Apple to spend cash on dividends and share repurchases

The speculation is over. Apple has announced that it will give a quarterly dividend of US$2.65/share starting from fourth quarter of 2012 (September quarter). The company will also use US$10bn for share repurchases.

Combined the dividend and the share buyback will involve an expenditure of US$22.4bn till Sep 2013.

Let consider what impact this will have on Apple by Sep 2013.

Apple scores crucial patent victory against Samsung; FRAND patent counter strategy of Google at risk

Photo credit: Wikipedia

As reported by Foss Patents, The dutch court has ruled that Samsung has to offer fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms to Apple for patents essential to 3G/UMTS standard. The ruling will also prevent Samsung from seeking injunctions against Apple's products, using these standards.

This is a crucial victory for Apple which could have major impact not just on Samsung, but also on Google and Android as it limits the use of standards essential patents (SEP) as legal tools against competitors.

Apple v/s Google: Motorola tried to bully Apple in patent negotiations

We had earlier reported that Apple had offered cross-licensing deals to Motorola and Samsung, but the talks failed due to unknown reasons and the patent wars escalated.

Now, in a document filed by the European Commissions (EC) on the proposed merger of Google and Motorola, it has appeared that the licensing deal didn't happen as Motorola/Google tried to intimidate Apple into licensing ALL of its patents, something unacceptable to Apple.

The EC document does not go into much detail on the licensing deals, but there are two interesting points. One relates to Android cross-licensing and the other relates Apple's patents and potential carve outs.

January 2012 US smartphone market share: Google's Android wins; RIM, Microsoft Windows lose

According to the latest data released by Comscore, US smartphone subscribers grew by 3.5% QoQ to reach 101.3 million units in January 2012.

In terms of smartphone platforms, Android and IOS (Apple) continue to gain market share, while Microsoft's share declined in spite of the initial launch of Lumia 710 by Nokia. RIM's market share also declined.

Apple to face antitrust investigation over ebooks

Wall Street Journal has claimed that the DOJ has warned Apple along with five of the biggest US publishers that they could face an antitrust investigation for manipulating the prices of ebooks.

iPad 3 launched, specs as expected

Apple has just announced the launch of iPad 3. Most the features were as speculated. Following are the key features highlighted by Apple.

LIVE: Key highlights from Apple conference

• 172mn postpc devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod) were sold in 2011
• Postpc devices made up 76% of sales in Q4 2011
• Retial provide best buying experience
• iOS is an important part of the total experience
• One of the most popular feature of iOS is Siri
• Siri will now be avialable in other parts of the world
• Siri is going to be launched in Japanese
• Apple TV, available next next at US$99
• 15.5mn iPads sold in last quarter, more than any PC manufacturer sold PC's
• iPad is the favourite device for many things incuding reading and browsing
• iPad 3 launches
• Retina display - 2048*1536 pixels or 3.1mn
• 264 pixels per inch, enought o call it a retina display according to Apple
• A5Xchip - Quad core graphics
• Better camera: 5MP backside illuminated sensor, 5 element lens, hybrid IR filter
• Camera also has auto exposure, auto-focus, auto face detection, auto exposure lock and autofocus lock
• Full HD resolution, HD video recording now at 1080p resolution
• iPad now supports  English, British English, Australian English, French, German and Japanese languages
• iPad 3 has LTE
• iPad 2 supported EVDO, HSPA. iPad 3 supports HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA
• iPad 3 priced at US$499
• $499,$599,$699 for 16/32/64GB versions for wifi
• Available from Mar 16 in stores, preordering today
• 10 hours of battery life, 9 hours on 4G
• Safari updated to take care of retina display

That concludes the part of the event we were waiting for. The launch of iPad 3! Also check our previous speculation on iPad 3 in this post.

Thanks Ars Technica for the live coverage :)

Apple offered Motorola and Samsung licensing deals at US$15 per device



Apple has been portrayed in the general media as a bully trying the stop Android from becoming competitive. This had been reinforced when Steve Jobs famously called Android a “stolen product” and 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.”

But according to sources at Dow Jones Newswires, Apple, like Microsoft, had offered Motorola and Samsung a licensing deal, albeit at a high price ranging from US$5-$15 or ~1.0-2.5% per device.

Sources also claimed that Apple wanted to offer licenses only to select competitors and not all of them, in line with the generally thinking at Cupertino to use patents as a strategic advantage.

Samsung targets iPad/iPhone again, this time in Korea

While Apple is looking to launch its much anticipated iPad 3 today, Samsung is playing the role of the spoisport by launching a new lawsuit in South Korea claiming that iPad 2/iPhone 4S infringers on three of its patents. It can be expected that after iPad 3 is launched, Samsung will add it to the list.

