Archive for June, 2012

Apple take down Google and Samsung in the patent war

In a stunning decision late Friday, Android (and especially Samsung) has been dealt a potentially serious blow by the on-going patent wars with Apple. US District Court Judge Lucy Koh rendered a decision in favour of Apple’s injunction to block sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the United States. The patent at issue has to deal with database mining capabilities in Apple’s Siri voice assistant. Here is a quote from the Judge’s ruling,

"Apple has shown that the ‘604 Patented feature is core to Siri’s functionality. Accordingly, the court finds that Apple has adequately established the requisite causal nexus between Samsung’s alleged infringement of the ‘604 Patent and Apple’s risk of suffering irreparable harm. In sum, Apple has shown a likelihood of establishing both infringement and validity."

This is the second time this week that Judge Koh rendered a decision in favour of Apple’s injunctions versus Samsung. Earlier in the week, Judge Koh also ruled in favour of Apple’s injunction to stop sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States. In that case, Apple already posted a $2.6 Million Dollar bond to block sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. This is done to pay for legal costs and potential damages in case Apple’s injunction loses on appeal.
In this patent infringement case against the Galaxy Nexus, Apple must post a $95.6 Million dollar bond before the phone is blocked for sale in the United States. That will likely happen sometime early next week.
Here is a quote from the Yahoo article detailing responses from both Google and Samsung,

BlackBerry 10 delayed until Q1 2013

It isn’t a good day today in the RIM camp. As well as holding an earning call to announce its first quarter of 2012 results Research in Motion announced that BlackBerry 10 would not launch in Q4 as stated but instead in Q1 2013.

Many will be disappointed by this news but RIM need to ensure that they get the new operating system 100% right.

With sales down the company are going through some major restructuring, however CEO Thorsten Heins is confident that BlackBerry 10 will be worth waiting for.

You can see the full press release below:

Carphone Warehouse to stock the Nexus 7

Carphone Warehouse have today confirmed they will indeed be selling the Nexus 7 tablet from Google next month. They have said the Nexus 7 will be priced at £199.99 standalone or for free on a tethered contact. I presume this means they will only sell the 16GB version.

Commenting on the launch, Graham Stapleton, Chief Commercial Officer at Carphone Warehouse, says, “Consumer demand for tablets has exploded in just over two years since the launch of the first generation iPad. The wide range of devices now available means that consumer choice and buying power is stronger than ever. Google clearly believes that there is further scope to grow the market and the competitively priced Google Nexus will serve to make tablet devices more accessible to customers. 

“The meteoric rise in the popularity of tablets can be attributed to changes in the way we are using the internet, managing relationships and consuming media. Our lives are more connected and ‘always on’ than ever before. It’s all about convenience; people don’t want to have to go to a desk and sit at a computer to surf the internet, do some online shopping, chat with friends or update a Facebook status – tablet devices lend themselves perfectly to all these activities, all from the comfort of the sofa. Whilst laptops have catered to this need in the past they are slightly cumbersome and awkward; tablets offer the ideal solution and represent the direction home computing is likely to take in the future as demand for clunky home desktop PCs decreases.”

Google Nexus features a 7 inch screen, quadcore processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB memory. It will be the first (and only for the next four months) tablet to run the new Jelly Bean operating system.

Posted by: James

The Nexus 7 tablet confirmed

Over Google I/O today the Nexus 7 tablet has been announced and it was pretty much what we expected to see.

Manufactured by ASUS the new 7 inch tablet running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will go on sale here in the UK for £159 for the 8GB version and £199 for the 16GB.

Under the hood of the Nexus 7 is some sweet stuff. This includes a Quad-processor with a Tegra 3 12-core GPU. Weighing only 300g and combined with a battery that will support up to 9 hours of video playback I think Google’s new creation may be quite popular.

Although we get WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC there is no 3G modem on board which I know will disappoint many. However, for the price, the Nexus 7 is a real bargain.

Posted by: James