Mar 02

Apple Goes After HTC In Lawsuit Over 20 iPhone Patents

Apple, IT, Microsoft, Nokia, iPhone No Comments »

Apple is using its strong patent portfolio to fight iPhone competitors in court. Its latest target is HTC. Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the cell phone manufacturer. The suit involves “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” Steve Jobs is quoted in a press release saying: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” The lawsuit itself is not available yet online. We’ve asked Apple for a copy. The lawsuit could be a way to go after Android, although Android is not mentioned in the press release. HTC manufactures some of the most successful Android handsets, from the first G1 up to the latest Nexus One. HTC’s touchscreen Android phones are the most similar to the iPhone. If that is the case, the lawsuit is a shot across Android’s bow and a warning to all Android manufacturers. This is not the first time Apple has gone after a mobile phone competitor. It is involved in similar patent litigation with Nokia. That lawsuit is more about Apple trying to get Nokia to license its patents. And the HTC suit may have the same motivation. But the fact that the lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as in a U.S. District Court in Delaware suggests that Apple is really going for the jugular. “The ITC does not award damages,” says Peter Toren, a patent lawyer with New York City law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The only remedy the ITC can award is an order to stop the importation of the infringing product. HTC is based in Taiwan. Apple thinks it owns the concept of the touchscreen Web phone and it wants other cell phone makers to pay for copying the iPhone or to stop altogether. Who will Apple sue next? Motorola? Palm? Research in Motion? Update: The complaint is embedded below. Some of the patents in questions are Patent Nos. 7,362,331, 7,479,949, 7,657,849, 7,469,381, 5,920,726, 7,633,076, 5,848,105, 7,383,453, 5,455,599, and 6,424,354 .

Apple vs HTC

CrunchBase InformationAppleHTCInformation provided by CrunchBase

[From Apple Goes After HTC In Lawsuit Over 20 iPhone Patents]

With all this suing going on it will be interesting to see if some of these patents (Apple’s, Nokia’s and others) actually stand up, and who has to concede what when the dust settles. In several years time…

Feb 24

iPhone and Android biggest winners in mobile market in 2009

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Though the overall mobile market is slowing—sales are down about one percent for 2009 year-over-year—a slight fourth quarter sales jump balanced the dips during the rest of the year. The good news is all in smartphones, as sales were up a whopping 41.1 percent for the fourth quarter and 23.8 percent overall, according to the latest data from market research firm Gartner. Nokia still commands large but declining chunks of smartphone and overall mobile phone sales, while iPhone and Android devices saw big leaps last year.

Overall mobile phone sales were down about 11 million units for 2009—perhaps good news for the growing concern about the contribution mobile phones make to the growing e-waste problem. Three of the top five vendors saw sales decline over the year, with Nokia down a couple points, and Motorola and Sony Ericsson seeing their shares cut almost in half. Samsung’s share of the mobile phone market is up to almost 20 percent, and LG bumped up a couple points to 10 percent. Gartner told Ars that Apple doubled its share of the overall market from 1.2 percent in 2008 to 2.1 percent for 2009, though it wasn’t enough to put it in the top five.

[From iPhone and Android biggest winners in mobile market in 2009]

Don’t forget RIM.

Feb 17

Jim Ray on the WebKit Mobile Browser Monoculture

Apple, IT, Microsoft, Nokia, iPhone, www No Comments »

Jim Ray:

More importantly, though, with something like browser rendering engines, I’m philosophically opposed to a monoculture.

First, I was observing more than celebrating. (But if any one rendering engine had to win the whole mobile shebang, I’m delighted it’s WebKit. But I’d love to see Mozilla get its mobile balls on.) But, bigger point: if any individual WebKit platform vendor disagrees with the direction of the mainline WebKit trunk, or simply thinks they can do better, they can do so. Real open source.

And:

For one, replace “WebKit” with “Flash” and suddenly the iPhone is the holdout.

Really? Every WebOS, BlackBerry, and Android phone today ships with Flash? I didn’t know that. (Not to mention Windows Mobile 7, phones with which aren’t shipping until “holidays 2010”, and which apparently aren’t going to ship with Flash.)

★

[From Jim Ray on the WebKit Mobile Browser Monoculture]

On the desktop Adobe had years to develop a Flash player to run properly on Mac OS X and Linux and failed. If they can’t provide a good implementation for more than one desktop platform how can they possibly provide a half-dozen or so mobile versions that aren’t dreadful?

