When the stock market opens later today, one interesting indication of the impact of the Apple victory over Samsung in its patent infringement battle will be investor reaction.

A jury in California rendered the verdict in the contentious case — in which more than $1 billion was awarded Apple — after the markets had closed on Friday.

In after-hours trading starting later that day, Apple’s shares rose smartly. The stock is now up almost 2.4 percent, or $15.67, to $678.89. Apple closed Friday afternoon at $663.22, already an all-time high.

On the flip side, today in Asian markets, Samsung’s stock plunged 7 percent.

And even though the South Korean consumer electronics giant has vowed to appeal the decision, this morning will bring the clearest indication of what the financial markets think of the development.

Will Apple soar — especially given that the Silicon Valley icon is expected in the weeks ahead to also be releasing new versions of its hugely popular iPhone and iPad devices?

And whither the shares of Google — a major Samsung mobile partner, whose Android operating system software is at the heart of many of the contested smartphones and tablets?

The big question, of course, is whether Google is seen by Wall Street as a Samsung proxy, with the potential of being a future target of Apple’s lawyers or, perhaps more simply, collateral damage in the fight.

Not surprisingly, the search giant sought to distance itself from the legal melee by finally releasing an ain’t-nobody-here-but-us-chickens statement on the situation last night.

In case you’re keeping track anyway, Google shares closed Friday at $678.63 — ironically, at almost the exact same price as Apple’s.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

Apple’s already soaring stock got yet another boost in after-hours trading today, after it largely won a bruising patent infringement battle with Samsung.

Shares of the tech giant, which have risen 76 percent in the last year, are now up almost 1.8 percent, or $11.73, to $674.95. Apple’s stock closed Friday afternoon at $663.22.

This comes on the heels of Apple becoming the most valuable public company of all time this week, after surpassing a market capitalization beyond $600 billion last week.

Now it is even higher, thanks to the jury verdict and — perhaps even more significantly for investors in the weeks ahead — as new versions of the popular iPhone and iPad are about to be launched this fall.

Today, with those iPhones and iPads a key part of the legal battle, the trial effect hit.

After the markets closed, jurors ruled that many of the Samsung smartphones and tablets infringed on various design and utility patents held by Apple on its popular iPhone and iPad devices. It also found some Samsung phones had violated Apple’s protected “trade dress” for the iPhone.

There will obviously be an appeal — Samsung said as much clearly in its cheeky statement about the loss:

“It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies,” the South Korean consumer electronics giant said. “This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims.”

But, for today at least, Wall Street likes the Apple legal victory.

Check it out for yourself:

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

If anyone had any question what irony is exactly, consider this: Today is the one-year anniversary of the day Steve Jobs stepped down from his job as the charismatic and legendary leader of Apple, as well as the very moment that the company he co-founded has largely won an epic legal battle with Samsung over patent infringement.

The late Apple co-founder was particularly vocal at various times on the issue of copying innovations that he felt his company had pioneered.

That’s been especially true related to Google Android operating system that Samsung and many other device makers are using.

In a quote by Jobs from Walter Isaacson’s biography of him, he famously said:

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

And that has certainly been at the center of the landmark trial over who stole what in the aggressive race to dominate the market for popular smartphones and tablet devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Right now, the verdict from a California jury — who deliberated for less than 24 hours — is being read in a San Jose courtroom.

And, so far, it is largely favoring the Silicon Valley-based Apple over the South Korean consumer electronics giant on the wide-ranging patent infringement case.

As The Verge’s liveblog of the verdict noted: “Apple didn’t win everything — not by a long shot — but it won enough to make this a very important day.”

Indeed.

Those wins include patents related to touchscreen features, such as zooming, as well as on designs.

In addition, so far, Samsung has been ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

The jurors determined that Samsung violated six of seven patents and found that it willfully infringed in five instances. Also: The jury said that all seven of Apple’s patents were valid, which Samsung had contested.

The findings in the complex case are still being read in court, because it involves many patent infringement allegations on both sides related to dozens of devices.

