Apple Inc won a patent lawsuit in Japan, as a Tokyo judge ruled that Samsung Electronics Co smartphones and a tablet computer infringed on its visual effects for touch panels.
Samsung and Apple — the world’s two biggest smartphone makers — have each scored victories in patent disputes fought over four continents since the maker of the iPhone accused Asia’s biggest electronics maker of “slavishly copying” its devices.
GLOBAL DOMINANCE
The companies are competing for dominance of a global mobile-device market estimated by researcher Yankee Group at US$346 billion last year.
Samsung spokesman Nam Ki-yung said the company would review the ruling and then decide if it would appeal.
Takashi Takebayashi, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Apple, did not immediately return a telephone call.
Samsung infringed Apple’s patent on the way an iPad or iPhone screen seems to bounce when a user scrolls to the end of a file, the Cupertino, California-based company said in the lawsuit.
In August last year, Tokyo District Judge Tamotsu Shoji ruled against Apple in a lawsuit that claimed Samsung smartphones and tablet computers infringe on an invention for synchronizing music and video data with servers.
The Tokyo District Court in February rejected Samsung’s request to suspend sales of iPhones and iPads in the nation.
MARKET SHARE
Shipments of tablet computers in Japan jumped 104 percent to 5.68 million units in the year ended March, according to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd. Apple controlled 53 percent of the market, while Samsung ranked fifth with a 4.3 percent share, the researcher said last month.
Smartphone shipments rose 4 percent to 6.81 million units in Japan during the first three months of the year, according to research company International Data Corp. Apple had 40 percent of sales, while Samsung did not rank in the top five, the researcher said last week.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts