HTC Sues Apple In The UK, Following ITC Ruling

HTC Corp. (2498), the Taiwanese smartphone maker locked in a patent battle with competitor Apple Inc., sued the iPhone maker in Britain.

The complaint, filed July 29 in London, comes two weeks after HTC lost a ruling against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Notice of the U.K. case didn’t specify the nature of the new lawsuit.

The Washington-based ITC ruled on July 15 that HTC’s Android-based mobile phones infringe two Apple patents, a judgment that HTC, Asia’s second-biggest maker of smartphones, has said it will appeal.

Apple To Launch iPhone 5 In October, Not September

We have been hearing a number of rumors over the last few weeks that the iPhone 5 would launch in September, first we heard it would launch on September the 5th, and then we heard that it would launch in the first two weeks of September.

Now according to the guys over at All Things D, we will see the iPhone 5 launch at the start of October, this follows on from a recent Gizmodo report which said it would land at the end of September after they received some information from an AT&T employee.

Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government

As the U.S. government attempts to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling, the Treasury's operating cash balance dropped to $74 billion this week, less than the $76 billion that the tech company Apple had in cash as of June 25, when it released its most-recent financial results.

Apple is taking in more money than it lays out, CNN said.

At present, the U.S. is spending around $200 billion more than it takes in in revenue every month, BBC News reports. Meanwhile, Apple is raking it in. In the three months ended June 25, net income was $7.31 billion, an increase of 125% from a year earlier.

Not only has the world's highest-valued technology company surpassed the fiscal strength of the world's most powerful nation, but Apple is now the second-largest company on the planet, after Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $363.25 billion, according to Financial Post. And earlier this week, shares of the company began trading above $400 a share on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time ever.

Yes, Apple is really on a roll.

Toshiba Thrive Vs. Apple iPad 2

Toshiba Corp. entered the tablet race by releasing its 10.1-inch Android tablet, the Toshiba Thrive, on July 10. However, the tablet has to deal with the iconic Apple iPad 2, as the benchmark for design and performance has been set by the Cupertino giant.

Thrive comes in only Wi-Fi version and boasts of a 10.1-inch LED backlit multi-touch wide-screen display (1280x800 pixel resolution), Android Honeycomb 3.1 OS and NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor.

Thrive also has features like a virtual keyboard with Swype technology, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, USB 2.0 and HDMI ports, and an SD card slot. The tablet offers multitasking, zippy Web browsing, console-quality gaming (thanks to ultra-low power NVIDIA GeForce GPU) and hardware-accelerated Flash.

Microsoft's Windows Faces Erosion, Competition

Microsoft's long-running Windows franchises faces the twin threats of softening PC sales and consumers' rising preference for mobile offerings such as Apple’s iOS.

Microsoft’s July 21 earnings call revealed one little tidbit that could have executives in Redmond reaching for the anti-anxiety medication: revenue for the company’s Windows and Windows Live Division declined 1 percent during the most recent quarter, even as other divisions reported significant growth.

It’s hard to understate the importance of Windows revenue to Microsoft’s overall fortunes. Windows 7 has sold some 400 million licenses since its October 2009 release. A galaxy of manufacturing partners and third-party vendors depend on the operating system to help sell their own products and services. And Microsoft needs those truckloads of Windows revenue to help finance less profitable initiatives, such as its “all in” cloud strategy.

Apple approves Google+ app for iPhone

Apple today approved the Google+ app for the iPhone, and posted it to the App Store.

As of noon ET, only an iPhone version of Google+ was available. It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app.

Google+, the social network that launched earlier this month but still remains in field trials, already boasts 10 million users, Google CEO Larry Page said last week during the company's quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

The app may not be available to everyone immediately, said Vic Gundotra, who heads Google's social division.

"iPhone, meet Google+," said Gundotra as he announced the new software on his Google+ account. "This app should be rolling out over the next few hours."

Computerworld was able to download and install the Google+ app for the iPhone from this App Store page. As of 2 p.m. ET, however, the app was still not available via an App Store search.

Two weeks ago, a Google employee said that the company had submitted Google+ to the App Store. "The Google+ iPhone app has been submitted to the App Store (no not today, sometime prior to today) and is awaiting approval," said Erica Joy on July 4.

According to that timeline, Google's app took twice as long as the vast bulk of submitted apps to win Apple's approval.

Apple deals massive patent blow to HTC, Android in serious trouble

Late yesterday an ITC judge ruled that smartphone maker HTC has infringed two Apple patents, and it seems likely that every single Android device out there infringes the same patents.

The two Apple patents that HTC is infringing are as follows:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.”
• U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.”

This is a very significant development since these two patents are also in dispute between Apple and Motorola and Apple and Nokia. This decision is also landmark in that it is the first legal judgement that finds Android in infringement of third-party intellectual property rights.

Just how serious is this ruling for HTC? Very serious. The worst-case scenario is that the ITC imposes an US import ban against all of HTC’s Android products. That’s how serious this is for HTC.

According to intellectual property activist Florian Mueller, Apple is unlikely to grant HTC a license for these patents and might make a damages claim.

But it gets worse. This also has severe implications for all Android products on the market, irrespective of the maker, as Mueller also pointed out:

It’s hard to see how any Android device could not infringe them, or how companies could work around them.

Mueller has put together a chart showing how all Android devices infringe the same patents that HTC has been found infringe.

HTC claims that is has found ‘alternate solutions‘ to these patents, but Mueller isn’t optimistic:

But can those patents really be worked around? Standing in front of the Great Wall of China, you can also vow to walk around it. That doesn’t mean it’s a viable option.

And it seems that it is going to get worse as Android is at the center of 49 federal and ITC infringement suits.

This is serious stuff.

Source: www.zdnet.com