Production is set to begin next month for the screens, which measure at least 4 inches diagonally compared with 3.5 inches on the iPhone 4S, the latest phone from Apple, the people said.

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“China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” Chairman Xi Guohua said, according to Bloomberg. “When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.”

The company reportedly indicated it is unclear whether a deal will be reached this year. An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment.

However, sources have said that a meeting with China Mobile was among the stops CEO Tim Cook made during a China trip earlier this year.

With roughly two thirds of a billion users, China Mobile is the biggest carrier in the world, as measured by number of customers. The company’s current 3G network doesn’t work with today’s iPhone, but a next generation iPhone could well work with China Mobile’s 4G network, which is currently in a few spots.

China Mobile has also applied to offer service in the United States, Reuters said, but it is unclear how well that bid will be received.

“The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order,” HTC said in a statement to AllThingsD. “We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval. The HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE have been received enthusiastically by customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.”

HTC has been in a patent battle with Apple, which won an exclusion order late last year for certain HTC phones.

The HTC One X is bound for AT&T, while the HTC Evo 4G LTE is headed to Sprint and was due to go on sale on Friday.

Sprint declined to comment beyond HTC’s statement. An AT&T spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

HTC has been counting on its One line (along with the Evo for Sprint and a new Droid Incredible model for Verizon) to help it regain its footing.

In an invitation sent to All Things D, the company says: “Meet PayPal’s new president, David Marcus; be the first to speak to PayPal’s new, brand-name retail partners; and get an exclusive sneak peek at how PayPal plans to make payments easier than ever for tens of thousands of mid-size merchants.”

The two-and-a-half-hour event will take place on Thursday at the company’s San Jose campus.

It’s unclear which retailers will be on hand, but so far, the company has been working with major retailers, like Home Depot, and there have been other unconfirmed reports of a relationship with Office Depot.

To date, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe has been careful to characterize this year as an experimental period, where the company will be laying the groundwork for its entrance into the physical payments space with several deployments. It is not banking on scaling the operation until the following year.

Right now, PayPal has presented two solutions to retailers, including a plastic credit card that allows purchases to be charged to a PayPal account and a mobile payments solution, which allows customers to enter their mobile phone number and a PIN into the payment terminal without the need for the phone to be present at the time of purchase.

The approach is much different than what Google Wallet is pitching, which ironically launched its product exactly a year ago next week. Google’s deployments, which relied on near field communication technology, have been hindered by low adoption by both retailers and the carriers.

Google’s strategy is a shift from its previous practice, when it partnered with only one hardware maker at a time to produce seven “lead devices” that showed off the newest Android software features, before releasing the software to other device makers. The change is a bid to exert more control over the apps that run on smartphones and tablets powered by Android, thus reducing the influence of wireless carriers over such devices, these people said.

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On Tuesday, the company’s stock price closed at $11.09 — a price it has not seen since December of 2003. Another ugly decline for RIM, which has shed more than three-quarters of its value in the past year alone.

Evidently, the brief run-up in RIM’s stock price prior to the unveiling of the company’s long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system at BlackBerry World earlier this month has proved untenable. And the prospect of watching the first BB10 phones go head to head with the next iteration of Apple’s iPhone this fall has sent investors fleeing into the woods.

RIMM data by YCharts

As I write this, RIM’s market cap is hovering at just about $6 billion. Hard to believe that just five years ago that number was about $80 billion, and RIM was the most valuable company in Canada by stock market value.

The No. 4 U.S. carrier said that it is eliminating some jobs and outsourcing others, while also staffing up in some areas, such as business sales.

“T-Mobile previously announced its intent to restructure and optimize operations throughout the company in order to best reposition the company, given today’s demanding and rapidly evolving marketplace,” the company said in a statement to AllThingsD. “This week we are communicating to our employees a series of additional organizational changes to best position T-Mobile to powerfully compete and return to growth.”

Parent company Deutsche Telekom has agreed to pump billions of dollars into the struggling carrier to help modernize its network and launch high-speed LTE service. At the same time, T-Mobile has continued to lose contract customers and has said it needs to better align its cost structure even as it tries to regain lost ground.

