Microsoft sues Samsung!

Microsoft revealed today that it has sued Samsung in an attempt to enforce a patent cross-licensing agreement the two companies reached in 2011.
By Microsoft’s account, Samsung is balking at licensing fees after its smartphones became more successful than expected. The lawsuit alleges Samsung was late in paying its second-year royalties and then refused to pay interest. Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia appears to be the reason that Samsung cited for not having to pay.
We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment on the issue.
Microsoft spent years leveraging its patent portfolio against Android phone makers, eventually earning royalties from most of Google’s best partners.
➤ Microsoft’s Samsung action [Microsoft on the Issues blog]

With the lawsuit, Microsoft hopes that the court will enforce the contract.
thenextweb.com

Xerox Xerox Xerox... Bill Gates eulogise a few ideas on the tech upstart!

Classics ain't Microsoft style these days as the tech mammoth grapples with coping in the ever changing industry. Still the World's richest though, Bill Gates as usual shares his insights on what we can all learn from John Brooks. The founder of Xerox - Joseph C. Wilson, which was at that time, the novel idea in the technology industry (we are talking about the 1906 here!) Interestingly, Xerox engineers had the early ideas about personal computing but they were forced to share them with Apple and Microsoft, who eventually monopolize the industry.

The book is out of circulation but it's chapter five made available by the Brooks family with the help Microsoft Owner - Bill Gates and it is an interesting read. Enjoy!

You can find the download from here

Apple earnings beat with $35.6 billion in sales, 31.2M iPhones sold… Listen here for more!

Company's third quarter results come in slightly stronger than expected, fueled by the iPhone, but iPad sales were far below what Wall St. expected.

Apple narrowly beat expectations on Tuesday, with better than expected earnings.

Apple reported earnings of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per share on $35.6 billion in sales. Wall Street was expecting Apple to post earnings of $7.32 per share on sales of $35 billion.

Apple said it sold 31.2 million iPhones, 14.6 million iPads, and 3.8 million Macs during the quarter.

"We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over 31 million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, Software and Services," Apple CEO Tim Cook, said in a statement. "We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014."

Looking ahead, the company said it expects to sales between $34 billion to $37 billion, with a margin between 36 and 37 percent. That's below the sales of $37.55 billion and in line with the 36.8 percent gross margin Wall St. analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected.

Apple is hosting a call with financial analysts at 2 p.m. PT (listen here), which typically provides a number of insights into company, including stats that aren't initially reported. We'll add any important details from that call to this post. cnet.

Blackberry may be launching a new BB A10 soon!

An upcoming BlackBerry smartphone named the A10 has been leaked online complete with specifications.

A post on the CrackBerry forum has possibly shown the Canadian smartphone maker's next handset, the A10. Since renaming the company from RIM to just BlackBerry, it has launched the Z10, Q10 and Q5 which all run on the BlackBerry 10 OS.

Now it seems the A10 will be the first of a new A-series of devices. The 10 part signifying that it will be at the high-end of the range.

The most notable specification is that the A10 will come with BlackBerry OS 10.2, a new version which will presumably bring additional features or at least some improvements.

Like a lot of current smartphones, the A10 will sport a large 5in OLED screen but only with a 720p resolution meaning a pixel density of 295ppi. It will run on a dual-core Qualcomm processor with a quad-core GPU and 2GB of RAM alongside.

An 8Mp rear camera with a flash will be coupled with a 2Mp front-facing counterpart. The BlackBerry A10 will offer a typical 16GB of internal storage supported by a microSD slot for up to 64GB cards with something called 'hot-swap'. This must mean something along the lines of being able to switch memory cards without rebooting the phone.

BlackBerry's A10 smartphone will support 4G LTE networks with other connectivity consisting of Wi-Fi, DLNA, Micro HDMI and NFC. There's no mention of Bluetooth on the spec sheet but we assume it will be present. It will have a 2800mAh integrated battery.

Nokia sold up to 7.4 million Lumia in Q2 but posted $150 million loss!

 After BlackBerry's disastrous earnings a couple of weeks back, Nokia and Microsoft have clear bragging rights over third place in the ecosystem war -- but does a bronze medal earn you any cash? The Finnish manufacturer has reported declining Q2 2013 revenues of €5.69 billion ($7.4 billion) compared to the $9.2 billion earned in the same quarter last year. The good news is that the huge financial losses of 2012 seem to be gone, with today's reported loss standing at just €115 million ($150 million), all of which can be laid at the feet of Nokia's devices and services division.

Meanwhile, the company's smartphone sales seem to be growing thanks to fresh Lumia models like the 520, 620 and 720 -- with a total of 7.4 million Windows Phone 8 devices sold in the quarter. While that's a big improvement on the 5.6 million in Lumia sales from Q1 and the 4.4 million sold in Q4 2012, the Asha division saw sales slip down from 5 million last quarter to 4.3 million now. Oh, and if anyone's still in the market for a Symbian handset, better be quick -- the company is reporting that sales of the phones are now "approximately zero."

