What’s next for Apple? Apple will provide wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers. First, Apple will sell data packages bundled with iPads. Then it will sell data and international roaming plans to iPhone customers through the iTunes Store. And in time — sooner than many think — Apple will strike wholesale deals with several mobile operators so that Apple can provide wireless service directly to its customers, as Apple Mobile.
Lucius Fox
Chief Executive Officer of Wayne Enterprises
“I don’t think you understand. We can’t treat newspapers or magazines any differently than we treat FarmVille.”
With those words, senior Apple executive Eddy Cue stuck to his take-it-or-leave-it business model of a 30 percent revenue share payable for transactions through the iTunes service. Despite my arguments to Mr. Cue in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., offices last year on behalf of news publishers seeking different terms, to him there was no difference between a newspaper and an online game.
A Texas shell company says Apple and others have infringed on technology for basic smartphone gestures like dragging and “double tap.” The patents were issued in 2007 to a Taiwanese maker of touchpad technology.
In lawsuits filed this week, a shell called “Touchscreen Gestures” claims devices like the iPhone, the iPad and the Blackberry Playbook are infringing on its technology. A related suit accuses Samsung’s Galaxy tablet of violating the same patents.
The patents are US Patent 7190356 (“A method of identifying double tap gesture”), US Patent 7180506 (“A method for identifying a movement of single tap 7180506) and US Patent 7184031 (“A method identifying a drag gesture”).
The New York Times has reported that security researchers have found a new computer virus that has infected half-a-million Macs.
The virus called ‘Fakeflash’ or ‘Flashback’ lets the malware’s creators gain unauthorized access to the victim’s computer.
The U.S. hit Apple Inc. AAPL -0.63% and five of the nation’s largest publishers with an antitrust lawsuit over the fast-growing e-book market, alleging they conspired to raise prices and block Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.38% from selling e-books at $9.99.
Three of the publishers settled the U.S. suit and agreed to let Amazon and other retailers set the consumer price of e-books, upending the model that had led the price of many best-selling e-books to rise to $12.99 or $14.99. A separate settlement with states could lead to tens of millions of dollars in restitution to consumers who bought e-books.
There is a good reason to root for the overdogs-turned-underdogs. One of the banes of the technology world is a lack of competition. Intel has a near monopoly in the processors that power our computers; Microsoft and Apple have a duopoly on operating systems; Google has a near monopoly on search. Facebook has a near monopoly on social networking. One of the strange aspects of Microsoft’s business is that people love the products that lose it money (think XBox) and hate the products that make it money (think Word and Windows). Why? Because it makes money on products with which it has monopolies—products that it doesn’t have to innovate. When Microsoft has to compete, it makes good stuff, as it appears to have done with the Lumia.
For most of us, it’s hard to fathom switching phones. We’re devoted to apps on the iPhone or Android that aren’t available through Microsoft. Tapping on a screen to type now seems as intuitive as kicking a soccer ball across an empty lawn. But the Lumia 900 will be something different, and it has the look of something good. iPhones are technologically marvellous, but they’re also expensive and irritatingly ubiquitous; Android can be confusing. The cell-phone market could use another competitor. It probably won’t be Research in Motion, which appears set on hara-kiri. But Nokia and Microsoft are genuinely trying to recapture the magic of that old N95.
- Nicholas Thompson on Nokia’s new phone, the Lumia 900: http://nyr.kr/HnDzdU
Last month Apple unveiled that it plans to build both a massive fuel cell farm and a huge solar farm at its data center in Maiden, North Carolina. Now, late last week, in a filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission, Apple let loose a few more details about its fuel cell plans (hat tip Wired and the local News & Observer, reposted by the News & Record).
Apple says in the filing that it will install twenty four 200 kW fuel cells at an outdoor site next to its data center, and the fuel cells could start generating electricity, using biogas, as early as June 2012. Apple expects the entire 4.8 MW system to be online by November 30, 2012.
Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google Inc. GOOG +0.24%for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.’s AAPL -0.17% Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
The Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five of the biggest U.S. publishers that it plans to sue them for allegedly colluding to raise the price of electronic books, according to people familiar with the matter.
Several of the parties have held talks to settle the antitrust case and head off a potentially damaging court battle, these people said. If successful, such a settlement could have wide-ranging repercussions for the industry, potentially leading to cheaper e-books for consumers. However, not every publisher is in settlement discussions.
Xie Xianghui, the lawyer for Shenzhen-based Proview International Holdings (0334.HK) subsidiary Proview Technology, said today that despite Apple’s US announcement today of the third-generation iPad, Proview has already contacted customs authorities at more than ten port cities around China to request a block on imports and exports of the tablet.
