Samsung wins appeal in patent dispute with Apple

3D-printed Samsung and Apple logos are seen in this picture illustration made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina on January 26, 2016.

Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Files

A U.S. appeals court on Friday overturned a $120 million jury verdict against Samsung, finally handing the South Korean smartphone maker a significant win in its longstanding patent feud with top rival Apple.
 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., said Samsung Electronics Co Ltd did not infringe Apple's "quick links" patent, and that two other patents covering the iPhone's slide-to-unlock and auto-correct features were invalid. The court also said Apple was liable for infringing one of Samsung's patents. 
 
In a statement, a Samsung spokeswoman said: "Today's decision is a win for consumer choice and puts competition back where it belongs - in the marketplace, not in the courtroom.” 
 
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.   
 
Apple and Samsung have been battling over mobile device technology patents for years. Apple has mostly prevailed, and in December, Samsung paid Apple $548.2 million stemming from a separate patent case, which Samsung has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
Friday's ruling was issued by a unanimous three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit, the country's top court specializing in patent issues.
 
The ruling reverses a May 2014 verdict from a federal court in San Jose, California ordering Samsung to pay $119.6 million for using Apple's patented technology without permission.
 
Infringement of the quick links feature, which allows the device to recognise data on the touchscreen, such as a phone number, and link to it to make a call, accounted for nearly $99 million of the damages.
 
While the appeals court said that Samsung did not use the same technology to detect and link to specific data, it also said Apple's other patents were obvious compared to previously known inventions and should never have been granted. 
 
Chicago-based patent lawyer Bradley Hulbert, who has followed the litigation, said the decision is "a clear signal that Apple is not invincible and that alternative operating systems are here to stay. The marketing and psychological benefits for Samsung are huge."
 
Rutgers Law School professor Michael Carrier said Apple "rolled the dice" by going to court and today's decision "shows that the patent wars really are not worth it."
 
The case is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 15-1171.
 
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Cynthia Osterman)         
 
~ Andrew Chung

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Apple planning 12.9-inch iPad for 2015: Bloomberg

Umbrellas are seen in front of the Apple store on 5th Avenue in New York May 19, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer

 

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is preparing to roll out a larger, 12.9-inch version of its iPad for 2015, with production set to begin in the first quarter of next year, Bloomberg cited people with knowledge of the matter as saying on Tuesday.
 
The report comes as Apple struggles with declining sales of its 10-inch and 7.9-inch tablets, which are faltering as people replace iPads less frequently than expected and larger smartphones made by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and other rivals encroach upon sales.
 
Apple has been working with its suppliers for over a year on larger touch-screen devices, Bloomberg cited the sources as saying. 
 
It is expected to introduce larger versions of its 4-inch iPhone next month, although the company has not publicized plans for its most important device.
 
Apple was not immediately available for comment.    
 
~ Eddie Chan

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Apple to hold iPhone-related media event on September 9: Re/code

The exploded view of the home button which doubles as a fingerprint sensor is seen on an image of the new iPhone 5S at Apple Inc's media event in Cupertino, California September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam

 

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has scheduled a "big" media event related to the iPhone for September 9, technology news website Re/code said, without citing sources.  
 
(on.recode.net/1qRPvKH)
 
Apple usually launches the newest version of its iPhone in September.
 
The company did not immediately return emails seeking comment.
 
Analysts and media reports have said Apple may launch two iPhone models with 4.7 and 5.5 inch screens this year to compete with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's (005930.KS) popular Galaxy Note 3 phablets, which have a 5.7 inch display.
 
Apple's current iPhone models, the 5S and 5C, have a 4 inch display panel.
 
The company has asked suppliers to manufacture 70-80 million units of the new large-screen iPhones by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported in July.
 
Apple's shares were down 0.8 percent at $94.81 in late afternoon trading on Tuesday.       
 
~ Soham Chatterjee

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Apple shares fall after muted iPhone sales

A clerk arranges Apple's iPhone 5C phones on racks bearing the logo of China Mobile, at a mobile phone shop in Beijing December 23, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon
 
(Reuters) - Apple Inc needs a cheaper iPhone to keep pace with low-cost rivals, analysts said, after the company's smartphone sales fell short of lofty expectations in the holiday shopping season.
 