In other parts of the business, "Here," Nokia's renamed mapping division, lost €89 million ($116 million) while Nokia Siemens Networks made a slender €8 million ($10.4 million) profit. Looking forward, the company has said that it's lowering its future estimates by two per cent, saying that dwindling demand, higher operating expenses and "the macroeconomic environment" will all help to erode the company's cash reserves. But hey, at least Microsoft's still is kicking in that $250 million in alimony platform support payments.

Are you ready for the iPhone 6?

Apple has lost a lot of ground in the smartphone market as of late, with many believing that the iPhone now plays second fiddle to the high-end Android devices released earlier this year. Needless to say there is a lot of attention focused on Apple to see what the Californian tech giant comes up with for its new iPhone, whether it's the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6. Here's where we take a look at the rumoured new iPhone 5S/6's release date

Will it be the new iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6?

This is a bit of an impossible question to answer as Apple will neither confirm nor deny even the existence of another iPhone being in the pipeline. However, we're pretty experienced in tracking Apple's new smartphone leaks and developments and the fact that there has been very little noise coming out of the Apple barracks suggests that the next iPhone's specs won't be a million miles away from the current iPhone 5's. So if you were to force us to guess whether it will be a semi-updated iPhone 5S or a completely new iPhone 6, we'd have to put out money on the former. 

History sides with us too, as ever since 2008; Apple has released a new generation of smartphone followed by a "S" launch of the phone roughly a year later. Take a look at the previous iPhone release dates below to see the obvious pattern.

Previous iPhone release dates

• iPhone 1st gen: June 29, 2007
• iPhone 3G: July 11, 2008
• iPhone 3GS: June 19, 2009
• iPhone 4: June 24, 2010
• iPhone 4S: October 14, 2011
• iPhone 5: September 21, 2012

iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 release date in UK

Now, before we start, you need to know that Apple threw everyone a curve ball when it released the iPad 4 less than eight months after releasing the iPad 3 (which it subsequently dropped like a bad habit, yet kept selling the iPad 2). 

So, while Apple's previous formbook shows that Apple releases a new iPhone roughly every 12.5 months – suggesting that the new iPhone 5s or iPhone 6 will have a September/October 2013 release date - you can't rule out Apple announcing one sooner (although Apple almost certainly won't). 

 In terms of solid new iPhone 5S/6 release date rumours, it's pretty thin on the ground out there. PC Advisor's Chris Martin says this about the possibility of a new iPhone 5S/6 launch at Apple's worldwide developer conference (WWDC). "Apple holds its worldwide developer conference (WWDC) annually in June and it's here that it could reveal the iPhone 6. This is the least likely as the event is focused on software. However, Apple has announced hardware at the event (last year was the MacBook Pro with Retina display) so it could use this to launch an iPhone." 

 We think the most likely time for an new iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 launch is September/October time, with the announcement being made at an dedicated event. We're basing this solely on Apple's previous tendency to launch iPhone at the time and in this sort of fashion.

It's also worth mentioning that there is talk that Apple might launch a budget version of the iPhone this year too. However, we need to stress that there has been very little to suggest this other than mere internet rumours so far...that said, the iPad mini was just an internet rumour so far. PCadvisor.

This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds!

This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds

“Like a "Mission Impossible" tape, e-mails could disintegrate before unauthorized eyes get a chance to view them, according to an AT&T patent application”.

Ever lose sleep over e-mails you've sent? Messages of an embarrassing nature that make you wish you hadn't clicked on "send"?

AT&T is thinking of you. It applied for a patent for self-deleting e-mail. Once sent, these missives won't hang around in some inbox waiting for someone to do what he pleases with them. They'll disintegrate, so to speak.

"Method, System, and Apparatus for Providing Self-Destructing Electronic Mail Messages" is U.S. patent application number 20130159436 and was recently made public.

The application outlines an e-mail client system and server application that can send and receive messages that self-delete.

The filing notes that e-mails, once sent, are outside the control of the sender. They can be copied, saved, printed, or forwarded.

"The inability to control the number and type of operations that may be subsequently performed on a sent e-mail message makes conventional e-mail systems unsuitable for sending confidential information for which absolute control of distribution is a necessity," the application states.

It goes on to say that some e-mail systems that allow users to set up their client so that messages are deleted after a certain period of time. Still, the power to destroy the message remains in the hands of the recipient.

The application describes how the client and application will destroy the message at a set time, with the option to do so regardless of whether it's been read or not. They will also limit what can be done with the message.

"The e-mail message will be destroyed by the e-mail client application whether or not the message has been read. Alternatively, if the e-mail message specifies that it should be deleted after it has been read, the e-mail client application will destroy the e-mail message once it has been opened and closed by the recipient. All instances of the e-mail message are deleted from the recipient's computer."

Now what would the NSA think about that? cnet.