As part of last week’s earnings report, the company said it aims to beef up efforts to sell to businesses, among other efforts.

Earlier this year, T-Mobile announced a first wave of cuts that included the closing of several call centers and at the time indicated further restructuring was on the horizon. The company has also said it is exploring whether to sell its cell towers.

According to a memo obtained by the Verge, CEO Philipp Humm says affected workers will be notified this week if their job is among those being cut.

“We have tremendous employees here at T-Mobile and we truly wish we could retain all our talent, but our business realities require hard choices,” Humm said in the memo. T-Mobile said most workers will learn their fate today or tomorrow.

Due out this summer, the Vaio E Series 15 and 17 laptops offer revamped designs and technology to speed boot-up times after the computer has been in sleep mode. The new models join the previously announced Vaio E Series 14, but bring with them the option of larger displays — the Vaio E Series 15 sports a 15.5-inch screen; the Series 17 has a 17.3-inch screen.

The laptops feature a wraparound design with rounded corners, and will be available in white, black or silver. Each of the new models has a large trackpad; some include a backlit keyboard.

A feature called Rapid Wake + Eco promises to have your laptop up and running in seconds after it has gone into sleep mode. The Vaio E Series 15 and 17 also offer a built-in Webcam and technology to boost speaker volume. If you want to watch movies from your laptop, there’s an option to add a Blu-ray disc drive.

In general, the E Series is designed for everyday tasks and is built with families and students in mind, so if you’re looking for something a little more portable and powerful, Sony’s Vaio S Series would be a better fit — and it just so happens that there are two new members in that family, too.

The Vaio S Series 15 and 17 laptops offer a 13.3-inch display and a 15.5-inch display, respectively, and are made from lightweight materials including magnesium, aluminum and carbon fiber. The Series 15 weighs less than 4.4 pounds, and also has the benefit of an HD display with wide viewing angles.

A smaller size doesn’t mean less power, though, as both the S Series 15 and 17 will get a boost from the latest processor from Intel, called Ivy Bridge. Sony will also offer optional accessories, such as a docking station and an extended battery.

Like the E Series, the S Series models are expected to ship this summer, but pricing and specific release dates for all the laptops have not been announced at this time. Current E Series models run in the $500 to $600 range, while laptops in the S Series cost between $725 and $1,500.

In what may be the last headcount addition before Facebook’s forthcoming multibillion-dollar IPO, Facebook “acqhired” the full team from mobile photo-sharing service Lightbox on Tuesday, continuing its mini-spree of snapping up engineering talent and companies.

“The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love,” Facebook told AllThingsD. “We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook.”

It’s also something of a reunion for CTO and mobile head honcho Bret Taylor. As he noted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, Taylor worked on Maps with Lightbox co-founder Thai Tran, back when both were Googlers.

It’s not an acquisition. All seven members of the London-based Lightbox will join the company, but Facebook won’t acquire user data previously held by the service.

Users will have until June 15 to download their information from Lightbox, after which the company will shut down the service. After that, Lightbox says, the company will be open-sourcing some of its code for Lightbox, and posting it to Github for all to see and use.

So it’s obviously another step toward figuring out mobile for Facebook. The company realizes it needs mobile talent; Facebook acquired mobile discovery start-up Glancee last week, and of course bought Instagram last month for a whopping $1 billion.

Facebook is smart to bring on more minds that are focused on the problem of mobile. It’s mostly for product building, no doubt, but perhaps some of these hires will move toward making mobile a proper revenue stream for the company.

It’s also worth noting that Lightbox was predominantly focused not just on mobile, but on coding for the Android platform. The seven-man team, then, could be a perfect boon to Facebook’s Android brainpower. Instagram, on the other hand, was iOS for the majority of its existence, only recently releasing an Android application after hiring more engineers to tackle Android.