Apple's shares fell as much as 8.8 percent on Tuesday, their steepest decline in a year, a day after the company's weak revenue forecast for the current quarter renewed fears about Chinese smartphone demand and a tepid global market.
 
The world's most valuable technology company had lost $43 billion of its market capitalization - more than the entire market value of Twitter Inc - at the stock's intra-day low of $502.07. 
 
Activist investor Carl Icahn, who is waging a public campaign to get Apple to return more cash to shareholders, bought up $500 million worth of Apple stock - his third purchase of the same size in less than a week - to boost his total investment in the iPhone maker to more than $4 billion. 
 
At least 14 brokerages lowered their price targets on Apple, reflecting concerns that it was becoming harder to sell high-end phones as markets get saturated.
 
The record 51 million iPhones sold by Apple in the quarter ended December 28 fell short of the 55 million expected by Wall Street.
 
Analysts on Tuesday attributed some of this shortfall to the pricing of the iPhone 5C. Apple's low-cost alternative to its iPhone 5S was unable to grab market share from cheaper rivals using Google Inc's Android software, they said.
 
"We don't think Apple has created a meaningful new product category with the iPhone 5C," BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman wrote in a report.  
 
He said Apple should create a "more impactful medium-price iPhone", with a lower price tag than the iPhone 5C launched in September.
 
The iPhone 5C sells for $549 without a two-year contract with a telecom carrier. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's flagship Galaxy S4 now sells for $530 without a contract in the United States, while Google Nexus 5 sells for $350.

Analysts said they were looking to the launch of the iPhone 6, a mid-range smartphone, and wearable devices such as iWatch in the second half of the year to boost investor confidence.
 
"Apple has the ability to lower the price of the iPhone to compete more aggressively in the midrange, and we believe the resulting elasticity would yield net profit improvements," Goldman Sachs analysts said.
 
Apple maintained its gross profit margin of 37.9 percent for the quarter just ended, as more people opted for the high-margin iPhone 5S than the 5C.
 
But rival Samsung, which has a phone for every budget, widened its lead over Apple by cornering 29.6 percent of the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2013, ahead of Apple's 17.6 percent, data from research firm Strategy Analytics showed.
 
"The high-end smartphone market is simply looking saturated," Evercore analyst Rob Cihra wrote in a note. "Although adding a cut-rate low-end doesn't suit Apple's (business) model, not having one limits growth."

IPHONE SALES DISAPPOINT         

Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung said the iPhone sales miss comes despite expectations of higher sales from China, where it signed a deal with China Mobile Ltd, and the addition of NTT DoCoMo as a carrier in Japan.

 

Analysts said slowing growth in iPhone sales was not just due to company-specific reasons, noting that Samsung's Galaxy phones have also been facing a decline in demand.

 

"There were a lot of reasons to believe iPhone sales would grow double-digit in units in 2014 even as the market matured, but 1Q results and the March guide pretty much put that thesis to rest," Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt wrote in a note.

 

McCourt downgraded the stock to "outperform" from "strong buy" and cut his price target to $550 from $700.

 

Apple forecast sales of $42-$44 billion this quarter - brisker than usual because of its deal to sell iPhones through China Mobile, the country's No.1 carrier. Wall Street analysts on average had expected $46 billion.   

 

"We had assumed the China Mobile partnership would mute March quarter seasonality, but this was overly optimistic," Goldman Sachs analysts said in the note.

 

Several analysts, however, said the China Mobile deal would begin to pay off as the company extends the partnership to 340 Chinese cities by the end of the year, from only 16 currently.

 

~ Supantha Mukherjee   

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U.S. ban on some Samsung products to go into effect

The company logo is displayed at the Samsung news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in this January 7, 2013 file photo.

(Reuters) - The U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Tuesday it would allow a U.S. ban to go into effect at midnight on importing or selling mobile devices made by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd that infringe on Apple Inc patents.
 
The decision is the latest step in a patent battle between the two companies that has spread across several countries as Apple and Samsung vie for market share in the lucrative mobile industry. Samsung and Apple are the No. 1 and No. 2 smartphone makers globally, respectively.
 
The U.S. International Trade Commission said on August 9 that some older smartphones and tablets made by South Korea's Samsung infringed on Apple patents. It banned the importation or sale of the devices.
 
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman could have overturned the ban - as he did on August 3 in a case where Apple was found to have infringed on a Samsung patent - but did not.
 
"After carefully weighing policy considerations, including the impact on consumers and competition, advice from agencies, and information from interested parties, I have decided to allow the commission's determination," Froman said in a statement.
 
Apple had filed a complaint in mid-2011, accusing Samsung of infringing its patents in making a wide range of smartphones and tablets.
 
The ITC ruled that the Samsung devices infringed on portions of two Apple patents on digital mobile devices, related to the detection of headphone jacks and the operation of touchscreens.
 
Samsung has said its newer models incorporate features that work around disputed technology, and that those changes have been approved by the ITC.
 
In the August case, when the USTR overturned a proposed ban on some older-model Apple iPhones and iPads, the patents covered were standard essential patents, while the patents covered by Tuesday's decision were not.
 
Standard essential patents are central to the products at issue and are supposed to be licensed broadly and inexpensively. U.S. antitrust authorities have argued that infringing on them should trigger requirements for license payments but not import or sales bans. 
 
~  Diane Bartz        

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Samsung to launch faster Galaxy S4 smartphone

By Miyoung Kim

SUWON, South Korea | Mon Jun 17, 2013 6:27am EDT

(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co plans to sell a variation of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone that will transmit data at nearly twice the normal speed, the head of its mobile business said on Monday.
 
J.K. Shin, also co-chief executive of the world's biggest technology firm by revenue, said the phone would be sold in South Korea as early as this month.
 
Samsung was in talks with several overseas carriers to take the phone, Shin told Reuters in an interview at Samsung's headquarters in Suwon, just south of Seoul. He declined to name the carriers.
 
"We'll be the first with the commercial launch of the advanced 4G version of the smartphone," Shin said.
 
The new S4 will use LTE-Advanced 4G technology, an upgrade from conventional 4G called LTE, or long term evolution. LTE-Advanced offers data transmission at up to twice the normal 4G speed. The phones will be powered by Qualcomm chips.
 
A movie download that takes 3 minutes with conventional 4G would take slightly more than 1 minute, Samsung said.
 
Samsung's shares have lost almost $20 billion since June 7 after analysts cut forecasts for Galaxy S4 sales by as much as 30 percent on industry data that showed the high-end smartphone market was getting saturated.
 
The same problem is hitting sales of the iPhone 5, made by Samsung rival Apple Inc.
 
Samsung's market capitalization is still a hefty $195 billion. Its shares closed down 0.2 percent on Monday.
 
Shin showed little concern about sales prospects for the S4, which hit stores in late April. The mobile devices division is the company's biggest profit generator.
 
"S4 sales remain strong. It's selling far stronger than the (Galaxy) S III ... and the new LTE-Advanced (4G) phone will be another addition to our high-end segment offerings that ensure healthy profit margins," Shin said.
 
Shin declined to provide forecasts for S4 sales. He said the new S4 would be slightly more expensive than the current one.
 
The South Korean firm hopes the addition of hardware offerings such as faster data transmission, along with its widely anticipated move to introduce models with unbreakable or flexible displays, will help it protect margin growth.
 
"As operators seek to provide more data-centric mobile services, I think this will become mainstream 4G technology globally in the coming years," Shin said.
 
Shin also said sales of Samsung's tablet products in the U.S. market jumped 3.3 times since it installed brand shops within Best Buy's stores in April, and is now considering expanding the format in Latin America and Britain. Samsung declined to name potential retailers.
 
EYES ON NETWORK BUSINESS

Many countries need to upgrade mobile base stations to handle not just 3G but also 4G, or build them from scratch to support 4G connections.
 
Shin said the network gear market was one of Samsung's fastest growing businesses, mainly thanks to 4G equipment sales which had been rising more than 30 percent a year since 2010.
 
The new phone would help this part of Samsung's business, he said.
 
"Such technology leadership will set the pace for the competition and help us become a major player in the network gear market," Shin said.
 
Samsung has won some 4G network deals from all major South Korean carriers, U.S. Sprint Nextel Corp and Japan's KDDI Corp and Hutchison Whampoa's British unit, but it needs to crack China to close the gap with traditional vendors in the overall gear equipment market.
 
Shin said there had not been much progress in Samsung's push to penetrate China's 4G equipment market yet, but it was increasing investment in the country.
 
