LG Optimus LTE has successfully passed a 4 million unit sales globally

According to a tweet, LG Optimus LTE has successfully passed a 4 million unit sales globally. This smartphone is one of the most successful LG mobile phones to date, where Optimus LTE and LTE Tag itself originally been sold in South Korea reached 400,000 units and swell in May reached 1 million units.

Until January , Optimus LTE has been sold as many as 1 million units. LG also known to increase the sales figures will continue their LTE phones with the expanding country will be visited. Vendor origin South Korea also seems to find his company was in a good position in the LTE market, which would certainly increase along with the development of 4G networks for the next few years.

 

Push in U.S. for fewer sales bans for patent infringement

WASHINGTON | Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:00pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies that hold the most important patents needed to build smartphones, tablets and other devices should only rarely be granted sales bans on rivals as a punishment for infringement, U.S. government officials told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Since a 2006 Supreme Court decision known as eBay v. MercExchange, it has been unusual for U.S. district courts to issue injunctions banning sales of an infringing product.

But the U.S. International Trade Commission is not subject to that legal precedent, and still orders sales bans.

The result has been a flood of infringement cases at the ITC, some of it based on patents essential to a standard, such as a digital movie format.

"It really is creating a lot of concern here on Capitol Hill and is creating greater concern in industry in this country," said Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at a hearing on the issue.

One solution under discussion would require the ITC to consider whether there has been fair licensing negotiations between the companies before issuing an exclusion order based on a standard essential patent, said Edith Ramirez, a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

While rules vary among standard-setting bodies, the usual expectation is that essential patents be licensed on reasonable terms and to everyone.

Both Ramirez and Joseph Wayland, the acting assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Justice Department, said they would be reluctant to see exclusion orders forbidden entirely on essential patents.

"There may be circumstances where a company refuses to negotiate in good faith," Wayland told lawmakers.

Recent attention on the issue has focused on a case where Motorola Mobility, which recently became a Google Inc unit, accused Microsoft Corp of infringing patents to make its Xbox game console, including patents that standard setting bodies declared to be essential to a video standard.

If Microsoft loses, the Xbox could be banned from the U.S. market because of a licensing dispute over an essential patent.

Microsoft is leading the fight against the ITC exclusion orders.

Major smartphone players such as Apple Inc and Qualcomm Inc have also lobbied lawmakers on the issue, according to a congressional source.

Mark Lemley, a patent expert who teaches at Stanford Law School, estimated the cost to the companies of the smartphone patent wars at "conservatively $15 to $20 billion dollars."

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

 

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U.S. judge rejects Samsung request to lift stay on Nexus sales

By Erin Geiger Smith

Wed Jul 4, 2012 10:41pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday rejected a request by Samsung Electronics Co. to lift a pre-trial injunction against sales of its Galaxy Nexus phone, another legal setback for the South Korean firm ahead of an upcoming court battle with Apple Inc..

Last week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, granted Apple's request to block sales of the smartphone. Samsung had asked the court to stay the injunction pending resolution of an appeal.

On Monday, Koh rejected a similar request to lift a ban on the U.S. sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, a tablet computer that runs on Google Inc's Android and is a competitor of Apple's iPad.

The two injunctions were significant victories for Apple, as such pre-trial injunctions are rarely granted.

Apple and Samsung, the world's largest consumer electronics corporations, are waging legal war in around 10 countries, accusing each other of patent violations as they vie for supremacy in a fast-growing market for mobile devices.

Apple sued Samsung last year, accusing the South Korean electronics maker of "slavishly" copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the claim and countersued. The case is due to come to court late this month and could have implications in other jurisdictions.

The district court is not the last chance for Samsung to get the injunctions lifted. Samsung has also appealed to a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, which has exclusive jurisdiction over intellectual property disputes.

As a condition of the Galaxy Nexus injunction, Apple was ordered to post a bond in the amount of more than $95 million to secure payment of any damages sustained by Samsung should the injunction be deemed a wrongful decision later.

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet reiterated her previous statement in the case, saying Samsung blatantly copied Apple's products and that Apple must protect it's intellectual property.

Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The smartphone case is U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 12-00630.