And in today’s mobile landscape, everyone needs Android-specific engineering talent. The platform accounts for more than half of smartphone market share in the U.S., while nearly broaching 50 percent of smartphone platform share globally, according to Canalys.

The most important thing gained? The newly hired Lightbox team’s bragging rights. Who else can say they were Facebook’s last talent grab before going public?

(Photo of Lightbox team members Nilesh Patel and partners at Mobile World Congress in February, courtesy of Lightbox.)

ESPN has reengineered its streaming radio app to offer improved sound quality, push alerts for when a favorite program is going live and content-caching for listening to podcasts without an Internet connection.

It’s also launching the app for the first time on iPad. The app is already available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry; the updated version will hit Android in June, and a Windows phone app will be available this summer.

If you vaguely recall ESPN having just updated its radio app, you would be correct: The company retooled it less than 18 months ago to include new search and personalization features, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported here.

Marc Horine, ESPN’s vice president of digital and print media, says that with the newest version, the network is trying to refocus on what’s most important with a radio app — the listening experience. Files have been compressed for faster streaming and downloading, and the sound quality has been enhanced, Horine says. And the app includes DVR — which allows users to skip ads, by the way, though I doubt ESPN would encourage that — and the ability to download full podcasts for listening offline.

Most of the content on the app is commentary, though there are some live play-by-play game options, and there’s a SportsCenter update available every 20 minutes (for the really, really rabid sports fans). To lure listeners to the app, ESPN has mixed up its app offerings to include original, app-only programming with stuff that’s already broadcast on terrestrial radio, like “BS Report with Bill Simmons,” “Pardon the Interruption” and “Fantasy Focus.”

At $4.99, the new ESPN Radio costs two dollars more to download than the old version, and runs in-app ads as well as commercials throughout the podcasts.

Horine says the mobile radio app has been downloaded more than 740,000 times since it first launched two-and-a-half years ago. That’s actually a pretty small percentage of the 24 million weekly radio listeners ESPN claims across all platforms.

And the majority of listeners — 90 percent, Horine says — listen to radio while at work Monday through Friday. But now, with the ability to stop and start radio podcasts on your desktop and pick up right where you left off on the mobile app, ESPN envisions mobile will become a growing fraction of those listeners.

(Full disclosure: I worked as a non-Disney employee for ESPN from 2003 to 2006. I was not involved with network’s radio programming.)

The Nokia 110 and 112 are both dual-SIM, 1.8-inch-screen phones that offer basic Internet access as well as connections to Facebook and Twitter and a collection of bundled games from Electronic Arts. Compression technology can help cut data use by as much as 90 percent, Nokia said.

“Today’s mobile phone users want a quick internet experience that allows them to discover great content and share it with their friends — but without being held back by high data costs,” Executive VP Mary McDowell said in a statement.

The 110 is priced at 35 euros and is set to ship this quarter, while the 112 is estimated to sell for 38 euros and is due to ship next quarter.

While Nokia’s woes in the smartphone market have been well documented, the company has also been losing ground in the lower-end feature-phone market — a key source of company profits.

Mardini, with the backing of family and friends, is launching Voyager Mobile, a start-up that aims to bring cut-rate cellphone services to the masses. The company is launching with two rate plans with service via Sprint’s network. The company will charge $19 a month for unlimited talk and text, and $39 (plus tax) for unlimited talk, text and Web.

The 22-year-old Mardini, who is entering his senior year at New York University, told AllThingsD that he decided to get into the cellphone business after noticing how high his bill had gotten.

“It was just one of those things,” he said in a telephone interview. “I pay so much for my cellphone. I was thinking there has to be a better way to make it cheaper for everyone.”

Despite the low prices, Mardini said he believes he can offer a range of phones, including some fairly high-end Android devices, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S II, also known as the Epic 4G Touch. The company will also sell tablets, data cards and hotspots, though the rate plans for those have yet to be finalized.

Voyager is the latest in a growing number of companies looking to resell service on another carrier’s network.

Among the most high-profile such start-ups are Republic Wireless and FreedomPop.

The notion of a virtual mobile network operator has been around for a while. Some have persisted, while others — like ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile — have faded. In recent months, though, a new wave of companies have cropped up, promising to bring new business models and economics to the wireless business.

Voyager Mobile has said it will announce details of its plans on Tuesday at 6 am ET. Its Web site promises unlimited service starting at $19 a month, but offers only the barest of details, along with a countdown clock. However, details started trickling out on Monday, including its rate plans and phone lineup, which were reported by several sites, including PhoneScoop and CNET.

Though still in college, Mardini has been involved with several other companies, with the first one tracing its roots back to some DJ gear that he got at age 9. The record business evolved into a local tech firm, and eventually led Mardini to launch Munifi Networks, a broader IT services company.

Mardini said he is using proceeds from those and other family businesses to launch Voyager, which is starting out with just seven employees, and is based in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn. Given its tiny workforce, Voyager is relying on outsourcing to handle many aspects of its operations. Its small size is a key to the low prices, Mardini insists.

“In the end, we are able to offer the best price to our customers,” he said.

Update: Well, it looks like Voyager had some problems getting off the ground.

“During its Tuesday, May 15 launch, Voyager Mobile experienced a malicious network attack to its primary website: voyagermobile.com,” the company said on its Web site. “Due to the network outage, Voyager Mobile is postponing its launch to a time and date in the very near future.”

The company added that it won’t be derailed.

“Our goal of low cost wireless service for all will not be undermined and we strive to continue the voyage for a better wireless world,” it said.

On Twitter, Mardini said that the Web site was hit with a packet attack, and that the company is working to restore service.

Also, we weren’t the only ones to track down Mardini ahead of the launch. Fred Fishkin had an interview that ran before ours.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled a California trial judge was too quick to deny Apple’s request to temporarily block the sales of Samsung tablets while Apple’s patent-infringement claims against its rival proceed in court.

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LightSquared reported assets and debts each exceeding $1 billion, according to the petition it filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

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The latest evidence came Monday, as Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures teamed with chipmaker Nvidia to buy approximately 500 patents from IPWireless.

The patents include some related to 3G and 4G technologies, including LTE, the companies said. Terms of the deal, which closed at the end of last month, were not disclosed.

Ownership of the patents will be split between Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures, with Nvidia getting license to all of the patents it didn’t get to purchase.

Intellectual Ventures has already sued several major carriers over patents. In Febuary, it sued Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T, and last week it added U.S. Cellular to the proceedings. (Verizon Wireless, not named in the suit, is a licensee of Intellectual Ventures.)

Fortunately, the summer travel season is upon us, and vacation isn’t too far away. So, over the past week, I tested a couple of iPad apps for travel. To be clear, these apps aren’t geared toward finding deals on flights or hotels, but are digital guides that offer written and visual information about various destinations.

The first one I tested is Stuck on Earth, a free, iPad-only app from photo blog Stuck in Customs that takes a different approach to travel planning, with crowdsourced photos and suggestions based on your personality type. I compared this app to one of the new day-by-day apps from the trusted travel authority Frommer’s. The Frommer’s guides, which range in price from $10 to $15, are available for iPad and iPhone. With the HTML version, coming out shortly, users will be able to access travel info from any Web browser or use on an Android device.

There are many more travel apps in the App Store beyond these, including Lonely Planet’s $6 to $10 apps for iPhone and Android, offering seven country guides and 83 city guide apps for iOS. And if you’re taking a more social approach to your travel planning, Gogobot combines trip recommendations from friends with Instagram-like photo filters to create postcards.

Stuck on Earth featured some inspiring, exotic photos, but after testing it, I found it was better for brainstorming trip ideas than it was for firm planning. The Frommer’s guide was more comprehensive, and is the one I’m more likely to use on a trip. However, Frommer’s and Inkling, its publishing partner, have put out only seven digital guides to date, spanning just a few states and a handful of countries.

First I tried Stuck on Earth. That app uses a narrator named “Karen,” whose suggestive tone might raise some eyebrows in a public place. “Well, hello there,” Karen said, her voice dripping like syrup on the iPad. She then asked me which personality type I am: Daydreamer, Explorer or Photographer; or a combination of the three.