China's three mobile operators - China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - plan to spend a combined 345 billion yuan ($56.3 billion) this year on network upgrades. That includes investment in 4G, which multiplies mobile broadband speeds by up to five times for users of iPhone and Galaxy phones compared with 3G.
 
Many analysts believe Huawei and ZTE Corp - already big suppliers of China Mobile since only 10-15 percent of 3G network contracts went to foreign vendors - will be winners, leaving others to fight for smaller bits of the pie.
 
Samsung hopes to show Chinese clients that 4G networks with new technology can be built faster and with lower operating costs.
 
~ Dean Yates and Alex Richardson 

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Samsung chooses Intel to power Galaxy Tab 3 model

Summary: Can Intel's deal with Samsung improve the chipmaker's long-term prospects?

Stealing custom from ARM, Intel has secured a contract to power one of Samsung's new tablet products.

Announced on Monday, Samsung revealed two new products for its tablet line -- the 8-inch and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3, possibly designed to try and claw back marketshare from Google and Apple which have produced the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini tablet computers.

The 8-inch model features a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, a 1280 x 800-pixel HD screen and runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The tablet also sports two cameras, 1.5GB RAM, and is available with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage.

The 10-1-inch model also contains the same features, but according to Reuters, the larger tablet is powered by a 1.6 GHz Intel dual-core processor provided by Intel.

The U.S. chipmaker has struggled in the mobile market, but an agreement with Samsung is likely to boost the company's prospects and is expected to pave the way for Intel to expand its presence in the mobile device market. However, moving into the Android market will require vast time and resources, which may explain reports that the number of chip engineers based at Intel Korea has risen from six last year to over 50.

A Samsung researcher told The Korean Times :

"This is a win-win deal for both sides. Intel, which is trying to cut its heavy reliance on PC business, offered better pricing for Samsung that is shifting its focus toward tablets following its huge success in smartphones. Samsung wants to secure as many processors as possible at better pricing.

That's why Samsung Electronics has recently been diversifying its procurement channel in processor chips as a strategy to stabilize production yields of its in-house Exynos-branded processors."

In Q1 2013, Intel's financial results were hurt by the slumping PC market, and the firm reported gross margins of 56 percent, which were below expectations of 57.9 percent. This year, Intel projects low single digit percentage sales growth, but with the introduction of mobile-based chips and the deal with Samsung, the chipmaker may be able to improve its long-term prospects.

ARM, known for its energy-efficient technology, is by Samsung to extend the battery life of its Galaxy Tab series as well as the Samsung Chromebook. At this year's Computex conference, the company announced a new series of chips designed for mid-range smartphones, including the Mali-V500 which is designed to prevent the copying and distribution of video through mobile device streaming.

The chipmaker has also invested in mobile security and ecommerce; establishing a joint venture with Germalto last year to create mobile security solutions for corporations.

~ Charlie Osborne

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Samsung's Galaxy S4 emerges to do battle on Apple's home turf

(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co premiered its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, which sports a bigger display and unconventional features such as gesture controls, as the South Korean titan challenges Apple Inc on its home turf.

The phone, the first in the highly successful Galaxy S-series to make its global debut on U.S. soil, was unwrapped at Manhattan's iconic Radio City Music Hall on Thursday evening. Some industry watchers were clearly dazzled by its features, setting a high bar for Apple to surpass.

The S4 can stop and start videos depending on whether someone is looking at the screen, flip between songs and photos at the wave of a hand, and record sound to run alongside snapped still pictures. But other industry watchers said the phone would not upturn an industry that lives and dies by innovation.

The plethora of new features "are good steps in this direction, but they can be seen as gimmicks rather than game changers. At this point, Samsung appears to be trying to kill the competition with sheer volume of new features," said Jan Dawson, chief telecom analyst at IT research outfit Ovum.

"For now, Samsung can likely rely on its vastly superior marketing budget and the relatively weak efforts of its competitors in software to keep it ahead."

The success or failure of Samsung's latest flagship phone - the fourth in a brand launched in 2010 - will be pivotal in the world's biggest smartphone maker's battle against Apple and smaller, and key to that struggle will be phone differentiation.

Apple may already be feeling the heat.

Just a day before, marketing chief Phil Schiller blasted Samsung and the Google Android software in rare interviews given to Reuters and other select media, underscoring the pressure that the iPhone maker is feeling from its Korean mobile-phone nemesis.

