Nokia claims the infringements involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices.

This is the latest salvo in a long-running legal battle between the two companies.

Nokia and Apple are embroiled in another dispute concerning the iPhone.

“We’ve taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation,” said Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia.

In a statement, the company said that during the past two decades Nokia has invested about $51bn (£34bn) in research and development and has rounded up 11,000 patents.

Last year Nokia filed a similar lawsuit which claimed that various Apple products infringed Nokia patents. Apple responded with a countersuit against Nokia for infringing Apple patents with its smartphones.

Meanwhile, Apple is also involved in another legal row with Taiwan’s HTC, maker of Google’s Nexus One phone, which it says has infringed patented technology.

Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and often end with some kind of licensing agreement, correspondents say.

The Nokia lawsuit came on the day Apple announced that its iPad tablet computer will go on sale in nine countries outside the US on 28 May.

Resource:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8669529.stm

Searching for information on the web is the most popular activity for the new generation of tech-savvy phone owners, research into the mobile phone habits of Australians has revealed.

More than three-quarters of people with internet connected phones use them to hunt for information online while on the move – up from just 30 per cent a year ago.

Popular online activities for mobile phone users include:

CHECKING news and weather (59 per cent).

EMAIL (58 per cent).

MAPS or directions (56 per cent).

SOCIAL networking (39 per cent).

Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site accessed via the mobile Web, snaring 98 per cent of visitors, followed by Twitter and MySpace.

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The Nielsen internet and technology report shows new activities, such as buying items online, jumped 10 per cent to 17 per cent.

The previously popular pastime of downloading ringtones dropped 9 per cent to 21 per cent.

The survey comes as new social networking-oriented phones hit the market. They boast iPhone-style touch screens, Qwerty keyboards and the ability to snap and instantly upload photos to sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Samsung spokesman Tyler McGee said manufacturers were responding to the demands of consumers.

“Research shows that three out of five Australians under the age of 35 who access the internet claim to use social networking on their mobile phones,” he said.

Samsung has just released four internet-friendly phone models.

The survey said Nokia still leads the internet-capable mobile phone pack, controlling more than 35 per cent of the market. Apple’s iPhone has more than doubled its share to 28 per cent and is growing quickly.

About 13 per cent of Australians who have not yet used their mobile to go online plan to do so over the next 12 months.

“We’ve seen a big shift in the levels of activity among those who are using mobile internet,” Nielsen online spokesman Matt Bruce said.

Resource:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/mobile-phone-users-hungry-for-accessing-online-including-facebook/story-e6frf7l6-1225860323408

The Linux-based tablet has a 12.1-inch screen, making it slightly larger than Apple’s rival device, the iPad, which will only go on sale in the UK at the end of May. The JooJoo has a resolution of 1,366×768 pixels and uses an Intel Atom processor with Nvidia Ion graphics processing. It has a 4GB solid-state drive and 1GB of RAM.

Like the iPad, the JooJoo has an onscreen virtual keyboard. Unlike the Apple slate, it runs Flash content and has a USB connection and a webcam.

The JooJoo has a nine-second boot-up time and a browser-based operating system. On Fusion Garage’s website, the company addresses the issue of an application store — the distribution method favoured by Apple for its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad — by saying JooJoo “has the largest app store in the world… it’s called the internet”.

The JooJoo began its life as the CrunchPad, a collaboration between Fusion Garage and Michael Arrington, the entrepreneur behind the TechCrunch website. Arrington launched a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in December last year, after the company decided to release the device without his input.

The device is now shipping to US customers, after an initial delay. In a blog post on Monday, Fusion Garage chief Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan said the company had been overly optimistic in its delivery date estimates. He also conceded that the JooJoo’s software had needed major revisions since the first review samples were sent out to a generally tepid reception.

“We are in the midst of ‘bad JooJoo’ for a very simple reason: we were aggressive in our product delivery commitments, decided to completely revise our UI as we were readying the product for release, and our initial units shipped with software that proved to be problematic when put to the test in the real world,” Rathakrishnan wrote. “Embarrassing? Yes. Correctable? Absolutely. And we will.

“We will have a robust software update available shortly that we fully expect to eliminate many of the problems that were widely reported in our initial product review cycle. We will also be able to play full-screen HD video as promised via our Fusion Garage player,” he added.

According to Fusion Garage, the JooJoo receives over-the-air software updates to add new functionality as it is developed.

UK customers can order the JooJoo through the Fusion Garage website at a cost of £319 plus tax and shipping. An optional stand for the device is available for £30 plus tax and shipping.

