Apple's legal team sure has been busy this week. First there was the Motorola patent case. Then there was the letter to the ITC regarding an old HTC case. And now this.
Reports are coming in this evening that Apple has just won a devastating preliminary injunction on the sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 here in the United States...
Late last year, the International Trade Commission found HTC to be infringing on one of Apple's patents. So the ITC gave the company until April to correct the problem, before enforcing a country-wide import ban on its products.
Long story short, shipments of several HTC devices were held up at U.S. customs last month due to the ruling. And even though it supposedly found a workaround, and the shipments were released, HTC isn't out of the woods just yet...
Since the iPhone launched on Verizon's network last year, the handset has been the carrier's most popular smartphone. Most quarters it's even sold better than all Android devices combined.
But it looks like things are starting to shift at Big Red, as a new report suggests that the iPhone is no longer the wireless provider's bestselling device. What is? Motorola's Droid RAZR MAXX...
Different stats and market research all point to the same conclusion: that the mobile market is being reduced to a two-horse race between iOS and Android (or Apple and Samsung, specifically) as once great incumbents such as RIM and Nokia get pushed aside, their market shares seriously declining.
In fact, it's fairly safe to say that on the fifth anniversary of iPhone, both RIM and Nokia are fighting for survival, quite possibly their lifecycle coming to an end. Meanwhile, only four companies are turning profit in the increasingly crowded smartphone space...
One of the major staples of Android development's always been the operating system's ability to automatically scale apps up and down in order to accommodate whichever form factor they're being used on.
Apple's approach to form factor fragmentation has traditionally been the opposite one. As in, Apple requires app developers to target each screen size with a pixel-perfect user interface. Though iPads can pixel-double tiny iPhone apps, Apple wouldn't degrade user experience by letting iOS stretch apps' hard-coded interfaces.
It would appear that iOS 6 introduces a diametrically opposite approach, one letting developers construct interfaces that can intelligently adapt to different screen resolutions without looking plain fugly.
This is not just convenience, but a necessity given that rumored taller iPhone and an iPad mini, both allegedly due around September or October of this year...
We've known for awhile that Google's been working on improving Voice Actions in Android. Needless to say, last October's release of the iPhone 4S and its headline voice assistant feature dubbed Siri sent Google's engineers back to the drawing board in an attempt to re-envision what conversing with an Android device should be like. According to the well-informed Wall Street Journal, the search giant has now "accelerated" plans to bring Siri competitor to the market.
Despite what Google's Eric Schmidt would have you believe, developers still prefer Apple's iOS platform over any other mobile operating system. More importantly, the vast majority of programmers don't think a rumored introduction of a taller iPhone this fall will complicate their life as adapting their apps to a larger canvas shouldn't be a biggie...
Apple really stick it to Google by supplanting Google Maps in iOS 6 with in-house mapping service, didn't it? But more than anything, yesterday's WWDC keynote has proven that Apple is just as merciless without Steve Jobs.
As both tech giants fight tooth and nail for mindshare, Cupertino is now adamant to go thermonuclear on everything Google, not just Maps.
The iPhone maker demonstrated its incredible agility and willingness to fight Google on multiple dimensions yesterday. To that extent, iOS 6 could be viewed as the biggest step yet in the de-Googlification of iOS.
Here's why...
I've always tinkered with my devices, regardless of their OS. I remember installing leaked versions of RIM's OS 6 on my old BlackBerry Bold, and rooting my Android handsets to install the latest ROMs.
But out of all of those experiences, I can honestly say that hacking devices, customizing them and installing tweaks, is much easier to do on iOS than it is on any other platform — even the "open" Android...
So mere four days before the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs' favorite analytics company posts some peculiar numbers making Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt look ridiculous.
Though Android continues to lead the pack in terms of shipments, the iOS train just keeps on chugging along in terms of loyalty and profitability.
Seven out of ten mobile apps in the first five months of this year were built for Apple's platform, where developers on average earn four times more revenue...
When social network Path released its Android app following the successful debut on the iPhone, barely anyone paid notice. But when Instagram went Android, it spurred lots of controversy. Even Apple’s marketing boss Phil Schiller stopped using the app because it “jumped the shark” when it went to Android.
The debate over iPhone exclusives going Android really heated up with yesterday’s announcement of Instapaper of Android, Marco Arment’s read-later program which became a huge success on the iOS platform.
Should Apple work harder to secure iOS exclusives, which have been around in the console business for ages? Or perhaps this is nothing to get worked up about? Cast your vote now...
In what seems to be the norm lately, another popular iPhone app has expanded to Android, Marco Arment's Instapaper. This awesome and elegant tool to save web pages for reading later can now be used on Android devices natively.
While it lacks the polish and elegance of the iOS version, Instapaper for Android comes with one major advantage...