Google-owned Motorola Mobility withdrew a patent complaint filed with a US commission, but remained quiet on Tuesday as to the reason for the legal ceasefire.
Motorola Mobility reserved the right to renew its case and said that no agreements had been worked out between the companies, according to paperwork filed on Monday with the US International Trade Commission (ITC).
The ITC had indicated it planned to investigate the Motorola claim that Apple had infringed on more than a half-dozen patents involving technology for e-mail alerts, voice controls, video and other features.
The smartphone and tablet-computing era is rife with patent battles, many pitting Apple against competitors who are building devices powered by Google-backed Android software.
Android-powered and Apple smartphones continued to dominate the US market, where both platforms increased shares evidently at the expense of BlackBerry handsets made by Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM), industry tracker comScore reported on Tuesday.
Android software remained the most popular smartphone platform with its share of the market growing 1.7 percent to 52.6 percent. Apple’s bite grew 2.4 percent to 34.3 percent, according to comScore.
RIM’s share of the US market slid 3.1 percent to 8.3 percent while Microsoft and Symbian shed .4 percent each to drop to 3.6 and .7 percent respectively.
Apple’s portion of the US market is expected to get even bigger given the record-breaking pace of sales of the iPhone 5 model released last month.
Samsung remained the top smartphone in the US with an unchanged 25.7 percent of the market at the end of August while Apple’s portion grew to 17.1 percent as compared to 15 percent in May, according to comScore.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to