Resource:
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/mobile-devices/2010/04/28/fusion-garage-launches-joojoo-web-tablet-in-uk-40088789/

It appears that earlier this month, Google presented the owners of soon-to-be-launched Australian liquor price comparison website, Groggle.com.au, with a cease and desist letter demanding it stop using the Groggle brand.

According to the letter, sighted by Delimiter, Google is alleging that “The mark is is substantially identical with and deceptively familiar to the Google trademarks which are extremely well known in Australia.” The search giant is represented by law firm Middletons.

Groggle Pty Ltd is a startup based in Brisbane founded by Cameron Collie and Alec Doughty and is planning to offer a location-driven alcohol price comparison service online. Currently in beta, the Groggle project is over two years in the making and the founders had hoped to launch in a few months, with a look at launching a similar website in the US within the year.

Google’s letter alleged the Groggle name was “likely to mislead and deceive consumers into believing that Groggle has a sponsorship, affiliation or approval with Google, when this is not the case”.

Collie said in response to the C&D letter: “We are a legitimate business that is just trying to launch a startup and now we are facing the wrath of Google’s lawyers because Google thinks it owns any word that ends in ‘gle’ and cannot see that our domain is a play on the word ‘Grog’ and has nothing to do with their name.”

Collie also mention that the URL “Groggle.com” is not a typo of Google.com and could not be considered for typo-squatting, a practise of URL hijacking when surfers type an Internet address in the address bar and are then taken to another website not of their choosing.

The directors of Groggle Pty Ltd had until the 14th April to meet Google’s demands as stated in the C&D, including withdrawal of the trademark application and transfer of all domain names to Google. Groggle Pty Ltd has eight different variations of Groggle domains registered.

The C&D is riddled with mistakes and refers to “Groggle” as “Groogle”, such as “change its company name to a name that does not include the word “GROOGLE” or “GOOGLE” and provide a written acknowledgement that Groogle has infringed upon the Google trademarks.

A follow up letter was sent to Groggle Pty Ltd on the 20th April notifying Collie and Doughty that they have until 4pm on Thursday 29 April to comply with the C&D.

The way the website operates is when consumers search for their poison of choice, for example “Boag’s Classic Blonde” on the Groggle site and enter their postcode. The results displays the retailer with the cheapest price for the product, within the consumers district.

Retailers have to register with the website in order to be included in the results, they can then update prices and products as needed.

Collie and Doughty had registered Groggle.com using Google Apps Premier Edition and paid Google the annual fee of $50 per user account, totalling $100 for 2 user accounts.

Google didn’t have a response at the time of writing this article.

Resource:
http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/38635-google-growls-at-groggle

HTC Corp., which makes Google’s Nexus One mobile phone, has agreed to pay under a patent licensing agreement, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said in a statement today without disclosing the amount. Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. also make mobile devices that use Android.

Microsoft has been talking “with several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform,” Horacio Gutierrez, the company’s deputy general counsel for intellectual property and licensing, said in an e-mailed statement without naming the companies involved.

Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, offers Android for free to handset companies, and seeks to make money instead from selling advertising tied to Android users’ searches and application uses. Microsoft’s demands expand the legal issues around Android and raise the possibility of more companies seeking royalties, said Michael Gartenberg, a partner at research firm Altimeter Group.

“The message is so not subtle — Android is not free and not only is not free, it can start being quite expensive over time,” Gartenberg said. “The irony of the fact is that for every HTC Android phone that ships, Microsoft will get a check.”

Dealing With Microsoft

Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group in San Jose, California, estimates that HTC and most other handset manufacturers would have to pay Microsoft $20 to $40 per phone to license the intellectual property required for Android.

Unless Google somehow figures out how to ax this cost, “Android is going to fall off as an expensive and risky platform,” he said. “Nobody wants to deal with Microsoft.”

Apple Inc. already has a patent-infringement complaint pending against HTC over phones that run on Android. Research In Motion Ltd., Nokia Oyj and Palm Inc. are among the device makers that might claim to have patent rights to Android, Gartenberg said.

HTC, based in Taoyuan, Taiwan, also makes phones that run on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system.

Anthony House, a spokesman for Mountain View, California- based Google, said the company isn’t ready to comment on the matter.

Apple Case

Apple, maker of the iPhone, is seeking to block U.S. imports of HTC phones that run on Android. That case is pending before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington.

In a March 15 blog posting, Gutierrez said the Apple case is proof that the mobile phone industry “is in the process of sorting out what royalties will be” for the software that adds the features such as Internet access and downloading capabilities.

