Samsung co-CEO JK Shin said today that the company has developed a modified Galaxy S4 that supports LTE-Advanced. This next-generation 4G LTE standard supports significantly speedier data rates — theoretically up to three gigabits down and 1.5Gbps up — though real-world speeds are expected to top out between 150 megabits per second and 300Mbps.

“We’ll be the first with the commercial launch of the advanced 4G version of the smartphone,” Shin told Reuters, adding that he expects the device to be a crucial part of its product portfolio. “The new LTE-Advanced (4G) phone will be another addition to our high-end segment offerings that ensure healthy profit margins.”

And there’s certainly a good chance that it will be, someday. But not for a while. A slick LTE-Advanced smartphone isn’t much good without an LTE-Advanced network to run on, and right now such networks are pretty sparse. Russian carrier Yota has one, and AT&T plans to begin rolling one out later this year. Verizon and T-Mobile are working on LTE-Advanced deployments, as well. But it will be some time before we see the sort of ubiquitous coverage necessary to get the best use out of this new Galaxy S4 that Samsung’s planning.

“For the last several months, we have consistently stated and maintained that our System V code is in Linux. The claims SCO has are both broad and deep. These claims touch not just IBM but other vendors as well. They also touch certain industry consortia and corporate Linux end users. Our claims aren’t trivial. The violations of our intellectual property are not easily repaired. It is our intention to vigorously protect and enforce SCO’s intellectual property, System V source code and our copyrights. We’re now fully prepared to do that.”

– Former SCO CEO Darl McBride, in 2003

When the SCO Group — which for a decade waged an aggressive and ill-starred legal campaign against the Linux OS — collapsed into financial ruin last summer, it seemed that the company was finally headed for an ignominious grave. Following hard-fought but ultimately ludicrous lawsuits against both Novell and IBM, SCO careened from Chapter 11 into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, volunteering in its own filing that it had “no reasonable chance of rehabilitation.”

But evidently liquidation wasn’t enough to keep SCO dead and buried, because this past May the company filed a request to reopen its case against IBM. Now a Utah district court judge has granted it, and SCO is clambering from the grave and preparing to shamble into court after IBM once again.

Astonishing. You’d think that after all these years, SCO would be little more than a case study in why using litigation as a profit center to compensate for market losses is bad business. But no. It’s back. And once again, it’s pushing forward with its suit accusing IBM of misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, breach of contract and tortious interference. And the end game here is the same as it has always been: Squeeze millions of dollars in licensing fees from a company it claims illegally distributed portions of its proprietary Unix code with the Linux OS — code it has never really specified, despite repeated calls to do so from its defendants and the open source community.

So SCO has been given one last shot at IBM, a chief architect of its ruin. And while it’s impossible to say what will become of it, the company’s litigation record doesn’t bode well for its chances.

As Groklaw editor Pamela Jones quips in her write-up of this latest development in the case, “What SCO should really ask the court for is a Time Machine, so it can go back in time and do a better job.”

The patent, which describes among other things the over-scroll bounce iOS performs when it reaches the bottom of a scrollable element, was successfully asserted against Samsung in Apple’s $1.05 billion lawsuit against the company last summer. But it was subsequently invalidated by the USPTO along with three other claims it included. Now, after further review, the agency determined that the prior art on which it based that decision was not sufficient for invalidation. And it has confirmed the rubber banding claim (#19), as well as three others made in the patent (#14, #17 and #18).

But it’s the rubber banding claim that’s really key here. In handing down its verdict in Apple v. Samsung last August, a San Jose, Calif., jury found that 21 Samsung products infringed that claim, among them the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Droid Charge and the Nexus S 4G.

So the USPTO’s change of heart on its validity bodes well for Apple as it ramps up to do battle with Samsung once again this November in a new trial to determine damages in the case.

A week ago today, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said his channel checks showed that the Q10 has been pretty well-received by consumers, and said he expects Q10 sales to offset a slowdown in sales of its touchscreen-only predecessor, the Z10.

Then, on Thursday, Societe Generale analyst Andy Perkins raised his rating on BlackBerry to “buy” from “sell,” saying Q10 sales will reach almost one million in the fiscal first quarter. Add those to the four million Z10s that Perkins expects BlackBerry to sell, and that’s five million BB10 handsets total for Q1, which is above the current consensus of three million to four million units for the quarter.

Today comes more good news: Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um has issued a positive note on BlackBerry, observing that Q10 sales may help the company beat expectations for its fiscal first quarter. Um said his channel checks in the U.S. reveal that the Q10 is off to a good start. “[There has been] Good Q10 customer interest and demand,” Um said. “The Q10’s launch has been much more successful than the Z10 launch, which is consistent with our view that the die-hard BlackBerry installed base of 76 million loyal to the keyboard presents a strong upgrade opportunity.”

Like his colleagues at Jefferies and Societe Generale, Um, too, sees the potential for first-quarter upside over consensus estimates, though he notes that the timing of the Q10’s launch — 14 countries in mid-May; U.S. in June — could limit it.

