Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Friday it had extended its patent-infringement claims against Apple Inc to include the new iPad.
The latest complaint, filed in US District Court in Madison, Wisconsin, follows other lawsuits by Nokia claiming that a broad swath of Apple products violate Nokia patents. Nokia says the disputed technologies help reduce the size and cost of electronic gadgets. Apple had already responded with its own infringement claims against Nokia.
Apple has also sued Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電), one of the leading producers of cellphones that run on Google Inc’s Android software, a potential challenger to Apple’s popular iPhone. Apple says HTC’s Android phones violate iPhone patents.
The legal disputes come amid increasing competition in the fast-growing market for smartphones. Tech companies are scrambling to win over the growing number of consumers buying cellphones that come with e-mail, Web surfing and scores of apps for checking the weather, updating Facebook and other tasks.
Smartphone sales rose 57 percent to 54.7 million units last quarter, and accounted for almost one in five phones sold, researcher IDC said in a statement on Friday. That compares with a 22 percent increase in the overall market.
Worldwide smartphone shipments will rise 30 percent this year to 226.8 million, representing 18 percent of all mobile phones, said Ramon Llamas, an analyst at IDC. By 2014, that number will almost double to 438.4 million phones, he said.
Nokia is the world’s biggest smartphone maker and kept its market share unchanged at 39.3 percent last quarter, though it is more dominant in Asia and Europe. In the US, it faces intense competition from the iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd’s (RIM) BlackBerrys.
Apple claimed 16.1 percent of shipments in the quarter, up from 10.9 percent a year ago, IDC said. RIM, the second-largest global smartphone maker, slipped to 19.4 percent from 20.9 percent.
HTC boosted its share to 4.8 percent from 4.3 percent and Motorola Inc rose to 4.2 percent from 3.4 percent, IDC said.
Nokia’s latest lawsuit targets the iPhone and the iPad 3G, the version of the device that can connect to the Web using cellphone networks. Nokia said the gadgets infringe on five patents related to technology that makes voice and data communications more efficient, which allows the devices to be more compact.
“We have taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation,” Nokia executive Paul Melin said in a statement.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined to comment on the new case, but said the company had already filed a countersuit in December to earlier claims by Nokia. Apple claims Nokia is infringing on 13 of its patents, saying the company chose to “copy the iPhone” to recapture its share of the high-end phone market.
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