He said Microsoft has “consistently taken a proactive approach to licensing.” The company, which is typically defending itself against four dozen patent-infringement suits at any given time, isn’t known for filing lawsuits over its own patents. Since 2007, the company has filed two patent lawsuits against companies that didn’t sue it first, according to Bloomberg data.

Resource:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-29/microsoft-says-google-s-android-may-infringe-patents-correct-.html

Australians’ ownership of internet phones now sits at 43 per cent, with 29 per cent regularly using it to search, email, find maps and to share their lives on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Even though people have an internet-enabled handset, some people aren’t necessarily using it. According to Nielsen’s online business managing director Matt Bruce some still own older 2G smartphone models, while others are afraid of bill shock.

“The older models are not as easy to use. You have to find your way through the phone to find the browser, then go from there. The iPhone makes it easier,” he said.

Internet searches are the most popular online activity on the phones. Some 73 per cent of users conduct online searches by mobile now, compared with 30 per cent a year ago.

Other common uses include checking news and weather (59 per cent, up 18 points), email (58 per cent, up 20 points), maps and directions (56 per cent, up 24 points) and social networking (39 per cent, up 25 points).

The adoption of internet phones has been growing steadily since the introduction of mobile data cap plans in Australia, which go some way to reducing the risk of bill shock for users. People’s infatuation with the iPhone has also driven mobile internet adoption worldwide.

Nokia still maintains a solid lead on internet phones in Australia with a 35 per cent market share, however, the iPhone has made significant gains in the past year, more than doubling from just 13 per cent to 28 per cent market share. Intention to purchase an iPhone also remains high, with Apple set to triple its share this year, Bruce said.

With an overwhelming majority of the share of mobile social networking, Facebook is by far the most common social networking site accessed via mobile (98 per cent), followed by Twitter (20 per cent) and MySpace (17 per cent), the report said.

According to Nielsen, Telstra has seen mobile data traffic on its Next G network double every eight months for the past two years.

Resource:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/australians-take-to-mobile-internet-20100429-tszn.html

On Monday, Google not only said it will sell the Nexus One through partner retail shops in Europe, it also indicated it no longer intends to launch a version of the phone for Verizon’s American wireless network.

The day the Nexus One arrived, the scuttlebutt was that Verizon – like Motorola – was less than pleased with Google’s decision to sell its own handset, and now, we can only assume that Verizon and Vodafone, Verizon’s part owner, have forced the web giant to eat some crow.

This may have something do with the fact that the Nexus One isn’t what you’d call a top seller. Estimates indicate Google has unloaded a mere 500,000 devices since the launch on January 5. But on launch day, Google said it would be “would be happy to sell about 150,000” devices.

The idea, the company said at the time, was to create a “revolutionary” new channel that would make it easier for the world to buy smartphones – regardless of how many devices it sold in the short term. But less than four months later, the company is reading from a very different script.

“Our partners have played an amazing role in making Android successful, and the Android ecosystem has grown faster than our most optimistic expectations of even just a few months ago,” the company tells us. “By working with Vodafone and other operators in Europe, we’ll be able to get more Nexus One phones to more people more quickly.”

In January, Google wasn’t concerned about the health of the Android “ecosystem.” At least, it didn’t claim to be. It painted its online store as something that would operate alongside existing channels, not just in the short term but for many handsets to come. “Nexus One belongs in a class of device, which we call, superphones,” vice president of product management Mario Queiroz said that January morning.

“It’s the first device, the first phone, which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners from a series of devices…You might be asking how are we going to bring this product to market. Well, today, we’re also pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a Google-hosted webstore.”

Android project lead Andy Rubin said that existing partners like Verizon were willing to join this webstore for certain “efficiencies.” Google’s direct model would cut out all sorts of overhead wireless operators are just dying to cutout. “[Operators] just want to sell service plans,” he said. “This [web store] enables them to reach consumers very efficiently.”

Well, now even Google is awful close to acknowledging that this was just talk. “We have decided that the best and fastest way to get Nexus One into the hands of European consumers is through our partners,” the company said today. Note the word “best.”

And this admission is born out by that fact that in addition to offering the Nexus One through Vodafone shops and other retail stores in Europe, the company is not selling to the Continent through its webstore – and it has apparently reversed plans to offer a CDMA-based Nexus One on Verizon, the largest US carrier in the US, with roughly 90 million subscribers.