At $14.50, BlackBerry shares are trading up today.

Testifying in the DOJ’s e-book price-fixing case Thursday, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said that when he first approached Jobs with the idea of a bookstore in the fall of 2009, the Apple co-founder dismissed it.

“He wasn’t interested,” Cue said. “Steve never felt that the Mac or the iPhone were ideal reading devices. In the case of the phone, the screen was smaller, and in the case of the Mac, you had this keyboard and device, and it didn’t feel like a book.”

But as Apple began ramping up for the launch of the iPad, Cue broached the idea again, and Jobs had a change of heart.

“… When I got my first chance to touch the iPad, I became completely convinced that this was a huge opportunity for us to build the best e-reader that the market had ever seen,” Cue said. “And so I went to Steve and told him why I thought [the iPad] was going to be a great device for e-books. … and after some discussions he came back and said, you know, I think you’re right. I think this is great, and then he started coming up with ideas himself about what he wanted to do with it and how it would be even better as a reader and store.”

That was the “good part,” Cue explained, and it inspired Apple to approach publishers about selling their e-book titles. But there was a “bad part,” as well: Timing.

“This was in November,” said Cue. “We were launching the iPad in January. And so Steve said, ‘you can go do this, but you’ve got to get it done by January. … I want to be able to demo it onstage.’ And so that was the sort of challenge presented to me.”

And a challenge that Cue took upon himself to complete not just for Apple and the promise of a new revenue stream, but for Jobs, whose health was in decline at the time.

“Steve was near the end of his life when we were launching the iPad, and he was really proud of it,” Cue said. “He was working hard on it. I believed that iBooks was going to be a tremendous feature of the product. People were going to love it; our customers were just going to go wild about iPad and iBooks, and I wanted to be able to get that done in time for [the event] because it was really important to him. … I like getting my work done and I pride myself on being successful, but this had extra meaning to me.”

Just days after introducing Apple’s new iTunes Radio streaming music service at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Eddy Cue — Apple’s senior VP for Internet services and software, and its master dealmaker — appeared in a Manhattan federal court as a central witness in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book price-fixing case.

According to the government, Cue was the main intermediary between Apple and five major publishers, and the “chief ringleader” of an alleged conspiracy to shift the e-book industry from the wholesale pricing model established by Amazon to an agency model where publishers, not retailers, set e-book prices, sending them higher than they had been in the past. But on the witness stand Thursday, Cue maintained he was anything but.

Presented with phone records that suggested a group of five publishers were discussing among themselves Apple’s agency model proposal, Cue denied any knowledge of the communications. In fact, Cue said he didn’t even suspect the publishers might be coordinating. “I don’t believe they were working together to do the deal that I was working on, because I did those deals and I struggled and fought with them for many, many days to get them to sign,” Cue said. “And they argued different points. So if they were talking to each other, I would have assumed that I would have had a much easier time getting those deals done.”

And while the government was able to force him to acknowledge that the price of some e-books did rise after Apple opened its iBookstore, Cue remarked that this shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the publishers’ dissatisfaction with Amazon’s lowball $9.99 pricing. “They had expressed they wanted higher prices from us,” he said, reiterating what Cupertino has argued throughout this process: That it was the publishers who raised e-book prices, not Apple.

And when pressed to admit that higher e-book prices were not in the best interest of the general public, Cue refused to concede. Instead, he insisted that Apple’s entrance into the e-book market dramatically improved it. “We gave consumers great prices and a great selection of books that weren’t available elsewhere, in a better bookstore,” Cue said. “We gave them a great offer.”

Questioned by Apple’s chief counsel, Orin Snyder, on Thursday afternoon, Cue was a bit more forthcoming, bolstering Apple’s argument that it was concerned only with its own deal with publishers, and not with those of other retailers.

“My focus [on these deals] was from an Apple point of view. I [wasn't] interested in [the publishers'] business, or how they do business with the — with anybody else. … I didn’t care at all what type of deals the publishers got or didn’t get from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or anybody else. I knew that if Barnes & Noble or Amazon were able to negotiate a better deal than I had from a consumer price point, I would get it as part of our MFN (Most Favored Nation agreement).”

And speaking directly to those MFNs, which ensured that Apple would always be able to sell e-books at least as cheaply as other retailers, Cue insisted that they were not — as the government alleges — intended to force rival e-book sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble to the agency model.

“We did the MFN for the purposes of being able to compete on price,” Cue said. “The MFN has nothing to do with whether you’re on an agency model or any other model. That wasn’t the goal. [That] didn’t matter to us. That’s not what we were thinking. What we were thinking is, does the MFN give us competitive pricing irrespective of whatever models Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or anybody else is in.”

Cue will return to the stand on Monday.