Judge asks Google, Motorola to hand over sensitive documents to Apple

According to a Bloomberg news report, Google and Motorola have been ordered by a US judge to handover documents related to development of the Android operating system to Google. The two companies have also been asked to handover documents relating to the merger of Google with Motorola.

German courtroom dismisses two patent lawsuits between Apple and Samsung

The Mannheim state court in German has ruled on two cases involving Samsung and Apple, dismissing both of them. This includes a suit brought by Samsung against apple concerning essential 3G/UMTS patents as well as one of the two "slide to unlock" patent brought by Apple against Samsung.

According to an article by BBC, Samsung was disappointed with the ruling and planned to appeal against the verdict. Samsung also said that a separate case involving four patent infringements is still pending in Mannheim.

Apple has so far not commented on the cases, and could wait for the other "slide to unlock" case before taking further action.

Feb Browser share: IE, Chrome lose; Firefox, Safari gain

Net Applications has released browser market share numbers for February 2012.

Among the desktop browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) could not repeat the success of last month and lost market share. Chrome also lost market share for the second consecutive month, while the other three major browsers, Firefox (FF), Safari and Opera, gained.

In the Mobile browser segment, Safari and Android increased their share and now combined account for 81% of the total pie while Opera saw its market share decline of 5%. Overall, mobile market share continue to show major month over month changes, though Safari has consistently accounted for over half of the pie.

Let us look at the numbers in more detail.

Apple crosses 500 - Next target 1,000?

Source: Ycharts

Apple added another feather to its hat by crossing US$500bn in market cap for the first time on Wednesday Feb 29th, 2012. It is a historic day for a company, who little under 15 years ago was close to bankruptcy, which was only avoided after an investment by its bitter rival, Microsoft.

According to HispanicBusiness, Apple has become the fifth US company ever to cross US$500bn in market cap. Previously Cisco, Intel, Microsoft (twice) and General Electric had managed to surpass the landmark.

iPad 3 expected to launch on March 7

Apple has started to send press invites for a special media event on March 08, 2012. The event is going to be held in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.

It is widely expected, but not confirmed, that iPad3 is going to be launched in the event. According to nj, a photo in the e-mail invite featured a close-up photo of what is believed to be the next iPad and the words: "We have something you really have to see. And touch."

Proview sues Apple in the US

WSJ has just reported that Proview Electronics, the Chinese company suing Apple over th iPad trademark, has filed a case against Apple in the US. The lawsuit was filed in Santa Clara, California, on Feb 17, but went previously unreported.

According to Chinadaily Proview had registered the trademark Ipad in 2000 in several countries but sold it to Apple in 2010:

Apple bought the right to use the trademark from Proview Taipei in February 2010 via IP Application Development Limited (IP), a company based in the US. However, Proview Shenzhen claims it still reserves the right to use the trademark on the Chinese mainland.

Microsoft continues attack on Google, complains to EC

Microsoft's products threatened by Motorola/Google?

In the latest round of the patent wars, Microsoft announced that that it has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission against Motorola Mobility and Google. Microsoft claims that Motorola wants extraordinarily high patent fee of 2.25% of every devices price and could block sales of Windows PC, XBOX and other such Microsoft products.

In a blog post titled Google: Please Don’t Kill Video on the Web Microsoft indicated that the patents in question reltae to the video technology H.264. They are thus standards essential patents and must be licensed under FRAND (Fair, Reasonable And NonDiscriminatory) licensing terms.

Earlier, Motorola had indicated in its 2011 annual report that "Apple had complained to EU against Motorola regarding the enforcement of standards-essential patents against Apple allegedly in breach of Motorola's FRAND commitments."

Flash or no Flash? Adobe releases Flash roadmap, Mobile flash is history

Adobe has published roadmap for its Flash Player and its desktop counterpart, Adobe AIR. Overall the company expects Flash to cater predominantly to gaming and premium video markets. And as stated before, mobile version will no longer be developed.

The company plans 3 versions in the coming future Flash Player 11.2 (1Q 2012), Cyril (2Q 2012) and Dolores (2H 2012).

Further ahead with Flash Player Next, Adobe plans to update Actionscript language and work on the Actionscript Virtual machine. Initial releases for next are planned for 2013.

Jelly Bean to launch in Q2, Google targeting Windows 8 tablets

A Taiwanese news publication, DigiTimes, has claimed that Google will launch the next version of Android, code named Jelly Bean, in Q2 2012. According to the news report, Chrome is going to be integrated with Android. (It is to be noted that Google had recently released a version of Chrome capable of running on Android.)

DigiTimes further states that Google will oush vendors to adopt a dual-boot system design capable of running Android and Windows.

DigiTimes further claims that "However, since Android 4.0 did not perform as well as expected, several of Google's downstream partners are turning conservative about Android 5.0."

I think the claims of Q2 launch are very aggressive. Fragmentation is very high in Android, and as per Google only 1.0% of devices so far have ICS.