From there, the Stuck on Earth app guided me to a main page divided into sections: One featured a world map and a local map; another was dedicated to My Saved Trips and Top Lists of destinations, selected for me by a Stuck on Earth curator.

I created a few folders for My Saved Trips: One was for France, one for Barcelona, and one for India. (A girl can daydream, right?) Then I went to the world map, where “pins” in the form of photo albums appeared in locations around the world. It was easy to get lost in the app’s photo albums. When I saw a photo of a monument, street fair or cafe that looked interesting, I added it to one of my trips; I could also share it via email, Facebook and Twitter.

All of the photos in Stuck on Earth are first posted to Flickr by users who are visiting or have visited that location. You might think this would mean that some photos are shoddy, but I found many of the images to be beautiful and unique. The creator of Stuck on Earth, Trey Ratcliff, says that the photos are chosen from a pool of 25 million photos on Flickr, and the app’s curators pick and choose which ones will be added to the albums. If I wanted to upload my photos to the app, I would have to join the Stuck on Earth community on Flickr and send them there first.

As much as I liked it, it’s not likely that I’d use Stuck on Earth as my main travel app. While the long photo captions are interesting and, in some instances, even include great personal anecdotes from the photographer, they didn’t offer enough information to really plan a trip. Also, the app is iPad-only, and I might not want to carry my iPad everywhere while traveling.

While testing Frommer’s iPad apps, I decided to focus on France. I downloaded the day-by-day guide for iPad for $9.99; Frommer’s also has guides for Alaska, California, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Japan and Spain.

The app has a whopping 18 chapters. Thumbing through the digital pages required a combination of swiping up and down and left to right, but it’s all pretty intuitive. The chapters offer both one-week and two-week tours, and itineraries for day trips, with static maps. There are photo slideshows, too.

A helpful spotlight tool searches for key phrases — like “red wine.” My favorite part of the Frommer’s guide was the ability to highlight content and make notes.

I browsed through a two-day tour of Paris, and explored the best tours for outdoor activity and dining. When I pressed my finger on the text for the Musée du Louvre, I had the option to highlight it, which would add it to my personal notebook, or to leave a public note for other app users to see. After a couple days into my virtual tour, I had left a few public notes (“So romantic!” near the Eiffel Tower), highlighted the Loire as a cycling route, and remarked in my notebook that I loved the Salers beefsteak at Le Baillage. Since the app is so new, I didn’t see any public notes from others yet.

The Frommer’s France app comes with voice dictation for language translation, though this feature is buried within the app. When I touched words or phrases in the glossary, I could hear the proper pronunciation of “Le plein, s’il vous plait?” (this translates to “Fill the gas tank, please?” in English).

The last chapter also included a ton of information about different types of accommodations, currency exchange, ATM locations, etiquette and customs, pharmacies, hospitals and other fast facts.

With international travel, there’s always the possibility that you might not have cellular service or an Internet connection on your mobile device, depending on your carrier and whether you’ve opted into international service. To test how these apps worked without service, I put my devices into airplane mode.

When I opened Stuck on Earth, Karen immediately told me that I didn’t have an Internet connection, but that I could look at my saved trips. She also thanked me for not turning off her voice. Using Frommer’s on the iPad in airplane mode, I was still able to see the full guide, maps and notes, as well as links to other content within the guide.

Frommer’s also offers the same apps for iPhone — which is great if you don’t want to lug your iPad around — but the apps currently don’t sync between iPad and iPhone. So if you’ve created a day’s itinerary on your iPad app, the iPhone version won’t show all of your notes. Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis says that a solution for this is coming soon.

If you’d rather just carry your smartphone while traveling, you may want to make all of your notes within the Frommer’s iPhone app from the start.