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit

The European Commission, the EU’s antitrust watchdog, is reportedly investigating claims that Google used anticompetitive means to boost its Android operating system’s market share. According to documents cited by the Financial Times, which broke the story, the probe was inspired by the allegations of rivals like Microsoft and Nokia, which claim Google has been licensing Android to mobile device manufacturers below cost and making demands about the placement of its various services on their handsets. Filed in April, the complaint accuses Google of using Android “as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today.”

Sources described the probe as informal, and it’s unclear if anything will come of it. That said, there’s plenty of precedent for such preliminary efforts to expand into full-blown investigations if the agency finds merit in the allegations. And given criticism of the EC’s provisional antitrust settlement with Google, EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia will likely be reviewing the probe’s findings with a very keen eye.

Google declined comment on the probe, but issued a statement generally disputing the allegations leveled against it. “Android is an open platform that fosters competition. Handset makers, carriers and consumers can decide how to use Android, including which applications they want to use.”

The two companies on Thursday announced a strategic partnership that will see Microsoft creating Windows Stores inside more than 600 Best Buy locations in North America.

These stores-within-a-store will occupy between 1,500 square feet and 2,200 square feet of floor space inside the Best Buy locations in which they’re built, and will showcase a broad range of Microsoft products — software like Windows and Office, and hardware like Surface, Xbox and the Windows Phone portfolio. Essentially, these Windows Stores are replacing the retailer’s existing PC departments. To support them, Best Buy is staffing some 1,200 Microsoft-trained sales associates, and it’s adding an online version of the Windows store-within-a-store to its website. The new stores will begin opening this month.

Microsoft is touting these new Windows Stores as massive “department-level takeovers,” and says they’re key to its retail efforts.

“We’ve heard a lot from customers over the last year,” Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela explained. “They’re buying tablets and other devices to complement their PCs. They’re using technology both at work and at play, and it’s blurring how they think of using tech in their lives. At the same time, they’ve asked us to showcase touch-first devices in a compelling retail environment. We’ve listened, and the story of the Windows Store is that we’ve delivered what customers want: More touch, more hands-on experiences and more opportunities to see Microsoft technologies and how they work together.”

Hardly an original idea; Apple and Samsung both have mini-stores in Best Buy locations. And Best Buy’s big-box-store business isn’t in the greatest shape these days.

But for Microsoft, which has been struggling in its standalone store efforts, this is a savvy move — an easy way to dramatically increase its retail footprint via an established big-box player. Through its partnership with Best Buy, Microsoft gets a significantly larger, more meaningful retail presence without having to roll out hundreds of standalone locations that would have been infinitely more costly.

Promo video below:

On the stand this week in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book price-fixing case against Apple, Keith Moerer — head of the company’s iBookstore — defended the storefront against a government attorney who characterized it as a “failure.”

“E-book sales grew 100 percent last year at the iBookstore, and it had over 100 million customers,” Moerer said.

So, how much of the U.S. e-book market does Apple actually control? According to Moerer, 20 percent.

“I believe that Apple has about 20 percent market share,” Moerer said. “It’s very difficult because there are not industry-wide sales reporting for e-books, but I believe that the iBookstore’s market share is approximately 20 percent in the U.S. and growing.”

That’s twice the 10 percent share typically attributed to the company. And if it’s an accurate accounting of Apple’s share, it means that the 65 percent and 25 percent shares often attributed to Amazon and Barnes & Noble respectively might be in need of reassessment. It also means that e-books are becoming a significant contributor to Apple’s iTunes business.

So that seemingly smoking gun email from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to SVP Eddy Cue in the Department of Justice’s e-book price fixing case against Apple? The one that appeared to undermine the company’s argument that it was indifferent to the pricing model publishers used with other retailers like Amazon?

According to new evidence submitted by Apple, it’s hardly warm, let alone smoking. The document cited by the government is simply a draft message that was never sent. What Apple entered into evidence late Wednesday appears to be a more complete version of that message, the one that was actually sent to Cue, and it differs significantly from that apparently damning draft.

Crucially, it does not contain any language suggesting publishers need to push Amazon to the agency model Apple wanted for its own e-book store. Indeed, it expressly acknowledges that publishers might continue their wholesale pricing arrangements with Amazon.

“I can live with this,” Jobs wrote, “as long as they also agree to the other thing you told me you can get: The retail price they will set for any book will be the LOWER of the applicable “iTunes” price below OR the lowest wholesale price they offer the book at to anyone else, with our wholesale price being 70% of such price. For example, normally our retail price for a $26 book will be $12.99 and we will pay 70% of that, or $9.10. However, if they offer the same book to Amazon for a wholesale price of, say $12.50, then our retail price for the same book shall be set at $12.50 and we will pay 70% of that price for the book.”

That’s a very different message from the unsent draft showcased by the DOJ earlier today. It’s much more fully thought out; it shows Jobs concerned only about Apple potentially being discriminated against on price; it outlines the Most Favored Nation (MFN) agreements Apple would ultimately strike with publishers that ensured it would always be able to sell e-books at least as cheaply as rivals; and it omits the phrase that the DOJ presents as damning: “I can live with this as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year.”

Apple and its lead counsel Orin Snyder are undoubtedly going to have a field day with this in court tomorrow, as it speaks to their argument that the DOJ is unfairly twisting the words of Apple’s founder to build its case. As Snyder argued in his opening, “There’s something inherently unfair and uncomfortable about placing such reliance on the out-of-court statements of someone who’s not here to explain them or place them into context — particularly when in almost every instance the government either omits key language to draw an inference, or blatantly mischaracterizes what the statements mean.”

Now the DOJ may well argue Jobs’s draft speaks to intent. Presumably, that was its rationale for surfacing it today. But again, this is a message that was never sent. And the alternate draft entered into evidence by Apple, the version that was actually transmitted to Cue, contains nothing untoward.

Apple and the DOJ have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Correction, June 13: An earlier version of this post stated that the Steve Jobs email entered into evidence by Apple on Wednesday was sent to Eddy Cue. It was not. It was simply another draft of the same message.

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit

“The negotiations make clear that the interests of the publishers and Apple were not aligned,” Snyder said. “Apple wanted lower prices on its own book store, and was indifferent to prices throughout the rest of the industry.”

But a new document entered into evidence Wednesday by the DOJ suggests that Apple may not have been quite as indifferent to publishers’ deals with Amazon as it professes to be. It’s a Jan. 14, 2010, message from Steve Jobs to Eddy Cue, his point man for e-book negotiations, and in it he says he wants publishers to push Amazon to an agency pricing model where publishers, not retailers, set prices.

“I can live with this as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year,” Jobs wrote. “If not, I’m not sure we can be competitive …”

A smoking gun? The DOJ certainly thinks so, and it used the message to great effect Thursday, shaking up the head of Apple’s iBookstore on the stand and undermining the company’s claims of indifference to other industry pricing arrangements.

Apple hasn’t yet had a chance to explain the message, which Snyder claims was never sent. But it promises to do so tomorrow when Eddy Cue takes the stand. Just how isn’t yet clear, though it’s worth noting that the subject line of the message in question is “Book prices thoughts” and it’s clearly part of a longer thread. Apple has argued throughout the trial that the DOJ’s case is built on cherry-picked documents that don’t support its theories when put in broader context. Perhaps that’s what we’ll see tomorrow.

Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment.

UPDATE: DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit

Sources say that Nokia plans to wind down shipments of Symbian handsets this summer. And while it will continue to sell them in the emerging markets where demand for them still exists, it will do so only until stock runs out.

And, depending on how many Symbian devices Nokia has in inventory, that could take some time. Symbian usage has been dropping off precipitously. In the first quarter of 2013, Nokia sold just 500,000 handsets running the OS. This, despite the mid-2012 launch of the company’s 808 PureView. That handset failed to juice sales the way Nokia had hoped, but with a 41-megapixel camera and somewhat flashy design, it will make a nice tombstone for the Symbian line.

The Financial Times was the first to report news of Nokia’s plans.

Nokia’s abandonment of Symbian is hardly a surprise. The OS has been in decline for years, its looming demise accelerated by Nokia’s leap from its burning platform into Microsoft’s arms. As CEO Stephen Elop said last month, Nokia is a Windows Phone shop.

“In today’s war of ecosystems, we’ve made a very clear decision to focus on Windows Phone with our Lumia product line,” Elop said. “And it is with that that we will compete with competitors like Samsung and Android.”

Nokia refused to confirm Symbian’s now increasingly brief future, but the comment it did offer suggests pretty clearly that it’s moving on.

“We can’t confirm when Symbian shipments come to an end, unfortunately,” a company spokesman told AllThingsD. “In general, though, regarding Symbian, the last Symbian phone we introduced was the Nokia 808 PureView, and that’s fitting. This phone extended the platform’s pioneering tradition, and acted as a bridge for the next wave of innovation now seen in our latest models, like the Lumia 925.”

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

– Steve Jobs, WWDC 1997

A refined version of OS X. A reimagining of iOS. New MacBook Airs. The Mac Pro recast as a diminutive onyx monolith. These were the big product announcements to come out of Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday. But there was one other, and while not hardware or software, it was equally important: A manifesto.

Presented in two videos that bookended the keynote address, it was at once a mission statement for the post-Steve Jobs era and a paean to the Apple co-founder’s vision for the company. It’s a “Think Different” campaign for the next phase of Apple’s evolution, and it speaks to Apple’s drive for perfection, Jobs’s “we just want to make great products” refrain, and his 1997 observation that “innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Two excerpts:

“The first thing we ask is: What do we want people to feel? Delight. Surprise. Love. Connection. Then we begin to craft around our intention. It takes time. There are a thousand no’s for every yes. We simplify. We perfect. We start over. Until everything we touch enhances each life it touches. Only then do we sign our work.”

“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How will it make someone feel? Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist? We spend a lot of time on a few great things until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches. You may rarely look at it, but you’ll always feel it. This is our signature. And it means everything.”

