With a decent selection of handsets in the marketplace — including Nokia’s newly announced LTE device, the Lumia 900 — Windows Phone is poised for some respectable market-share gains, particularly if Microsoft promotes it as aggressively as some expect it to.

Indeed, Morgan Stanley expects shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phones to hit 37 million units in 2012, and 64 million units in 2013.

Add to this Morgan Stanley’s estimates for HTC’s Windows Phone handsets, and you get shipments of 43 million this year and 74 million the next. And that’s just those two OEMs alone. There are a few others for which the research house doesn’t provide estimates. Samsung, for example.

Pretty good, considering Microsoft’s smartphone efforts to date, and Windows Phone’s youth. One could argue that it’s unrealistic to expect blowout sales from these first Windows Phone smartphones, particularly given the market power of their competition — the iPhone and a growing array of Android handsets. Microsoft was never going to just stroll into the smartphone market with a slick OS and convert legions of consumers who have been ignoring it for years.

And the company knows it.

“We’ve got a lot of room to go in selling Windows Phones,” CEO Steve Ballmer said during his remarks at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week. “But I feel very much like the work we’re doing is really going to pay off.”

Late Tuesday, the company filed suit against Apple and HTC claiming they’ve infringed upon a handful of patents on technologies for transmitting digital images from cameras and other devices.

Kodak’s complaint covers Apple’s iPad 2, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPod touch, and a number of HTC tablets and phones — the Flyer, EVO View 4G, Vivid, Hero S, etc. And it seeks a proscription against further infringement as well as damages. But what Kodak’s really looking for here are the royalties.

As Tim Lynch, Kodak’s Chief IP officer, notes in a statement announcing the suit, “We remain open to negotiating a fair and amicable agreement with these companies, which has always been our preference and our practice with other licensees.”

News of the suits comes amid reports that Kodak is contemplating Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company’s in no hurry to resolve its legal claims against Android smartphone vendors like Samsung, HTC and Motorola, says Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore. Instead, it’s likely holding out for a big payoff.

Which is a wise move, because in doing so Apple is undermining Android in a number of ways. The threat of litigation is obviously a deterrent — or at the very least, a consideration — to any handset manufacturer mulling Android as a potential OS for its devices. And for those OEM’s that have already been sued, it significantly raises the cost of supporting Android.

So realistically, expediency isn’t the game here. The longer these cases drag on, the better it is for Apple, especially if the company ends up prevailing in the end. Whitmore seems to believe it’s the likely outcome and figures Apple could end up collecting a fee of $10 for every Android device sold, which would add about $35 to its share price. And though less likely, if it wins outright and convinces a court to ban some Android handsets, the upside is even greater, as you can see in the chart below.

“Although Apple has not expressed a desire to settle, most believe a settlement could occur resulting in a $10-per-unit software licensing fee,” Whitmore says. “… Beyond the monetary benefit to Apple, a settlement would make Android-based handsets incrementally more expensive and less competitive due to the higher OS cost and would likely support incremental iOS share gains vs. Android. … Given the upside potential associated with an outright win, we don’t expect Apple to settle anytime soon.”

Over at FOSS Patents, Florian Mueller takes issue with Whitmore’s $35-per-share figure.

The company, which grabbed market share in the U.S. and Europe through its early adoption of Google Inc.’s Android platform for mobile phones, is being challenged in those key markets by Samsung Electronics Co., Apple Inc., Nokia Corp. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., all of which have quickly expanded their premium smartphone offerings.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

First, the commission tossed out a second finding of patent infringement by the Taiwanese cellphone maker, and narrowed its ruling on the patent on which it did find infringement.

Second, it stayed its ruling for a longer-than-standard 120 days to give carriers time to prepare, a move that also gives HTC more time to implement and gain approval for any workarounds. The import ban would not go into effect until April, the ITC said as part of its ruling.

In a posting on his FOSS Patents blog, Florian Mueller noted that the patent in question is limited to HTC’s Android phones which use one of two claims on a patent, related to the way that phones highlight certain text within an email or other unstructured data — allowing, say, a phone number to be dialed.

