Editorials

Apple’s iPhone 5 should launch tomorrow, but it might be a launch that is short lived if Samsung and HTC have anything to say about it. Both companies plan to aggressively pursue Apple over the use of Long Term Evolution (LTE) in their products HTC already has a complaint into the ITC.  To make matters worse for Apple (who is trying the invalidation tactic now) Judge Thomas Pender has ruled that HTC’s patents are most likely valid saying “Clear and convincing means something to me. I have to be pretty darn certain a U.S. patent is invalid”. Apple has also tried to claim that HTC only bought the patents to sue Apple. Judge Pender was quick with the reply: “I don't care if they bought these patents to sue you or not. They are a property right”.

We are not a fan of the push to the cloud as you might have figured out from our articles. The reasons are many including, but not limited to, security, privacy, and a general dishonesty about what the cloud is and what it really means to the many companies that are offering cloud services (predictable revenue stream). All of that aside, there is a side effect to the present cloud push that we actually overlooked that explains more than a few things that are going on in the market as a whole. This is an unexpected impact on the sale of PCs (all PCs) across the consumer and potentially commercial market.

FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) is annoying to read regardless of what side is doing it. Today’s bit of FUD is about Apple decreasing the amount of memory they are using from Samsung for the next iPhone. To start off with the decrease is nothing new nor is it unexpected. Apple used Elpida as the primary source for memory in the third generation iPad last year. They liked the product and the price so we would not expect them to drop that particular connection. Another supplier of memory to Apple is Micron Technologies. By an amazing coincidence Micron is also planning to buy Elpida some, like Citibank even feel that Apple might have encouraged Micron to make the purchase last year.

Nokia and Motorola have launched their new phones and the mainstream sites have decided to speak. Their verdict is that neither Motorola with their ICS based RAZRs nor Nokia with their Fischer Price colored Lumia phones were good. One of the biggest complaints about Motorola seemed to be that the three new phones that were being shown will only ship with Android 4.0. This is unusual in that Motorola is now owned by Google and you would think that these phones would have the latest and greatest from Google right out of the box. For Nokia it seemed to be the fact that a commercial used gave the impression that it was shot with the Lumia 920’s Pureview camera.