(Reporting By Erin Geiger Smith; Editing by Richard Pullin)

 

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Apple sales rocket in China, but growth may slow

Apple Inc is likely to see its sales growth nearly double in greater China this year, but the pace will probably taper thereafter as competitors hit back with new products in the biggest global mobile phone market. For the world's most valuable technology to get a bigger slice of the China market, it will also have to come up with an iPhone that supports the biggest Chinese mobile carrier's proprietary technology, settle an iPad trademark dispute and create more official sales outlets. Apple's sales in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, expanded three-fold to $7.9 billion in the first quarter, making up a fifth of the total figure. Sales are on track to nearly double in 2012 from last year's $13.3 billion. "We may not see a repeat of this year's stellar pace of growth in coming years unless Apple comes up with great products to keep up with consumers' demand and tastes," said Candice Wang, an analyst with research firm Analysys International.

Big boost in sales

Apple has been successful in raking in sales in China's wealthy first- or second-tier cities, b ut less so in the wider Chinese market, where overall income levels are still low. Consumers with deep pockets generally see Apple as a premium product and status symbol, analysts say, and are willing to overlook certain drawbacks - such as that "Siri", the iPhone's voice-enabled personal assistant technology, does not speak Chinese. "I see everybody using an iPhone, so I decided to buy one," said a user whose surname is Zhou, who lives in China's wealthy coastal province of Jiangsu. "I love the screens and the applications are really sleek." She has switched iPhones within a year to keep up with Apple's latest gadgets. But for most of China, especially in third- or fourth-tier cities, that is not the case. A basic iPhone 4S costs 4,988 yuan, which is more than what many Chinese make in a month.

Even though Chinese salaries are on the rise, per capita urban disposable income was only 21,810 yuan in 2011, while per capita rural income was only 6,977 yuan. For many Chinese consumers, the iPhone is out of reach and most have instead bought cheaper smartphones running Google's Android operating system, from the likes of ZTE Corp's. ZTE's U880 smartphone costs less than 800 yuan and the Coolpad 9930 model sells at 1,670 yuan. "There is no doubt that Apple's sales will keep rising, but market share is a different story," said CK Lu, analyst at Gartner. "If Apple wants to maintain or grow its market share, it will have to cooperate with its partners to roll out more affordable smartphones." With China's smartphone shipments expected to hit 137-140 million in 2012, exceeding the United States for the first time, according to research firms IDC and Gartner, the potential is huge in an country with more than a billion mobile phone users.

For now, Apple still has the upper hand in the high-end smartphone sector. "I've tried out iPhone 4S and Lumia 900 and I personally feel that if one really wants to buy a handphone, iPhone 4S is the way to go," Luo Wen, an Apple user based in the southern province of Guangdong, said in his microblog. "Nokia is lagging behind by a far margin in terms of the overall feel of its products."

Clock ticking on China Mobile Deal

Apple is expected to sell 16 million smartphones in China in 2012, double 2011's total mainly due to the addition of China Telecom as a carrier partner, IDC said. China Unicom is the other official carrier that sells iPhones, leaving China Mobile, the biggest operator, the only one without an Apple contract. "The clock is ticking for both parties to get a deal done," said Wong Teck Zhung, senior analyst at IDC. "China Mobile might lose patience and decide to go for flagship handsets from other vendors while consumers, increasingly aware of non-iPhone alternatives, might also just get tired of waiting." Wong said chances of a deal would bump up significantly if the upcoming version of iPhone supported China Mobile's 4G TD-LTE and its proprietary 3G technologies, provided Apple uses one of Qualcomm Inc's high-end Snapdragon chipsets.

In the tablet PC sector, Apple's iPad now dominates the China market with a more than 70 percent market share. However, it has not launched its latest iPad product due to its lawsuit with a near-bankrupt Chinese technology company called Proview International Holdings, which says it owns the "iPad" trademark in China. That legal tussle is awaiting a ruling from the Higher People's Court in Guangzhou.

Apple denied Galaxy S III sales ban in us

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California on Monday ended Apple’s hopes of stopping the upcoming launch of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III smartphone. The Cupertino-based company had pushed to get a court order blocking the June 21st launch, however Koh denied the injunction, Reuters reported. The judge claimed the case would overload her calendar, as she is overseeing Apple’s high-stakes trial against Samsung that is schedule to begin in July. Koh’s decision comes shortly after a federal judge tossed out Apple’s upcoming case against Google’s Motorola Mobility, marking another blow to the iPhone-maker’s aggressive and costly legal strategy.