPO, exit markets and larger economic uncertainty that are promoting growth in the private sector.
Valve’s Steam service has truly revolutionized the experience of managing and downloading games. It appears Valve will be expanding on this service, according to a list of productivity software categories that briefly appeared on the Steam Mobile app.
Last night, a Verge reader seems to have been the first to notice that the Steam mobile app listed a variety of new, non-gaming software categories alongside the usual game genres: Accounting, Animation & Modeling, Audio Production, Design & Illustration, Education, Photo Editing, Software Training, Utilities, Video Production, and Web Publishing. The categories were all empty, but they appeared on both the Android and iOS versions of the store before being removed in the last few hours. It’s unclear just how long the categories were listed before then, though they don’t seem to have shown up on either the Steam website or the desktop versions of the Steam application at any point.
Apple and Samsung don’t exactly see eye to eye on the term of the most recent injunction placed on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. No big surprise here, shortly after the ruling was handed down, temporarily banning sales of both devices, Apple began sending out requests to retailers requesting the halt of all sales of the Samsung products.
The letter from the iPhone and iPad maker outlined the order from the US District Court, which “applies not only to the named Samsung entities, but also to anyone ‘acting in concert’ with them.” Further, retailers were asked to “comply with the order by ceasing immediately to engage in any of the specified acts (e.g., importing, offering to sell, or selling within the United States) in connection with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer.”
Apple began sending those notices associated with the Galaxy Nexus on June 3, the same day U.S. Judge Lucy Koh turned down Samsung’s appeal on the injunction. Three days later, however, Judge Koh suspended the injunction.
A San Francisco jury found on Friday that RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server infringed Mformation’s patented mobile device management software, meriting royalty payments of $147.2 million based on U.S. sales.
RIM has been ordered to pay an $8 royalty fee on each of the over 18.4 million units that currently access the patent infringing software. The $147.2 million price tag is for non-government US-based sales only. RIM — which just issued a gruesome first-quarter earnings report, is in for more bad news according to Mformation’s attorney, Amar Thakur, if the company decides to seek damages on future sales-outside the US and to government employees- the figure could double or even triple.
Hardkernel, the Korean hardware manufacturer, offers up a strong line of tablets geared towards developers. The ODROID-Q open mobile development platform is a developers dream, based on the Exynos4412 ARM Cortex-A9 Quad Core it provides PC-like performance with full access to schematics and source code. Allowing developers to design software or develop tablet products by referring to the ODROID set.