Legions of lawyers for Apple and Samsung went back and forth on who invented what and whether it was a matter of copying or simple inspiration.

Samsung, naturally, said the various devices might be similar, but not the same. Apple begged to differ.

Jobs would have been in agreement, too, had he lived to see the verdict — he died of pancreatic cancer in October of last year, only months after stepping down.

But, in his resignation letter a year ago, he wrote about the importance of innovation:

“I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

Much of the pay package — which is 2½ times more than the retailer earned in its most recent quarter — is intended to compensate Mr. Joly for money he was set to earn as CEO of hospitality chain Carlson Cos., a job he resigned last week to take the helm at Best Buy.

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Today, Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle dominates the e-reader business and the Librie is little remembered. Sony is playing catch-up with a successor device, which ranks a distant third in the global market.

It is a story that has played out repeatedly over the past 20 years for Japan’s once-world-dominant electronics firms.

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Sharp’s 30 percent slide to its lowest level since November 1974 was the most eye-catching symbol of the trouble with Japanese electronics players, coming the day after the company warned it would slip to multibillion-dollar losses once again this fiscal year.

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That’s the impression that analysts at the research house IHS iSuppli got when they did just that: They took a Nexus 7 apart in order to see what components are inside, and to estimate what each of them costs. The early verdict, shared exclusively with AllThingsD, is that the low-end eight gigabyte model of the Nexus 7, which sells for $199, costs $151.75 to build.

The higher-end 16GB model, which sells for $249, costs $159.25, the difference being the cost of the memory chips inside.

Andrew Rassweiler, who leads the teardown team at IHS iSuppli, reckons that Google will break even on the 8GB model, and will turn a tidy profit on the 16GB model. “Like Apple, Google realizes it can boost its profit margin by offering more memory at a stair-step price point. It’s getting $50 more at retail for only $7.50 more in hardware cost, which sends $42.50 per unit straight to the bottom line.”

The IHS iSuppli cost estimate is about $30 lower than an early estimate put out last month by another research firm, UBM TechInsights. However UBM’s estimate was made without having first obtained the hardware for analysis.

The Nexus 7 is similar to Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet in many respects, but it has some better features. For one thing, the Nexus has the Nvidia-made Tegra 3 processor as its main computing engine. It’s a four-core chip, meaning it has four main processing brains. The Kindle Fire has a two-core OMAP 4430 processor from Texas Instruments. TI, however, supplied two chips for the Nexus 7, one a power-management chip, the other a low-voltage transmitter.

But the Nexus 7, manufactured by Asus for Google, also has a better display, with a resolution of 1,280 pixels high by 800 pixels wide, versus 1,024 by 600 for the Kindle Fire. Rassweiler said the display uses a technology known as in-plane switching, and added $38 to the hardware cost of the Nexus 7, versus $35 for the display in the Kindle Fire, Rassweiler said.

The Nexus also has a camera that added $2.50 in cost to the Nexus, and which the Kindle Fire lacks. The Nexus also has a chip from NXP that supports near field communications (NFC), a close-range wireless technology that’s intended for wireless commerce transactions. Broadcom supplied GPS receiver chips to support mapping functions.

One other part caught Rassweiler’s attention: A gyroscope and accelerometer from InvenSense. While it’s common to see InvenSense gyroscopes, it’s rare to see it combined with into the same chip with the accelerometer. Both are used to determine position and movement of the device. The only other combined gyro-accelerometer seen before, Rassweiler said, was seen in Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone, and was made by the European chipmaker STMicroelectronics.

All told, IHS iSuppli figures that the Nexus 7 costs about $18 more to make than the Kindle Fire. But that’s likely to change soon. A New Kindle Fire with a better display arrives this fall.

Image: Courtesy IHS iSuppli

About 600 of the jobs will be from its 20,000-person Geek Squad service and repair unit with the other 1,800 coming from store staff. Best Buy has a total of 167,000 employees.

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The company’s largest shareholder, Mr. Schulze controls slightly more than 20 percent of Best Buy stock. He abruptly resigned his post as chairman and director at the Richfield, Minn., company earlier this month, saying he was pondering options for his stake.

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