“The import ban won’t relate to HTC Android products that don’t implement that feature, or that implement it in ways not covered by those patent claims,” Mueller wrote. “If Google can implement this popular feature, which users of modern-day smartphones really expect, without infringing on the two patent claims found infringed, this import ban won’t have any effect whatsoever. Otherwise HTC will have to remove this feature, which would put HTC at a competitive disadvantage as compared to other smartphone makers, including other Android device makers.”

HTC said in a statement to AllThingsD that it is confident in the options it has at its disposal.

“While disappointed that a finding of violation was still found on two claims of the ’647 patent, we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ’647 patent,” HTC said. (Update: HTC said late Monday that the feature in question “is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.”)

White & Case attorney Bijal Vakil said he sees Monday’s ruling as just one step in a very long litigation process around how patents play into the smartphone business.

“I don’t see today’s ruling as a game changer,” said Vakil, a partner in White & Case’s Silicon Valley office. He added that one or both parties can appeal the case to a federal court, and that HTC could also seek a further stay of the ruling, pending that appeal.

Also of note, of course, is the fact that the patent in question relates to how Android works; so, while the ruling is limited to HTC devices, the case is being closely watched by others, including key Android device makers and Google itself.

Nor is this the only case. Microsoft is suing Motorola and Barnes & Noble over Android-related claims, while Oracle is suing Google directly, to name just a few of the current cases on the docket.

“Because the market for these devices is increasing, I don’t see this trend ending anytime soon,” Vakil said.

However, sorting out these claims could be very time-consuming for the courts and the companies.

“The average smartphone could potential read on tens of thousands of patents,” Vakil said. If companies were to try to review all of the possible patent implications of a product, nothing would come to market.

The organization found that HTC devices infringed on two claims related to an Apple patent. However, the ban will not take effect until April, the ITC said in a ruling, giving time for carriers to make transition plans and for HTC to demonstrate ways it has avoided infringement (by working around the patent, dropping infringing features or other means).

“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has found a violation of section 337 in this investigation and has issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting importation of infringing personal data and mobile communications devices and related software,” the agency said. “The Commission has determined that exclusion of articles subject to this order shall commence on April 19, 2012.”

HTC will be able to import some refurbished products to satisfy repair claims on already sold products, but will not be able to bring new products into the country after April 19, unless the ruling is reversed or it can show its products no longer infringe the patent in question.

The ruling had been delayed several times.

HTC said in a statement that it was pleased the commission reversed a ruling that said HTC infringed on another of Apple’s patents, and that it narrowed the ruling on the patent in which it did find infringement.

“While disappointed that a finding of violation was still found on two claims of the ’647 patent, we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ’647 patent,” HTC said.

Apple didn’t comment directly on Monday’s ruling, instead merely reiterating a past statement that “we think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Here’s the ruling:

Usitc Ruling Apple Htc

“People have a fundamental right to control their private information,” Franken said in a statement posted to his Web site. “After reading the companies’ responses, I’m still concerned that this right is not being respected.”

Franken said he is concerned that the average user of a phone running Carrier IQ’s software has no idea what information is being collected and who is getting it, or even the fact the software is running at all.

“I’m also bothered by the software’s ability to capture the contents of our online searches — even when users wish to encrypt them,” Franken said. “So there are still many questions to be answered here and things that need to be fixed.”

In addition to his statements, Franken’s office also released the responses from Carrier IQ, AT&T, Sprint, Samsung, and HTC. The senator says he still hopes to hear from T-Mobile and Motorola by Tuesday.

Sprint, for example, said it began installing the software on devices in 2006 and has put it on about 26 million devices, though only 5 percent of those phones are being asked to send data at any given time. AT&T said the software is installed on about 1 percent of its devices, or 900,000 phones, with 575,000 of those reporting data at any given time.

The carrier noted it has not used the software to profile customers or deliver ads but only to certify devices prior to launch and to review performance of the device and network after launch.

There’s a lot of other interesting bits of data in the response letters, each of which is posted as a PDF on Franken’s site.

Carrier IQ, which sent a response letter to Franken, has also tried to clear the air in interviews and in meetings with both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

Update: Sprint said on Friday that it has decided to stop collecting data using the software.

“We have weighed customer concerns and we have disabled use of the tool so that diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected,” Sprint said in a statement. “At Sprint, we work hard to earn the trust of our customers and believe this course of action is in the best interest of our business and customers.”

The International Trade Commission in Washington on Wednesday is expected to rule on whether some phones made by HTC Corp. violate Apple’s patents. The ruling could lead to a ban on handsets sold by the Taiwanese company, which uses the Android operating system and is the No. 3 smartphone provider in the U.S. market, according to research firm Nielsen.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The latest addition is Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Nexus, which will start selling this month for $299, or $100 more than the entry level iPhone 4S. The Galaxy Nexus follows the introduction of HTC Corp.’s Rezound and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s Droid Razr, both cost $299 with a two-year service contract.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The ITC had been scheduled to issue its decision on the matter tomorrow, but on Monday said it would delay it until December 14. So it will be another nine days before we see a final verdict in the case.

If the ITC rules in Apple’s favor and determines that HTC’s Android smartphones violate the four patents at issue on the case, it could ban their importation. And that would be a nasty setback for HTC, which might then miss out on the lucrative holiday shopping season.

A victory for HTC, on the other hand, could set the stage for a settlement with Apple, which was recently vindicated in another ITC case in which it was accused of violating the patents of HTC’s S3 Graphics unit.

The findings of a Connecticut-based systems administrator have sparked alarm in millions of smartphone users, after security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a video showing how a cellphone software company has the ability to log users’ Web searches and keystrokes.

The technology, made by Carrier IQ, is currently deployed on more than 150 million devices worldwide.

Research In Motion and HTC — the maker of the phone targeted in the security demo — have issued statements denying that Carrier IQ is preinstalled on their devices. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has sent a letter to Carrier IQ seeking more information on what the software does.

Carrier IQ has told AllThingsD that while its software has the ability to receive a tremendous amount of information, some of which could be relayed to a carrier for diagnostics purposes, the company doesn’t log keystrokes and the software is not being used to gather intelligence about the phone’s user.

But while we wait for more answers, what’s a smartphone user to do?

Google Android Phones: If you’re wondering whether your Google Android phone might have Carrier IQ installed on it, Eckhart, the researcher behind all of this, points people to a Logging Test app that he claims can be used to verify “what logging is being done on your phone and where the data is going to.” If successfully installed — which we hear may take some finagling, including emailing the app link to yourself to access it, and “rooting” your phone first — the $1 app is meant to detect Carrier IQ and remove it.

According to his blog post, Eckhart has tested this app on the HTC Evo 3D phone; he believes it works on the Sprint Evo 4G and HTC Thunderbolt, as well.

But since the Google Android operating system runs on devices from multiple manufacturers, it is not known at this point which models could be running Carrier IQ and which ones are not.

It should be noted that some manufacturers have denied responsibility for the app; HTC, for example, has put the blame on wireless carriers, and basically advises HTC phone owners to contact their carriers. The company did add it was looking into an option for allowing its customers to opt out of the Carrier IQ application, but no further details were given beyond that.

Sprint has not yet responded to my inquiry as to whether the wireless company was actively involved in the installation of Carrier IQ, or how users might disable such applications on Sprint. AT&T said it uses Carrier IQ solely to improve its network performance; Verizon claims not to use it at all, although my colleague John Paczkowski reports that may not be the case.

RIM BlackBerrys: While RIM hasn’t explicitly pointed to wireless carriers as HTC did, the BlackBerry maker also denies any involvement with Carrier IQ, stating “RIM does not pre-install the CarrierIQ app on BlackBerry smartphones or authorize its carrier partners to install the CarrierIQ app before sales or distribution.”

However, the next part of RIM’s statement on the BlackBerry developers forum indicates that it’s possible Carrier IQ could live on a BlackBerry device.

According to BlackBerry Development Advisor Mark Sohm: “If the Carrier IQ application is present on a BlackBerry smartphone, it does not mean that the Carrier IQ application has ‘hacked’ the BlackBerry platform. It means that either the BlackBerry smartphone user or the user’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server admin explicitly installed the application and authorized it to run.”

In other words, if it’s on your phone, you may have granted it access in some way, shape, form or click of your Qwerty keypad.

Apple iPhones: Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD declaring that the company stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5, its latest version of mobile software, and plans to remove it from future mobile software updates, too.

But what if you’re running an earlier version of iOS on your iPhone and are worried about where your data is going? Apparently, you can opt out of having your usage data submitted for diagnostics. To do that, go to to Settings → General → About → Diagnostics & Usage. Select “Don’t Send.”

More info to come as I get it.

Related Posts on Carrier IQ:

• Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring
• Carrier IQ: How to Hack Back Your Phone
  
• Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Monitors Service Messages, Ignores Other Data
• Apple: We Stopped Supporting Carrier IQ With iOS 5
• RIM, HTC, Google on Carrier IQ: Blame the Carriers
• Carrier IQ Improves My Wireless Service by Logging My Keystrokes? Please Explain.

Full Carrier IQ Coverage »

This is the fifth in a series of posts this week about the Facebook phone.

The loudest responses to our recent series on Facebook’s work on a social mobile operating system code-named “Buffy” have not been “Ooh, I want one!”

Instead, they’ve been more along the lines of: “Why would I let creepy Facebook into my pocket!?”

While blog comments and tweets are not necessarily a representative survey, they do come from a significant and vocal portion of the population that doesn’t seem inclined to trust the Facebook brand as their cellular carrier, too.

While there are Apple fanboys and Google loyalists aplenty, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg seem to rate high on the hater quotient.

That doesn’t deny the fact that 800 million people find enough value in Facebook to log in to it at least once a month, increasingly from their phones.

And, arguably, any service that is so highly personal and insanely dominant would probably generate similar privacy concerns.

But, if we can look past the hate, would a phone that is designed by Facebook, rather than the usual mobile suspects, be compelling to consumers?

After all, no one ever clamored for a Yahoo or Myspace phone, and even Google used a different brand name — Android — for its offering.

That said, there are actually a lot of features important to smartphone users that Facebook might be particularly well-suited to offer, such as app discovery and better handling of contacts.

Here are some examples:

Contacts and presence: Phones today can be remarkably dumb about helping us get in touch with our own contacts. Facebook has a lot of insight into the best way to reach a person at any time — whether through a text, message, push notification, or voice or video call on desktop or mobile.

Clicking on a button to reach an already established Facebook friend wherever they are would be a lot more convenient than all the time we spend listening to phones ring, calling alternate numbers, leaving voicemails and the like. Rather than collecting and updating people’s contact information, we can rely on our friends to take care of that themselves.

Escaping the confines of the app: Facebook features such as events, messaging and places are currently crammed into one mobile app, but they could make more sense spread out to the rest of the operating system, into places like the calendar, inbox and maps. (You can already see this with the dedicated Facebook Messenger app for iPhone and Android, which, in my experience, is faster and more reliable than Facebook’s main apps.)

Lots of phone makers have messed around with Facebook integration, but it seems the consensus is that the Window Phone has done it best to date, with core Facebook features such as photo tagging, notifications, group messaging and status filters. Microsoft has built a demo site of what this looks like; you can see it if you install their Facebook app.

Social app discovery: Facebook’s app platform, with its notifications and real-time “ticker” activity display, could greatly improve app discovery. One of the biggest problems for both users and developers is that it’s too hard to find interesting new mobile apps. Knowing what apps your friends are using would be much more dynamic and personal than algorithmic and editorial lists of apps.

HTML5: The Facebook phone cocreated with HTC, as we’ve described it, wouldn’t come out for more than a year. But that long lag time could actually be a boon in one respect, because it will give more time for HTML5 to mature to support rich apps. Facebook’s phone could be a showcase for these Web apps, which would ideally be more flexible and accessible than platform-specific ones.

Frictionless sharing: Facebook’s current plan to make sharing more automatic doesn’t sit well with everyone. That said, it would work especially well on a phone for users who want to keep a record of their own lives. Your phone has tremendous insight into what you’re doing, who you’re with and where you are.

What do you think? Would you buy a Facebook phone? And what could Facebook offer in mobile form that would interest you?

Let us know in the comments. And here’s a poll you can take, too:

View This Poll

Related Posts on the Facebook Phone:

1. It’s Finally Real and Its Name Is Buffy
2. Forking Android Offers Both Promise and Pitfalls
3. The “Slayer” That Wasn’t
4. If It Comes, Will It Already Be Too Late?
5. The Facebook Phone: Why Would You Want One?

Full Facebook Phone Coverage »

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The Taiwanese cellphone maker, which has been on a rapid growth pace, had expected sales to grow between 20 percent and 30 percent, with gross margins of around 28 percent. It now expects sales will be flat from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg and other reports.

“Due to the global macro-economic downturn and market competition, the assumptions of our prior 2011 Q4 financial forecast are no longer applicable,” the company said in a statement. “HTC expects 2011 Q4 revenue to be approximately the same as Q4 last year. Despite the fact that 2011 Q4 revenue is not what we expected, HTC has strong confidence in its products and operation. We expect that growth will return in 2012 H1.”

It’s the second dose of bad news for HTC shareholders this week. On Monday, the International Trade Commission dismissed a patent claim by S3 Graphics against Apple. HTC had been hoping its acquisition of S3 would bolster its patent position in the company’s ongoing intellectual property war with Apple.

HTC said Wednesday that it is re-evaluating it’s S3 purchase

“HTC had decided to acquire S3 Graphics based on the strong belief that evidences of patent infringement from Apple were clear and ITC ruled in its initial determination that Apple had infringed two patents from S3,” HTC said in a statement to AllThingsD. “In light of recent development, HTC will work closely in good faith with VIA Technologies and WTI Investment International to conduct holistic re-evaluation of the S3 Graphics acquisition.”

This is the fourth in a series of posts this week about the Facebook phone.

Time stands still for no man, even if that man is billionaire social networking legend Mark Zuckerberg.

And that’s one of the biggest challenges facing Facebook in its effort to build Buffy, a planned phone being designed by the social network and manufactured by Taiwan’s HTC.

The device, though arguably years in the making, is still a long way from hitting the market, possibly as many as 18 months away.

By that point, Apple will have likely introduced an iPhone 5 and Google Android — which uses desserts in alphabetical order (now Ice Cream Sandwich) — will be up to Jelly Bean at least, if not Karmel Korn or some other code name to make your cellular dentist cringe.

In addition, one of the key demographics for a Facebook phone would appear to be that group of people who never owned a smartphone. And a longer wait means that by the time Buffy might hit the market, that pool will be significantly smaller.

That said, Facebook is still the reigning king of the Internet in social communications, where more people are connected to their friends, and where more of their photos live.

What makes the prospect of a Facebook-centric phone appealing is the fact that, for at least some people, it is where they already spend a lot of their time on the desktop or laptop computer.

Thus, a leap to the phone — where increasing numbers of the social networking site’s users are moving — and beyond is a natural one.

The company clearly has a giant potential market, with 800 million users.

The key — and a key unknown at this point — is just what this phone would do, as compared to other phones on the market. As many have noted, Microsoft’s Windows Phone already has some pretty tight Facebook integration, while Apple’s iOS and Android itself offer all the basic Facebook programs.

Ideally, Facebook would be able to move from the supporting role it plays today in mobile to a more central one akin to its spot on the desktop, where it can truly claim to be one of the key platforms.

In that context, Facebook is more than a place to share photos or check a friend’s status; it is a place to buy things, sell things, play games and more, all using its proprietary credit system.

Mobile also offers opportunities that are either smaller or not present at all on PCs, such as the ability to connect with friends directly via voice, text and video, without having to know where (or on what device) their friends are. It could directly integrate video chat, perhaps extending its existing relationship with Skype.

What is entirely clear is that Facebook had better get this phone out as quickly as it can.

“Smartphones are likely to double to 50 percent of overall global units over the next three years,” said Brian Blair, an analyst with Wedge Partners. “And if they want to capitalize on that growth opportunity, they need to get something in the market.”

Related Posts on the Facebook Phone:

1. It’s Finally Real and Its Name Is Buffy
2. Forking Android Offers Both Promise and Pitfalls
3. The “Slayer” That Wasn’t
4. If It Comes, Will It Already Be Too Late?
5. The Facebook Phone: Why Would You Want One?

Full Facebook Phone Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/the-facebook-phone-if-it-comes-will-it-already-be-too-late/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111122/the-facebook-phone-the-slayer-wasnt/ http://allthingsd.com/20111122/the-facebook-phone-the-slayer-wasnt/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:00:03 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=146513 This is the third in a series of posts this week about the Facebook phone.

Facebook is now partnering with HTC to build an Android-based phone — code-named “Buffy” — around its own social operating system platform, as we reported yesterday.

But hasn’t Facebook been working on this phone thing for a long time?

This was the response from many people who track the company and recall the first reports about such a project from TechCrunch and Business Insider last September, as well as the bits and pieces that have cropped up since then.

The answer is complex, as Facebook’s original phone effort was stillborn.

About a year and a half ago, a Facebook mobile special ops team was formed, with its own building separate from the rest of the company. The workspace was accessible by keycard only to people intimately involved in the effort.

This Facebook team was indeed trying to build a phone – really build a phone — much as Apple did, with integrated hardware and software.

But when the project became too big and too political and different from where it started, many of the people involved left the company or went on extended leaves of absence, and the effort was shelved.

But the new effort had its origins in the first — including its code name, Buffy.

The first Facebook phone project was called the “Social Layer,” which was then shortened to “Slayer,” a sly mashup of the phrase.

But that was deemed too violent, and the gentler Buffy was chosen — after the popular television vampire slayer.

The team working on Slayer/Buffy included its leader, Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Firefox founder and Facebook iPhone app creator Joe Hewitt, Google Chrome OS creator Matt Papakipos, biz dev exec Priti Choksi, developer Zhen Fang and designer Matt Cahill.

This was an exclusive and handpicked group, which generated awkwardness within Facebook’s flat organization.

That’s because Facebook has historically only ever made one product — its social platform. To have a secret team operating out of a separate building drew a lot of interest and also jealousy from other employees, multiple sources said.

The Slayers were working on everything from industrial design to carrier subsidies in order to build the ultimate Facebook phone. They had discussions with potential partners such as AT&T and Intel, sources said.

But, as often happens in ambitious efforts like this, the project quickly spiraled out of Facebook’s expertise and into budgets that were impossible without an IPO or perhaps a billion-dollar fund raising.

With its horizon more limited, those involved — many of them longtime Facebook employees — lost faith amid power struggles and a growing concern that they wouldn’t have the leeway to create something that could truly compete with Apple’s iPhone.

So the team scaled back and looked at building on top of Android. Soon many of them ended up quitting Facebook altogether.

Palihapitiya, for instance, founded his own venture capital firm in June, while Hewitt left Facebook in May to work on his own projects.

Thus the first version of Buffy was slain, until it recently got new life under Facebook CTO Bret Taylor. A source familiar with the older version of the project said the company “undid and then remade” the decision to make an Android-based phone emphasizing HTML5.

A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment on Buffy directly, but told AllThingsD:

“Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

HTC also declined to comment.