Fortunately, Frommer’s and Inkling are planning on introducing more app titles this summer. If you’re planning on traveling to one of those destinations, I’d recommend checking out the app.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/going-on-vacation-ditch-the-paper-guidebook-and-try-these-apps/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/yep-the-wireless-industry-actually-lost-contract-customers-last-quarter/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/yep-the-wireless-industry-actually-lost-contract-customers-last-quarter/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 12:30:37 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=207506

iStockphoto | italianestro

The analysts thought this might happen — and it did. The titans of the U.S. cellular industry managed to see their total number of on-contract customers drop last quarter.

Typically, the major carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, see some shift in their share but manage to post a cumulative gain in so-called postpaid customers.

This quarter, though, gains at Verizon and AT&T weren’t enough to offset the steep losses at T-Mobile, Sprint and other carriers. T-Mobile alone lost half a million contract customers in the January-to-March quarter, while Sprint lost 192,000 contract customers.

The Associated Press did the math and calculated a drop in the industry of 52,000 contract subscribers at the top seven carriers. That contrasts with the prepaid industry (both from the Big Four carriers and smaller players such as MetroPCS, Cricket and TracFone), which saw gains of two million customers in the quarter.

As brokerage Jefferies & Company noted ahead of the earnings report season, the cellphone industry tends to face a tough few months after the initial bump that follows the introduction of a new iPhone.

(Image courtesy of iStockphoto | italianestro)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/yep-the-wireless-industry-actually-lost-contract-customers-last-quarter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120513/liqhtsquared-moves-toward-bankruptcy/ http://allthingsd.com/20120513/liqhtsquared-moves-toward-bankruptcy/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 19:30:12 +0000 Mike Spector and Greg Bensinger http://allthingsd.com/?p=207404 Hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone’s LightSquared Inc. venture is preparing for a potential bankruptcy-protection filing, as negotiations with lenders to avoid a potential default faltered, according to people familiar with the matter.

The two sides still have until 5 p.m. Monday to reach a deal that would keep LightSquared out of bankruptcy court, and there were some indications over the weekend that a final decision hadn’t yet been reached on the company’s fate. Still, the two sides remained far apart and people involved in the negotiations expected LightSquared to begin making bankruptcy preparations in earnest.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120513/liqhtsquared-moves-toward-bankruptcy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120512/explosion-of-text-message-spam-creates-space-for-cloudmark/ http://allthingsd.com/20120512/explosion-of-text-message-spam-creates-space-for-cloudmark/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 20:15:40 +0000 Scott Denne http://allthingsd.com/?p=207267 Spam is still a nuisance, but controlling unwanted email messages represents one of the few success stories in the security industry these days. A more sophisticated form of that threat has been gaining ground on mobile phones, however.

The amount of spam sent by text messages has more than tripled from last year’s level to 45 million messages sent each day. About 92 percent of those are messages are trying to trick people into giving up money.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120512/explosion-of-text-message-spam-creates-space-for-cloudmark/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/t-mobile-rural-carrier-group-team-up-to-help-fight-verizons-spectrumco-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/t-mobile-rural-carrier-group-team-up-to-help-fight-verizons-spectrumco-deal/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 23:15:21 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=207165 T-Mobile, a public interest group and an association of rural carriers are joining forces to encourage deeper scrutiny of Verizon’s effort to purchase spectrum from various cable companies.

Verizon announced its plans to buy the spectrum last December as part of a broader pact that includes a joint marketing agreement. It has said that, should regulators allow it to complete the deal, it will sell off some other spectrum, but T-Mobile and others have noted that the spectrum Verizon is offering to sell has some serious drawbacks.

T-Mobile and its partners, the Rural Cellular Association and Public Knowledge, plan to announce the new group — the Alliance for Broadband Competition — at a teleconference on Monday. Speakers will include the head of the RCA and Kathleen Ham, T-Mobile’s vice president of regulatory affairs.