Under pressure

At launch, Google said that both Verizon and Vodafone would offer service plans in tandem with the Nexus One from its webstore. And it gave each a placeholder in the store indicating their phones would arrive this spring. But the Vodafone name has vanished from the store, and Verizon users are now pointed to the carrier’s website, where they can pre-order the upcoming Droid Incredible, another HTC-manufactured Android phone.

Google is still selling an unlocked phone to customers in the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong as well as the US – as it has done since the Nexus One debuted. But the company has not expanded the store to other countries as it indicated it would. “Consumers in Europe will be able to buy Nexus one from mobile operators, beginning with Vodafone. We don’t have anything further to announce about Google’s web store at this time,” the company told us on Monday.

You might argue that Google has simply realized it’s rubbish at selling phones. For all Rubin’s talk of efficiencies, Google simply isn’t equipped to sell phones. Even if large numbers of people are inclined to buy a phone straight from an online search engine without the traditional marketing and hand-holding traditionally provided by the carriers – and we’re not sure they are – Mountain View is woefully unprepared to deal with support after the phone is sold.

But again, in January, Google said this was a long term endeavor. We would argue the company has backpedalled under pressure from its partners, whom the company very much relies on to sell Android phones through existing channels.

When we asked Google whether it had indeed nixed plans to offer the Nexus One on Verizon, it didn’t respond. But the company tells CNET that it “won’t be selling a Nexus One with Verizon” – an unusually unequivocal statement from the Mountain View Chocolate Factory. This couldn’t be further from what it – and Motorola – were saying on January 5.

“I see [Google’s Nexus One store] as another way to get to consumers, another way for them to buy devices,” said Motorola co-chief exec Sanjay Jha, who was trotted out during Google’s Nexus One press conference alongside Rubin and Queiroz.

Motorola and Verizon had just spent a reported $100 million promoting the new Android-based Droid phone. “I don’t see this as a threat [to Motorola]. I just see it as potentially an expansion of the marketplace.”

If it was just an expansion of the marketplace, Google would still be prepping a Verizon Nexus One.

It was Andy Rubin who, in the run-up to the introduction of the Nexus One, deflected questions about the phone’s existence by saying that Google would never build its own hardware or “compete with its customers” – meaning the likes of Motorala and Verizon.

Resource:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/27/google_backtracks_on_nexus_one/

The N8 phone has a 12 megapixel camera and allows people to record and edit High Definition video clips, as well as watch web TV services.

Analysts said the phone was a “pivotal device” in efforts “to make Nokia’s high end phones credible again”.

It is also a chance for Symbian to prove itself alongside Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone.

Despite being the world’s most popular smart phone software, Symbian has lost “mindshare” against more high-profile software, according to industry experts.

Analysts at CCS Insight described the Symbian 3 software as “evolutionary not revolutionary” but said it was a “key first step if it proves reliable”.

Cinema support

It is the first version of the software since the Symbian foundation announced that it had made its code open source in February.

The Foundation – which includes Nokia, Motorola and Samsung amongst others – gave away the code to developers for free in the hope that it would help speed up the pace of improvements. Any organisation or individual can now use and modify it.

The software in the N8 allows the phone to have multi-touch and multi-tasking, meaning more than one application can be open at any one time.

The device will be Nokia’s flagship smartphone. It can be plugged into home theatres and supports surround sound as well as high-quality video.

Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, can be displayed on the home screen in a single application.

Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was “stoked” that Nokia had chosen to use the operating system on its phone.

The phone will ship in the third quarter of 2010, following delays.

Resource:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8646715.stm

Similarly, Nokia new messaging service aggregates multiple e-mail accounts through one client and can support and mobilise up to 10 e-mail accounts.

This service will be available through all leading operators and consumers will only have to pay the basic data download charges. And as part of the Nokia Messaging Service (NMS) portfolio, it will also offer free Instant Messaging (IM) services, preloaded on select devices.

“Nokia’s e-mail proposition offers different kinds of e-mail options depending on the need of the user. The service is already in use by over 30-lakh people in more than 100 countries.

“India is among the top five countries for the service and we are confident that with our decision to offer it for free, we will see a significant surge in adoption of e-mail and messaging services in the country,” said Nokia’s Executive Vice-President (Markets) Anssi Vanjoki.

According to Nokia India Managing Director and Vice-President D. Shivakumar, “People are looking at messaging services as an enhanced business tool. There are 30-lakh mail users on mobile in India.

“The number is expected to touch 13-crore in 2014. Interestingly, 78 per cent of web e-mail users want to browse their e-mails on their mobile phones, while mobile e-mail users are growing at 96 per cent.”