Ambitious? Absolutely. Self-consciously soulful? Sure.

But the spots set Apple up as a company on a quest for perfection. As answers to critics who claim it has lost its way, and perhaps its ability to innovate, they’re pretty powerful.

And the questions they ask are understated but clear shots at the philosophical underpinnings of Apple’s rivals.

“If you are busy making everything, how can you perfect anything?”

“This is what matters. The experience of a product. How will it make someone feel? Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist?”

Do the folks at Samsung sit around puzzling over such questions?

The two videos — “Designed by Apple – Intention” and “Our Signature” — below.

• Apple’s developer program is six million registered members strong.
• It has grown by 1.5 million since WWDC 2012.
• There are now 407 Apple retail stores worldwide, in 14 countries.
• Those stores see more than one million visitors daily.
• Consumers have downloaded 50 billion apps from the App Store to date.
• There are 900,000 apps in the App Store; 375,000 of them are designed specifically for iPad.
• As of today there are 575 million iTunes Store accounts with associated credit cards.
• That’s 175 million more than Apple announced at WWDC 2012.
• Apple has doled out $10 billion to app developers; $5 billion of that was paid in the last year.
• Apple has shipped 28 million copies of OS X Mountain Lion.
• The Mac’s installed base is 72 million.
• Apple has sold 600 million iOS devices.
• 93 percent of them are running iOS 6.

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Apple’s long product silence ended this morning at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote with the debut of a number of new products, among them iOS 7, the latest iteration of the mobile operating on which the iPhone and iPad run.

Unveiled by CEO Tim Cook and Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, the next generation OS is a significant departure from its predecessors, featuring a “de-glitzed,” flatter design, as we previously reported. “It’s the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone,” Cook said.

iOS 7 appears to be a complete reimagining of the operating system. It features an entirely new color palette, new icons, new typography and a new structure, as well. In a video introduction that preceded the onstage demo, Apple SVP of Industrial Design Jony Ive — who was charged with overseeing all of the company’s interface design last fall — described iOS 7 as an operating system defined by an “absence of clutter and ornamentation.”

“I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency,” Ive said “In many ways, we’ve tried to create an interface that is unobtrusive and deferential.”

Sounds great, but what does it mean practically?

Foremost, iOS 7 is a comprehensive end-to-end redesign of iOS, one that forgoes the skeuomorphic flourishes that called to mind real-world objects in previous iterations of the OS, in favor of a more elegant, spartan design language. But that redesign also extends deep into the operating system’s innards. It has got all manner of functional layers, including a card-based multitasking system intended to help establish hierarchy and order among open apps and documents. Also on board:

• A redesigned Notification Center.
• A new Control Center that offers users quick access to commonly used functions.
• A mobile version of Air Drop that allows document sharing between iOS devices and Macs.
• An updated version of the mobile Safari browser with a smart search bar to enter URLs or search different engines.
• New camera filters.
• A new Photos app that organizes pictures according to moments.
• A smarter Siri, with a new interface and new voices (male and female) and languages.
• iOS in the Car, which integrates Apple’s mobile system into automobiles built for the next model year.
• Automatic app updates via the App Store.
• A new feature called “activation lock” that prevents a stolen phone from being re-activated even if a device is wiped.
• And, finally, the long-rumored streaming music service, iTunes Radio — free with ads, and ad-free for those with Apple’s paid iTunes Match service.

Said Federighi, “Installing iOS 7 on your phone is like getting a whole new phone — but one that you know how to use.”

Apple is making iOS 7 available to developers as a beta for iPhone today. A similar beta for iPad will follow and the finished OS will ship to consumers this fall.

Developing …

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• Say Hello to Mavericks, Apple’s New OS X Software
• Modest WWDC Expectations May Temper Apple Investors’ Response
• Why iRadio Could Be a Hit for Apple and a Dud for Big Music
• Handicapping Apple’s WWDC Keynote
• Apple’s iOS 7 Team in Deadline Crunch Mode, Adding Engineers

Asa Mathat | D: All Things Digital

The day after the company’s WWDC 2009 keynote, the stock fell 1.3 percent; the day after its WWDC 2010 keynote, it dropped 2.6 percent. After the WWDC keynote 2011 and WWDC keynote 2012? Down 3.3 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, according to BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk.

Will Apple’s share price slip post-WWDC this year, as well?

The answer won’t be clear until markets open on Tuesday. But with expectations for Apple’s WWDC plans far more subdued than they have been in years past, there’s perhaps less risk of volatility than there might have been otherwise.

The reason? Some purposeful expectation-setting earlier this year from Apple CEO Tim Cook. During Apple’s second-quarter earnings call back in April, Cook told investors not to expect next-generation iPads and iPhones until at least September. Said Cook, “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services that we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014.”