The S4, which Samsung preceded with a marketing blitz that drummed up industry speculation reminiscent of some of Apple's past launches, will be available by the end of April and rolled out to 327 carriers in 155 countries, including U.S. service providers Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA.

"Samsung has fulfilled the promise of their marketing that they are the tech innovators. It remains to be seen whether it's overload for customers, whether they can really take advantage of all these features," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.

The S4 will use either Samsung's own applications processor or Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon central processing chip, depending on the country. But the Korean company kept mum on exact dates and prices.

SAMSUNG HITS BROADWAY

Samsung took a slightly different tack with the S4's launch, using actors and a full live orchestra to present the smartphone's various features via a series of skits - as perhaps befitted its theatrical platform.

That marked a departure of sorts from the usual slick, high-wattage shows favored by rivals such as Apple.

Investors largely shrugged off the launch. Shares in Samsung were down 1.1 percent in a steady market in early Seoul trading on Friday.

The stock has stood little changed so far this year, while Apple's shares have tumbled 20 percent as disappointing sales of iPhones raised fears that its dominance may be slipping.

Apple's U.S. sales outstripped Samsung's for the first time in the quarter ending in December, even after Samsung spent a record $400 million on phone advertisements here last year.

While the global smartphone market's growth rate is tapering off, Samsung still derives the majority of its annual profits from Galaxy phones.

Samsung said the Galaxy S4 will sport a bigger 5-inch display than the S3's 4.8 inches. But because the new display will cover more of the phone's surface area, the device itself will be the same length and slightly narrower, thinner and lighter than the previous generation.

The newest features involve different options for navigation. For example, if the phone senses someone is looking at the screen, the user can tilt it forward or backwards to scroll up and down a Web page.

That feature falls slightly short of what some consumers may have expected after the New York Times reported that the phone would be able to scroll automatically by tracking readers' eyes.

But what it can do is sense when it has someone's attention. When a video is playing, for instance, the stream will automatically pause if the person glances away and it will restart when the eyes refocus on the screen.

This is an update on an existing Galaxy feature, which powers down the display if it senses no one's looking at it, conserving battery power.

The latest phone also has a sensor that lets users move their hands to the left or right to scroll between different websites they have opened or through songs or photos in an album without having to touch the phone.

The idea is to make it easier to change the song playing without having to pick up the phone while driving or to avoid putting sticky fingers on the touch-screen display while scrolling through a Web page at mealtimes.

The phone will also allow users to hover a finger over an email inbox or a photo gallery to get a glimpse of more details of what's in the email or which photos are in an album.

Another feature includes the option to automatically put a copy of details from a photograph of a business card into the phone's contacts database or call a number in the business card.

Samsung is also promising an instant translation between 10 different languages for certain applications, as well as a separate translation application on the device.

The device also has a 13-megapixel camera, compared with the S3's 8-megapixel camera.

"They kind of cherry-picked features that other competitors had, and then packed them up all together into one device," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

"The story though is more about who Samsung is and where they want to be. It is clear today that they want to play in an ecosystem game, their own ecosystem. The word Android didn't come up once."

~ Sinead Carew and Miyoung Kim

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Samsung wins reconsideration of Galaxy Tab sales ban

An Apple IPhone 4s and Samsung Galaxy S are seen in this illustration photo in Berlin
August 27, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski

(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that a lower court should reconsider a sales ban against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 won by Apple in a patent dispute with the South Korean electronics maker.

The injunction was put in place ahead of a month-long trial that pitted iPhone maker Apple Inc against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in a closely watched legal battle that ended with a resounding victory for Apple last month on many of its patent violation claims.

However, the jury found that Samsung had not violated the patent that was the basis for the tablet injunction and Samsung argued the sales ban should be lifted. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she could not act because Samsung had already appealed.

In its ruling on Friday, the Federal U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington said Koh could now consider the issue.

The decision comes just a month before the South Korean corporation is expected to unveil the second generation of one of its most successful devices, the stylus-equipped Note.

The Galaxy 10.1 is an older model, but the ban still hurts Samsung in the run-up to the pivotal holiday shopping season.

The world's top two smartphone makers are locked in patent disputes in 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative market, which is growing rapidly.

A U.S. jury found during the just-concluded trial that Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

~ Dan Levine; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn. Editing by Andre Grenon       

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