Tag archive: iOS

Forget about Apple’s November plea to the European Telecommunications Standard asking for regulations for “patent holders playing dirty.” Apple has turned face, and in its evident hypocrisy, returned fire on Samsung, using four newly acquired patents in its arsenal, and filed a patent suit to ban the sales of Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the U.S. The preliminary injunction, filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of… Read More

Way back in the fall of 2011, when we were just being introduced to Siri in all her (short lived) iPhone 4S exclusivity glory, we wrote about Speaktoit. It was among the first legitimate answers to Siri that came hot on the heels of the iPhone 4S announcement.   But back then, it was only an Android alternative to Siri – many of which have been added to the Android Marketplace since. Now, Speaktoit is available in the iOS App Store and offers… Read More

With over 500,000 apps available through Apple’s App Store, it can be daunting for developers to get their apps noticed — let alone downloaded. Enter a recent thread on app developer site Touch Arcade, in which a poster who was recently shopping around for ways to get his app more exposure was contacted by a “marketing” company that promised it could break apps into the top 25 rankings in exchange for a lump sum payment — in this case $5,000.… Read More

The world of patent licensing often seems like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, but every so often the industry stumbles into a new tunnel — or, at least, one that seems new at first glance. Such is the case with Apple, which has asked the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to establish a set of basic principles governing so-called fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing of patented… Read More

On Tuesday, social networking app Path took a fireball of heat after a developer discovered that the latest version of its app automatically uploads users' entire address book every time they logged into the network. Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin quickly swooped in to do damage control, saying an update to the Android version of the app already requires users to opt-in, and the same change is coming soon for the iOS version. Today,… Read More

Originally discovered by The Guardian earlier today, Apple's App Store was flooded with copycat gaming applications that mimicked the design style and names of popular iPhone and iPad games like Plant vs. Zombies and Tiny Wings. Created by a developer called Anton Sinelnikov, these applications trick iOS users into wasting money on software that doesn't even work. Sinelnikov is responsible for publishing apps such as Plants vs.… Read More

Just a week after dismissing one of Samsung's patent infringement suits against Apple, A court in Mannheim, Germany has done it again, dismissing a second suit from Samsung against Apple that claimed Apple infringed on the company's 3G/UMTS technology. As before, the court gave no reason for its ruling. Although the dismissals are a blow to Samsung's legal battle against Apple, in a broader context they amount to little more… Read More

Launched earlier this week and announced on the Steam site, Valve has started a closed beta for Steam Mobile on the iPhone and Android phones. The mobile application brings a vast amount of core functions found within the PC and Mac version of the Steam software, the most notable being the ability to make purchases through the application. This will allow any mobile Steam user to take advantage of the frequent sales that cut popular games up to… Read More

It's been a bumpy week for RIM. On Sunday, the Canadian smartphone maker's co-CEOs tried their best to quietly resign and hand over the CEO position to their former Chief Operating Officer, Thorsten Heins. For months, investors and journalists have been calling for Research in Motion's co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis — who have each taken turns running the company since it was founded in 1991 — to step… Read More

In the US, Apple's iPhone has surpassed the smartphone market share of all Android devices combined during the final three months of 2012, according to new numbers out from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, as reported by Reuters. But the difference is almost invisible: Apple owned 44.9 percent of the market; handsets running Google's Android operating system owned just 44.8 percent. Though the difference in popularity may be… Read More

Nokia is seeing some good initial success from its transition to exclusively supporting Windows Phone for its high-end handsets. Initial sales of the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, Nokia's first two Windows Phones, are likely hovering around 1.3 million units, according to Bloomberg. This is, of course, unverified data, but for two handsets that only launched in November, that's not bad. Add in the fact that Windows Phone is not a well… Read More

The long-running tit-for-tat legal battle between Samsung and Apple logged another entry today, with Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany ruling that Apple does not infringe on a Samsung patent involving 3G/UMTS technology. The judge did not offer any detailed reasoning, but overall the ruling likely represents only a small setback in Samsung's ongoing battle with Apple in Germany: It still has four more lawsuits… Read More

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner has significantly narrowed the high-profile patent litigation between Apple and Motorola over the technology used in their iOS and Android-powered mobile devices, reducing the number of claims in the case that could go to trial from eight to five. Posner ruled that one of Apple's patents in the case is invalid, and that Apple was not guilty of infringing on Motorola patents for authenticating… Read More

Being a co-founder of Apple, you’d of course expect Steve Wozniak to have an iPhone. Indeed, the man—who incidentally hasn’t worked for the company for some 25 years—is famed for waiting in line for hours at the launch of every new Apple smartphone. With his connections to the Cupertino company clear to all, it may come as a surprise to some that in a recent interview with The Daily Beast, he appeared to be singing the praises of Android… Read More

Despite a downturn in the GPS market over the last two year, TomTom is driving forward. At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, the company announced that it plans to release a new version of its app for iPhone and iPad that includes full Facebook and Twitter integration. The company also unveiled plans to streamline its product lineup. Like the currently-available version of TomTom's iOS app, the new version doesn't require a mobile… Read More