Those remarks will likely temper some share-price volatility that might have occurred had rumors of a June iPhone or iPad refresh persisted. Which isn’t to say that some investors won’t find something in which to be disappointed — there are those who invariably do — just that Apple has already dispensed with the obvious potential disappointments (no new iPhone!?! no Retina iPad mini?!?) by saying officially that they’re not coming until fall. And what is coming — iOS 7, OS X 10.9, and a fledgling Internet radio service — is known to be coming.

In other words, investor expectations and Apple’s WWDC plans may — may — actually be better aligned than they have been in some time. Which could bode well for the company’s shares post-WWDC. We’ll find out for certain come Tuesday.

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• Say Hello to Mavericks, Apple’s New OS X Software
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So Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address from Apple CEO Tim Cook will be regarded with great interest not only for annual updates to the company’s desktop and mobile operating systems — OS X and iOS, but also as a harbinger of devices to come.

iOS 7

The centerpiece news of the day will be the unveiling of iOS 7. This latest iteration of the operating system that runs Apple’s iPhones and iPads will be the first to version of the OS to be truly crafted under the design leadership of Jony Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, who was last year charged with overseeing the “human interface” of all Apple products. On stage at our D11 conference last week, Cook said Ive has been “really key” in recasting iOS. “We recognized that Jony had contributed significantly to the look and feel of Apple over many, many years and could do that for our software as well,” Cook explained. “And I think [what he's done] is absolutely incredible.”

As AllThingsD reported earlier this year, iOS 7 is expected to be significantly “de-glitzed” from its predecessor, featuring a flat design that favors simplicity over flash and skeuomorphism. As one source who has been briefed on iOS told AllThingsD in early May. “You know Game Center’s green felt craps table? Well, goodbye, Circus Circus.”

Also expected in iOS 7, tighter social integration with Flickr and Vimeo, some improvements to Maps and, perhaps, some content and services enhancements via an expanded deal with Yahoo.

Cook also talked about opening up more of the iPhone to developers, and a number of companies are holding out hope to be able to do some of the same things they have long been able to do on Android, such as crafting alternate software keyboards.

OS X 10.9

The second big software announcement of the day, and one about which comparatively little is known, is OS X 10.9 — Apple’s forthcoming desktop operating system. What comes after Mountain Lion and what sort of improvements will that update bring to the platform? Cook’s WWDC keynote should answer both those questions. Expect OS X 10.9 to feature improved full-screen apps with multiple screen support. Longshot: We may also see Siri and Maps integration, according to chatter I’ve been hearing, but haven’t yet been able to confirm.

iRadio

Apple on Friday signed the last of the big deals it needs to finally announce its long-in-the-offing Internet radio service. With agreements in hand for all three major music labels, the company is finally poised to discuss iRadio, or whatever it has chosen to call the service — a free streaming music offering that’s been described to me as a happy collision of iTunes Genius and Pandora.

Hardware

Word on the street is that the WWDC keynote will bring with it refreshes of both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. The biggest change here: A switch to Intel’s next-generation Haswell processors, which are said to dramatically improve battery life and graphics performance. Also potentially on tap, a new Mac Pro. Apple’s desktop powerhouse is long overdue for an update, and the company promised to roll one out this year.

What Else?

Improvements to iCloud, which could clearly use them. As I wrote when iCloud first launched, “If, as Steve Jobs says, software is the soul of Apple’s products, hardware their brains and sinew, then iCloud is their memory — and soon perhaps one of their biggest selling points as well. Certainly it’s a feature that will differentiate Apple’s already well-differentiated products even further from the competition.” It’s been two years since iCloud debuted, and the service still hasn’t quite delivered on Jobs’s promise

And beyond that? It’s all guesswork until Cook takes the WWDC stage at 10 am Pacific. AllThingsD.com will be covering his address live, so please be sure to join us for coverage.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

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• Apple’s iOS 7 Team in Deadline Crunch Mode, Adding Engineers

Samsung’s shares slipped some six percent Friday, dragged down by concerns about slowing sales of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone. The decline was the largest the company’s shares have charted in about nine months, and slashed its market capitalization by $12.4 billion to $187.8 billion.

The reason for the selloff? Fears that demand for the South Korean giant’s Galaxy S4 — the company’s fastest-shipping smartphone ever — might not be as strong as had been expected. According to a client note from J. P. Morgan Chase, orders for the S4, which went on sale last month, have slowed a bit.

“Compared to S3, S4 had stronger momentum in the first quarter of launch,” J. P. Morgan Chase analyst JJ Park explained. “But the following quarter’s shipment is expected to be disappointing and its peak-quarter number seems way below our previous estimates.”

And because of this, Park figures that Samsung will reduce its monthly orders for the device to seven million to eight million units, from 10 million. End result: S4 shipments for the year will top out closer to 60 million than the 80 million he originally forecasted.

Incidentally, Park’s not the only one sounding the alarm on S4 sales. Susquehanna’s Chris Caso made some cautious remarks about the device this week, as did Wedge Partners analyst Jun Zhang, who said today that he believes S4 sales have been roughly 20 percent short of Samsung’s target.