Feb 10

Joe Wilcox on Microsoft’s Glut of Middle Managers

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Insightful reporting based on interviews with current and former Microsoft employees:

“When I started at MSFT in 1996, there were six people between me
and [Microsoft cofounder] Bill Gates,” Boris said. “In 2009, there
were 13 people between me and [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer.” Fred
said, “the number of managers between me and the CEO went from six
to 10,” during the last decade. Another long-time Microsoftie,
whom I’ll call Barry, saw his reports go from six to 12.

Fascinating stuff, too, about the bizarre incentive structure for Microsoft employees. I think this gets to the nut of exactly what’s wrong with Microsoft. They’ve evolved a powerful, deep bureaucracy that has lost any sort of focus on creating great products. Worse, for obvious reasons Microsoft’s management is unlikely to see itself as the problem. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

★

[From Joe Wilcox on Microsoft’s Glut of Middle Managers]

Interesting stuff.

Feb 09

Touchscreens take lead in smartphone biz

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Bumper year for finger-friendly phones The world’s smartphone makers shipped more touchscreen models in Q4 2009 than at any time in the past – and more touchphones than devices with buttons.…The power of collaboration within unified communications [From Touchscreens take lead in smartphone biz]

And Apple is the leader in touchscreen smartphones.

Feb 04

Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’

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It’s a sad tale, if you hear Dick Brass tell it. In a new op-ed for the New York Times, the former Microsoft VP explains how he thinks the Microsoft corporate culture has “never developed a true system for innovation,” and that while the company is obviously strong at the moment, he doesn’t see the company retaining its dominance if or when the Office and Windows revenues die down. His own anecdotes are a little heartbreaking: his team developed ClearType (first announced in 1998), but due to infighting and jealousy within the company, was kept from shipping as a default until 2007 with Windows Vista. Similarly he argues that the Tablet PC was much restricted by an Office team that didn’t believe in the concept, and therefore never developed a version of Office that was stylus-friendly. Dick left the company in 2004, and he says the tablet group at Microsoft has since been eliminated, and that almost all the executives in charge of “music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade” have also left. The man isn’t out to get Microsoft: he sees the company as important, and its profits have obviously gone to great philanthropic ends through Bill Gates and others, but if what he says about the anti-innovative corporate culture is true, it sounds like Microsoft has some work to do before it can return to its place of preeminence as an innovator, instead of the fast and effective follower it seems to be becoming in many areas.Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | New York Times | Email this | Comments [From Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft 'no longer brings us the future']

Moribund and soon to be beleaguered Microsoft lost its way many years ago.

Jan 27

Britons waste up to eight days a year on computer problems

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Britons waste up to eight days a year dealing with computer problems at work and home, a new study found. [From Britons waste up to eight days a year on computer problems]

They should switch to a Mac.

Jan 26

Apple sees profits increase 50%

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Apple reports a 50% increase in profits after seeing its most profitable quarter ever over the Christmas period. [From Apple sees profits increase 50%]

These results just mask the fact that they are really beleaguered.

Jan 08

Jackass of the Week: Henry Blodget

Apple, IT, Microsoft, iPhone No Comments »

Remember how with the iPod, year after year, we were inundated with punditry arguing that the iPod would suffer the same fate as the Mac — “superior technology beaten in the market by cheaper commodity products because Apple tried to maintain too much control”. Or some similar analogy. That didn’t work out well for those pundits.

I haven’t seen as much of that with the iPhone, but Henry Blodget is giving it the old college try, positioning Android as the Windows in the analogy. Now, it’s true that Android is open and the iPhone isn’t, and Android is definitely gaining attention and market share. But the analogy has no legs. The mobile OS market today bears almost no resemblance to the PC market of the ’80s. Blodget can’t even muster an argument as to what Apple should be doing differently. Really: What? License the iPhone OS to other handset makers? Give me a break.

Anyway, this argument is stupid if for no other reason than that iPhone sales are still growing fast.

★

[From Jackass of the Week: Henry Blodget]

With hindsight it seems that argument didn’t even apply to the Mac/PC situation in the first place! Different forces were at work.

Dec 23

Software development’s winners and losers, 2009 edition

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In 2009, the computers got smaller, the databases got bigger, and HTML’s dominance grew. None of these trends are new, and some of these changes are as old as computers themselves, but the magnitudes are greater or smaller than ever before. Here are the winners and losers we spotted on the software development landscape in 2009. For the programmers, alas, many of the year’s ups had downsides. [From Software development's winners and losers, 2009 edition]

Pontification and punditry for the end of the year. Some good points, some interesting links.

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