Resource:
http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/gadgets/article411001.ece

The questions about whether or not Apple could produce a compelling tablet have been answered. PCMag gave it an Editors’ Choice award, and most other reviews have been positive to glowing. Yes, there are still some big questions about the iPad. Will consumers embrace it after the initial rush? Will publishers’ dreams of the “iPad as industry savior” be realized? I’d say we’re 6 to 12-months away from being able to answer those questions. Even so, Apple’s iPad is a tablet done right, and I think Apple’s plan of using and extending its mobile OS in ever-larger devices is pure genius and one that Microsoft would do well to mimic.

Right now, we’re all waiting for Windows 7-based tablets, such as the HP Slate, to arrive. There will be others, of course, but HP’s is the one Microsoft is touting. It appears to have the most potential for rebooting Microsoft’s tablet PC efforts. It’s built on the Windows 7 platform—a desktop and laptop OS that I use every day. It’s the best version of Windows since, perhaps, Windows 95. By that I mean that it’s new, fresh, smart, and light enough and intuitive enough to not get in your way.

All that said, it’s still a desktop OS. It carries with it all of the complications that are typically associated with running a relatively complex piece of technology. For what it’s worth, Apple’s desktop OS, Mac OS X, is only marginally less complex. This has relatively little to do with the hardware. We’ve proven in PC Labs that netbooks (which have hardware specs that are roughly equivalent to the upcoming Windows tablets), can run Windows 7, but Windows still shows you too much about the guts of your system. You still install drivers, there’s still a Control Panel, and even the nifty new Device Stage leads you to a hardware setup or configuration screen eventually. Windows Phone 7, like the iPhone OS, shields the end user from those complications. If Microsoft and its partners put Windows Phone 7 on these tablets, an end user might never have to see any of them. Yet, with access to the new Microsoft Marketplace, they’ll still be able to install whatever apps they need—all from one central place. Clearly, Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up in the Marketplace—it’ll have to get much richer and faster if Microsoft wants people to rely on it for their Win Phone 7 app needs. Web-based offerings could help here. Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, for example, could be the perfect tools for these Windows Phone 7-based tablets.

Before someone goes for my throat, let’s define some terms. Tablets is, admittedly, a broad term, and there’s a lot of confusion about what is and isn’t a tablet computer. For the sake of my argument, I do not consider products like the Apple iPad and HP Slate full-blown computers, and, while versatile, they’re not suited for all computing tasks. I don’t think video editing, intensive photo editing, and CAD work are what you want to do with them. Laptops that convert into tablets are, essentially, full-blown PCs stuffed with powerful, near-desktop-level (sometimes desktop-level) components. They’re ready to do virtually anything. All-in-one touch-screen desktops, such as the HP TouchSmart, are not tablets.

If you accept my argument—that true tablets need to work more like mobile phones and less like desktop computers—then Apple’s iPad strategy makes perfect sense. The astounding market success of netbooks helped Apple realize that most people only want to do a limited number of things with their computers. But Apple CEO Steve Jobs was loath to deliver a low-end portable computer to the market. Obviously, he figured out that Apple could serve the netbook market, with a product that’s sexier, simpler, and yet more powerful than many low-end netbooks. The iPhone and iPod touch are incredibly human devices that respond to your actions in an almost instinctive way. It’s not much of a leap to surmise that this think/do interface metaphor could also work in a form factor just shy of a full-blown laptop. There are more facets to the iPad than simplicity, but the choice of the iPhone OS as the iPad platform is probably the most important decision Apple made in the entire product development process.

Putting what is, essentially, a mobile OS into, for example, the HP Slate should be easy to do. It would allow Microsoft to replicate the Apple ecosystem’s success (i.e. the iPad, iPhone OS 4, iTunes, the App Store, and individual apps). Obviously, Microsoft doesn’t manufacture and control Windows Phone 7-based hardware the way Apple does its own hardware. That said, Microsoft is requiring certain key features in all Windows phones: GPS, touch screen capabilities, and an accelerometer. Now, Microsoft should extend that concept to tablets running its software (if it doesn’t already).

One company that may agree with my strategy is Google. I’ve heard more than a few rumors that the company is working on a tablet with its Android mobile platform—not its Google Chrome OS. This isn’t exactly a surprise. Other companies, including Dell, are thinking the very same thing.

I know this is a radical idea, but if Microsoft and its partners hinder these new tablets with a full-blown OS and the standard world of ad-hoc Windows applications and utilities bought from non-homogenous sources, Apple and the iPad will win.

Resource:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362882,00.asp