But, said multiple sources, that’s where we are today, with an HTC-made Facebook phone being prepared for release in the next year and a half.

Rest in pieces, Slayer.

Related Posts on the Facebook Phone:

1. It’s Finally Real and Its Name Is Buffy
2. Forking Android Offers Both Promise and Pitfalls
3. The “Slayer” That Wasn’t
4. If It Comes, Will It Already Be Too Late?
5. The Facebook Phone: Why Would You Want One?

Full Facebook Phone Coverage »

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/the-facebook-phone-the-slayer-wasnt/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111121/itc-dismisses-htc-complaint-against-apple-over-s3-patents/ http://allthingsd.com/20111121/itc-dismisses-htc-complaint-against-apple-over-s3-patents/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:39:53 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=146450 The International Trade Commission on Monday said it was dropping a complaint against Apple for allegedly infringing patents held by S3 Graphics.

“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that no violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1337) has been shown in the above-captioned investigation and that the investigation is terminated,” according to the ruling, which was posted by the Web site FOSS Patents.

Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC had scooped up S3 in hopes of strengthening its patent position against Apple, which has its own complaint against HTC before the U.S. trade body. A ruling in that case is expected next month, FOSS Patents said.

In a statement to AllThingsD, HTC said it was disappointed: “While the outcome is not what we hoped for, we will review the ruling once the commission provides it and will then consider all options, including appeal.”

The ITC had previously narrowed the scope of HTC’s case against Apple with regards to the S3 patents. HTC said that the ITC last week launched a new investigation based on a separate patent complaint filed by S3.

The battle between HTC and Apple is just one of many skirmishes dotting the mobile landscape, a battlefield that includes disputes between Oracle and Google, and Microsoft and Motorola, to name just a few.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111121/itc-dismisses-htc-complaint-against-apple-over-s3-patents/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111121/the-facebook-phone-its-finally-real-and-its-name-is-buffy/ http://allthingsd.com/20111121/the-facebook-phone-its-finally-real-and-its-name-is-buffy/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:46:59 +0000 Liz Gannes and Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=146043 This is the first in a series of posts this week about the Facebook phone.

After years of considering how to best get into the phone business, Facebook has tapped Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to build a smartphone that has the social network integrated at the core of its being.

Code-named “Buffy,” after the television vampire slayer, the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources familiar with the project.

Facebook only recently chose HTC, after also considering at least one other potential hardware partner — Korea’s Samsung. That means the products themselves are still a ways from hitting the market, potentially as long as 12 to 18 months.

Although it has changed scope and leadership, Buffy has been an ongoing area of concern at the social networking giant for the past two years. These days, the project is led by Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, several sources said.

A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment on Buffy directly, but told AllThingsD:

“Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

HTC also declined to comment.

Mobile is critical to Facebook’s future. And moving directly into the phone business, while fraught with challenges, may well be essential for the company.

Facebook says it has 350 million active mobile users, and relationships with 475 global mobile operators. Although it is one of the most popular applications on nearly every phone for which it is available, the social network generally plays only a supporting role.

In many cases, Facebook is just an app where people can view their friends’ feeds and upload their own photos and status updates. In other cases, Facebook has worked to take things a step further, allowing users to upload photos directly from the picture-taking app, or to integrate Facebook contacts with the phone’s address book.

But the fight for mobile control is only getting more fierce. Google and Apple run the two major smartphone operating systems, giving Facebook little say over its mobile destiny.

Apple has has fought to maintain strict control over payments within its mobile apps, even if those apps run off of Facebook’s platform, and it also made Twitter its social partner. Google is increasingly a direct competitor, as it is working to promote and integrate its own social network, Google+, across all its products.

The Buffy project represents a significant shift for Facebook, which has focused much of its mobile work on light collaborations with hardware makers looking to create more socially-oriented phones. The partnership with HTC is the latest incarnation of the long-running project, whose twists and turns we’ll detail in an upcoming story in this series.