That provision today is central to the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book price-fixing case against the company. With it, the government argues, Apple was able to force booksellers like Amazon to shift their e-book business model from wholesale, where prices are set by distributors, to agency, where the publishers set the prices, in the process putting Apple in the enviable position of “not having to compete on price at all.” For Apple, then, the MFN was the nefarious fulcrum with which it shifted the entire e-book industry from wholesale to agency and raised e-book prices in the process.

Now here’s the thing. When Amazon, whose complaints are believed to have initiated the case, finally did renegotiate its e-book agreements from wholesale to agency pricing, what do you think it demanded from publishers?

The very same agency terms that Apple demanded and that the government decries as components of an Apple-led conspiracy: A 30 percent commission on e-book sales, pricing tiers and caps, and, yes, a “most favored nation” clause. In fact, according to documents shown in court on Wednesday — documents that Amazon fought aggressively to keep out of the public eye — the company’s MFN’s were at times even more favorable to its business than Apple’s.

What’s more, during cross-examination on Wednesday, Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content at Amazon, acknowledged that the retailer adopted those terms specifically to protect its legitimate business interests. He noted that Amazon wanted to make sure it had a “level playing field” with other retailers. Like Apple, Amazon didn’t want to be disadvantaged competitively in the e-books space.

Said Grandinetti, “We were not prepared to sign a contract for whatever length of time this was going to be, where we weren’t confident we could not be further discriminated against by these publishers.”

If that’s a reasonable view, one that’s in Amazon’s own lawful business interests, why isn’t Apple’s behavior also lawful?

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit

These contracts required publishers to match in Apple’s iBookstore any lower prices they offered elsewhere. And the DOJ has been hammering Apple over them, arguing that they spiked the average price of e-books in the U.S. once they went into effect and put Apple in an enviable position.

“[Apple's MFN] was not structured like a standard MFN in favor of a retailer, ensuring Apple that it would receive the best available wholesale price,” the DOJ argued in its complaint against the company, contending that “instead of an MFN designed to protect Apple’s ability to compete, this MFN was designed to protect Apple from having to compete on price at all, while still maintaining Apple’s 30 percent margin.”

And with these MFNs, Apple did indeed architect a sweet deal for itself, one very Jobsian in its conceit. It got exactly what it wanted — a lowest price guarantee from publishers and the ability to claim that those publishers were still free to sell their books at whatever price they liked.

Now the government contends that Apple’s MFN agreements were a crucial part of the company’s conspiracy to raise e-book prices and reap the benefits. But in vetting that argument, it failed to answer a key question about those arrangements prior to trial. Specifically, were they the same for each publisher or were they different? If, as the DOJ argues, Apple was facilitating collusion among a cabal of publishers, you’d think that MFN agreement terms would be identical across the cabal with all participants guaranteed the same terms.

But they weren’t. Turns out, Apple negotiated different MFNs with each publisher. And in court Tuesday, Apple’s lead counsel, Orin Snyder, repeatedly pointed that out. While the the core price-matching provision was present in each of the five publisher agreements, guaranteeing Apple the ability to compete at the lowest price, the MFNs themselves were materially different.

Simon & Schuster, for example, wanted flexibility to do one-off, limited-time promotions. There were book clubs to take into account as well. Other publishers demanded their own specific considerations, so that by the time the deals were signed, each MFN contained numerous exceptions that were not present in the others. And according to the Tuesday testimony of Apple Associate General Counsel Kevin Saul, negotiating these exceptions wasn’t exactly a simple matter. “[It was] particularly difficult,” he said on the witness stand. “Twelve hours a day negotiations, emails, exchanging drafts. It was a challenging, tiring and difficult couple of weeks.”

That’s a detail worth noting, because part of the government’s case against Apple is that the company offered publishers materially similar MFN terms and that this furthered an alleged e-book price-fixing conspiracy. But according to Saul’s testimony, the MFN terms for each publisher were different. And when the exec was shown slides of each in court Tuesday, he stated on the record that “they are not the same.”

That’s a direct refutation of one of the assertions on which the government is building its case, and it bolsters Apple’s defense — if only a bit. “It does make the government’s case harder,” Stanford law school professor Mark Lemley told AllThingsD. “But it doesn’t mean there was no conspiracy.”

Pam Samuelson, director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, took a similar view. “It is quite possible for antitrust co-conspirators to mask agreements in restraint of trade by adopting differently worded documents,” she said. “Using identical language would make the anticompetitive nature of an agreement too obvious.”

Of course. But, according to Saul’s testimony, Apple conducted separate negotiations with each publisher and, ultimately each publisher decided it own course of action. So, straightforward, above-board dealings or collusion and clever obfuscation? Another one for the judge to decide.

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit

The ITC’s order affects only AT&T iPhones prior to the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 and earlier, so it’s not a devastating blow to Apple. Still, a ban is a ban, and this one can only be overturned by the White House or the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That it was ordered at all is something of a shock. In an initial review of the case, an ITC judge found that Apple’s products did not infringe Samsung’s patents.