Sprint is also a member of the group, though it is not listed as among the participants for Monday’s event.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/t-mobile-rural-carrier-group-team-up-to-help-fight-verizons-spectrumco-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apple-says-samsungs-email-purges-destroyed-potential-patent-evidence/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apple-says-samsungs-email-purges-destroyed-potential-patent-evidence/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 21:58:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=207125

Image by Joy of Tech

Apple’s patent spat with Samsung just keeps getting messier and messier. The latest dust-up: Apple has accused Samsung of “spoilation of evidence” in the pair’s patent-infringement case.

The allegation, made earlier this month in a motion discovered by Network World, claims Samsung destroyed “vast quantities of relevant evidence in blatant disregard of its duty to preserve all such evidence.” Samsung, it seems, routinely purges emails from custodian computers and, according to Apple, has continued to do so despite its duty to preserve evidence to the case.

From Apple’s motion:

Samsung’s ad hoc, unmonitored email ‘preservation’ methods have resulted in the irretrievable loss of unknown volumes of relevant emails. … For example, Judge Grewal recently compelled the deposition of Won Pyo Hong, the head of Samsung’s Product Strategy Team, in part due to an email in which Dr.Hong ‘directly orders side-by-side comparisons of Apple and Samsung products for design presentations.’

Apple and the Court cannot possibly know how many more emails Dr. Hong sent or received that would have supported Apple’s claims that Samsung copied Apple products had they not been deleted.

Harsh allegations, and ones that Samsung has decried as baseless. That said, this isn’t the first time the company has been called out for meddling with a discovery order. Just last week it was sanctioned by a California judge for withholding evidence. This just two weeks after another sanction for another failure to provide internal documents on a timely basis. Apple, in its motion, notes other instances as well.

So, as I said: Messy, and getting messier by the day. Which doesn’t bode well for the companies’ upcoming court-ordered mediation talks on May 21 and 22.

(Image: Joy of Tech)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apple-says-samsungs-email-purges-destroyed-potential-patent-evidence/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apples-coming-map-app-will-blow-your-head-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apples-coming-map-app-will-blow-your-head-off/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 17:16:07 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=207016

A 3-D view of San Francisco from C3 Technologies

Between 2009 and 2011, Apple acquired three mapping companies in quick succession: Placebase, in 2009; 3-D mapping outfit Poly9 in 2010; and in 2011, C3 Technologies, a second 3-D mapping company. Three mapping-company acquisitions in as many years. But for good reason: Apple has been hard at work developing its own in-house mapping solution for iOS, and now it’s finally ready to debut it.

Sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple will abandon Google’s mapping back-end in the next major iteration of iOS, replacing it with a brand-new mapping application powered by Apple technology. We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies. C3 did use missile-targeting technology to develop its gorgeous 3-D models of major cities, so …

In any event, we’re almost certain to find out for sure at Apple’s WWDC conference, which runs June 11-15 in San Francisco. Sources say the current plan is to debut the new Maps app during the keynote. Caveat: Keynote plans often change, especially at Apple.

(Image courtesy of MacRumors)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/apples-coming-map-app-will-blow-your-head-off/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/nvidia-shares-soar-on-earnings-beat-bullish-outlook/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/nvidia-shares-soar-on-earnings-beat-bullish-outlook/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 14:16:57 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=206928 Shares of graphics and mobile chipmaker Nvidia are rising by nearly 10 percent in early trading this morning, after its outlook for the quarter ahead soundly beat the consensus of analysts.

Nvidia said it expects sales in the second quarter to come in between $990 million and $1.05 billion, well ahead of the the $976 million analysts had forecast.

And the cheerful forecast came on top of earnings that also beat expectations. Sales in the first quarter fell to $925 million from $962 million a year earlier, which, despite the drop, was better than the $916 million consensus.

Nvidia’s profits were $60 million, or 10 cents on a per-share basis, which was also a drop from 22 cents in the year-ago period. A rather hefty fall at that, but it was in line with expectations.

It looks like Nvidia is scoring some important wins in the desktop space, now that Windows 8 — which supports variants of ARM-based chips and not just x86-type chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices — is coming. Also, notebook graphics chips are growing. Nvidia also landed a version of its Tegra chip inside a phone from HTC that launched with 22 carriers in Europe and Asia.

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