HTC is one of several companies that have built phones with a dedicated Facebook button, having introduced the Salsa and ChaCha earlier this year. AT&T has sold a version of the ChaCha, dubbed the Status. Others, including Inq Mobile and Motorola, have also developed phones with dedicated Facebook buttons.

And France Telecom’s Orange unit last week announced a series of Facebook-centric phones aimed at emerging markets in Europe and Africa.

With Buffy, though, the integration will go much deeper, bringing friends and social activities deep into the mobile interface.

“Mobile devices are inherently social,” Taylor himself said at an industry conference earlier this year.

That pronouncement has to be awfully tempting for him to turn into reality.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in Liz’s ethics statement.

Related Posts on the Facebook Phone:

1. It’s Finally Real and Its Name Is Buffy
2. Forking Android Offers Both Promise and Pitfalls
3. The “Slayer” That Wasn’t
4. If It Comes, Will It Already Be Too Late?
5. The Facebook Phone: Why Would You Want One?

Full Facebook Phone Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111121/the-facebook-phone-its-finally-real-and-its-name-is-buffy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/amazon-kindlephone-for-2012/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/amazon-kindlephone-for-2012/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:15:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=145188 Amazon just rolled out a full-fledged tablet. Next year, says Citigroup’s research department, it could have its own phone. Here’s the topline from analyst Mark Mahaney’s newest note:

“Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12. Based on our supply chain check, we believe FIH is now jointly developing the phone with Amazon. However, we believe that Amazon will pay NRE (non-recurring engineering fees) to FIH but the device and multiple components will actually be manufactured by Hon Hai’s TMS business group (the same business group that makes Amazon’s E-reader and the 8.9” Amazon tablet). We believe the smartphone will adopt Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4 processor and is very likely to adopt QCOM’s dual mode 6-series standalone baseband given QCOM has been a long-time baseband supplier for Amazon’s E-reader.”

Mahaney and his team guess that Amazon’s phone may cost it $150 to $170 to build, and it’s conceivable that the company will sell it for something close to that price: “For a normal brand like HTC, they need to price the product at US$243 to make 30% gross margin. If Amazon is actually willing to lose some money on the device, the price gap could be even bigger.”

Mahaney’s note doesn’t spell out that the phone will use Google’s Android operating system, but it suggests that will be the case by positing that Amazon will need to pay Microsoft an “OS royalty” — Microsoft has recently been able to extract royalty payments from other Android hardware partners.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/amazon-kindlephone-for-2012/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/htcs-next-tablet-will-be-quad-core/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/htcs-next-tablet-will-be-quad-core/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:49:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=143807 HTC CEO Peter Chou says the company’s next tablet effort won’t be a “me-too” product, but rather one that stands out from the competition. Just how the company proposes to manage that isn’t yet clear, though some early details are beginning to emerge.

The most noteworthy, the tablet HTC plans to show off at Mobile World Congress 2012, will run on one of Nvidia’s quad-core processors. The most likely candidate here is the Tegra 3, an A9-based chip that Nvidia says offers three times the performance of its dual-core predecessors, as well as improved multitasking and smoother app performance.

Of course, HTC isn’t the only company plotting a Tegra 3-based tablet. Indeed, at our recent AsiaD conference, Asus Chairman Johnny Shih showed off the company’s next-generation Transformer tablet, noting that it, too, would ship with the quad-core Nvidia chip.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/htcs-next-tablet-will-be-quad-core/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111110/htc-chairwoman-cher-wang-talks-android-smartphones-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111110/htc-chairwoman-cher-wang-talks-android-smartphones-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:10:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142896

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang.

When Cher Wang co-founded the Taiwan-based company in the late 1990s, it made notebook computers. Now, HTC is all about smartphones and tablets — two of the fastest-growing consumer electronic segments in the world — in a close relationship with Google’s Android unit.

But HTC has also been considering using its own mobile operating system, and faces challenges from a myriad of competitors.

Here’s Wang, in an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg, talking about all this and more:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111110/htc-chairwoman-cher-wang-talks-android-smartphones-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0