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

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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.

Yahoo takes Facebook to court: Start of the software/internet patent wars?

After threatening Facebook with a lawsuit last month, Yahoo has now acted upon the threat filing a case and accusing Facebook of infringing on 10 of its patents. The alleged infringed patents include those relating to messaging, news feeds, advertising, preventing click frauds and privacy controls. 

Yahoo had contacted Facebook recently asking for royalties, but filed the case after Facebook refused to pay them. 

Yahoo had earlier sued Google in 2004 for patent infringement related to "pay per click advertising method", which Google settled for ~US$230 million.

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.

Oracle could drop three more patents against Google; Case could become copyright infringement

Oracle has offered to withdraw three more patents in the case against Google/Android in exchange for a spring trial, albeit with a few caveats. If this happens Oracle will be left with only 2 of the initial 7 patent infringement filed against Oracle and the case could largely become a copyright case rather than a patent infringement one. This will come as a big boost to Google and Android.

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.

Google & Asus teaming to launch a low cost tablet; Potential Jelly Bean device

It appears the close relationship between Asus and Google, as touted by Benson Lin, Corporate VP at Asus, has just gone closer. According to Digitimes, Google is working with Asus to develop a new 7 inch tablet which could be launched as early as May this year.

This nicely ties in with rumours of Q2 2012 launch of Jelly Bean and Asus' assertion that they will be among the first to release Jelly Bean on their devices. Though, according to Slashgear, the device will have ICS — in which case one can expect a quick upgrade to Jelly Bean very soon after launching.

Google Play replaces Android market; unifies content

Google has replaced the Android market with a new service, Google Play. Google Play will replace Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore and unify content across these services.

In line with Google's strategic direction, Play is a cloud based service - apps, music, books and movies will be stored online..

According to Google, Play includes:

• Up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
• More than 450,000 Android apps and games
• World's largest selection of eBooks
• Movie renting

For the next 7 days, Google will be offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app for a special price every day. Also collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums will be sold at US$3.99, some movies at 99 cents as well as certain selected apps will be available starting from 49 cents, this week.

Android market on some of the phones have already started upgrading to Play, but some of the tablets like Xoom have still not been sent the upgrade.

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.

Google increases Android's apps size — tackles security loophole, improves refunds

In a blog post titled Android Apps Break the 50MB Barrier, Google has said that the max app size has now been increased from 50MB to 4GB. 

Currently apps get around the 50MB limit by forcing the users to download "sd data" outside the market which has security issues, as Google has no control over what data is downloaded.

The refunding policy has also been changed so that the refund will start only after the app has been completely downloaded — which is a welcome change.

Asus confirms next Android version as Jelly Bean

We had earlier reported that Jelly Bean is rumored to launch in Q2 with an aim to target Windows 8 tablets.

Now, according to TechRadar, Benson Lin, Asus’ Corporate VP, has said that “Asus is very close to Google, so once they have Android 5.0 I think there will be a high possibility that we will be the first wave to offer the Jelly Bean update.”

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.

Android as risky as IOS: Apps can access and send photos, without permission

Android has a great security feature, Permissions, where apps can typically only do what they are permitted to do before installation. This can potentially reduce scenarios like IOS, where data was being sent back to the app developers without the knowledge of the users.

But an investigation by New York Times, and covered by Ars technica,  has shown that there are some important things for which permissions are not required. And this includes access to extremely personal things like photos.

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."

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.