“We are disappointed that the Commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told AllThingsD. “Today’s decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States. Samsung is using a strategy which has been rejected by courts and regulators around the world. They’ve admitted that it’s against the interests of consumers in Europe and elsewhere, yet here in the United States Samsung continues to try to block the sale of Apple products by using patents they agreed to license to anyone for a reasonable fee.”

Samsung, meanwhile, praised the ruling.

“We believe the ITC’s Final Determination has confirmed Apple’s history of free-riding on Samsung’s technological innovations,” Samsung said in a statement to AllThingsD. “Our decades of research and development in mobile technologies will continue, and we will continue to offer innovative products to consumers in the United States.”

That’s the gist of a massive economic impact report Apple released today, detailing the job and income/expenditure benefits that the iconic circular office building heralds for Cupertino and Santa Clara County. Prepared by Keyser Marston Associates, the 82-page report touts Apple Campus 2 as a vast engine of job creation and revenue for the city, one that will raise the number of full-time employees in the Cupertino area from 16,000 to 23,400, and spike purchases from local business by $2.1 billion annually.

A couple of other tidbits. By the time Apple Campus 2 is finished:

• The total number of Santa Clara County-wide jobs supported by Apple is expected to be about 41,100.
• The net annual fiscal surplus generated by Apple to Cupertino is predicted to exceed $11 million.
• Local public agencies will collect an additional $32 million of property tax revenue.

The document is yet another effort by Apple to sell its new campus to Cupertino, and to allay concerns some residents have expressed since it submitted plans to the city last summer.

While Cupertino mayor Gilbert Wong has said in the past that “there is no chance we are saying no” to Apple Campus 2, the fact is that the city has not yet officially said yes. It is currently in negotiations with Apple over approval, and this document, which celebrates the various benefits of Apple’s new HQ, will obviously figure prominently in them.

How does Apple rebut such accusations when Jobs is no longer around to help in mounting a defense by explaining those remarks himself?

That’s a key issue for Apple’s legal team as it spars with government attorneys who characterized Jobs’s various remarks as “direct evidence” and “published admissions” of conspiracy. So what’s the strategy for dealing with it?

By casting the government’s use of Jobs’s remarks as untoward and shady. And in his opening argument on Monday, Apple attorney Orin Snyder did exactly that, questioning the fairness of even using them as evidence, and lambasting the government for purposely taking Jobs’s remarks out of context.

Said Snyder, “There’s something inherently unfair and uncomfortable about placing such reliance on the out-of-court statements of someone who’s not here to explain them or place them into context — particularly when in almost every instance the government either omits key language to draw an inference, or blatantly mischaracterizes what the statements mean.”

So, in Apple’s eyes, not only is the DOJ cherry-picking Jobs’s remarks for maximum effect, it’s spinning them as something that they really aren’t. How do we know that? Because, according to Snyder, Jobs would never have been so foolish as make such potentially damning comments publicly.

Here’s Snyder again:

“To believe that [Jobs's] statements are direct, unambiguous evidence, admissions of a conspiracy, you have to credit the notion that he, in full public view and to his authorized biographer [whose book] he knew would be read by millions of people, made statements that can be interpreted in no other way than as unambiguous admissions of the price-fixing conspiracy charged in this case.”

And knowing what we know of Jobs, that is a tough notion to credit, indeed.

Certainly anything is possible, but the idea that Jobs — a CEO as savvy as they come — would ever publicly volunteer details about Apple’s interest or participation in an alleged e-book price-fixing scheme is pretty far-fetched. More to the point, without Jobs around to speak to the ideas behind those remarks or his state of mind when he made them, it’s very difficult to determine whether they support Apple’s prosecution or its defense.

Said Snyder, “We can’t read Mr. Jobs’s mind, but what we can do is look at the words he used, and they certainly aren’t unambiguous admissions of a conspiracy.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
• Is Steve Jobs Message a Smoking Gun in Apple E-Book Case?
• Amazon Demanded Same Terms From Publishers For Which Apple is Now On Trial
• Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges
• Apple Accuses DOJ of Unfairly Twisting Steve Jobs’s Words
• Apple Says DOJ Is Trying to “Reverse Engineer a Conspiracy” in E-Books Case
• Here’s the DOJ’s E-Book-Pricing Case Against Apple (Slide Deck)
• Apple CEO Tim Cook: “The E-Book Case to Me Is Bizarre”
• Judge in E-Book Pricing Case Thinks Apple’s Going Down; Apple Begs to Differ
• Here’s That Steve Jobs E-Book Email to James Murdoch
• Apple’s E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition
• DOJ Filing Calls Apple “Ringmaster” of E-Book Pricing Rise
• Apple Alone Fighting DOJ E-Book Suit After Macmillan Settlement
• Apple’s Cook Must Testify in E-Book Antitrust Suit