Is Google evil? It’s an interesting question and of course it depends on who one asks. Employees certainly don’t think so. A few vendors may not think so, though many are likely to say it is (just keep their names off the record however). Then there is Skyhook Wireless, a small company with a number of significant patents in the Wi-Fi global positioning space that definitely believes Google is evil.
Following several lawsuits the company had previously filed for patent infringement and business interference, Skyhook has filed a new patent lawsuit and has now gone back to court again, where it claims Google is willfully infringing on a suite of patents it was granted after the first lawsuits were filed. It may get ugly, and it may very well turn out Google is misbehaving. But, is it evil?
This week saw Research in Motion (RIM) in the news a few times, though not all of it was good news. As seems to happen to RIM every 18 months or so these days, the company recently suffered an outage – only this time around it happened in the EMEA region. Unlike the last major outage it suffered, it did recover in fairly quick order however. RIM also received some sideways bad news early this week when Yahoo announced that it was moving off the BlackBerry platform as a corporate-mandated mobile device.
RIM also managed to sign some partnerships and licensing deals this week. RIM and Global Enterprise Mobility Alliance (GEMA) will join forces to provide RIM’s Mobile Fusion MDM capability as a managed service to enterprises. RIM also entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft to gain full access to Microsoft’s new exFAT file system capabilities.
Enterprise Software
On the enterprise mobility front, SAP has updated its veteran mobile device management platform Afaria for use with iOS 6. Medio has released a new analytics module for its inGenious enterprise-grade analytics platform, dubbed Clustomers. The new technology will help businesses to optimize how they interact with their customers on both mobile devices and mobile-enabled Web sites. Treehouse Deelopment has introduced a number of new video-based courses to help enterprise developers learn how to handle iOS and Android programming. Bradford Networks has delivered Network Sentry v6, its enterprise security platform.
Wireless Infrastructure
Those who think that wireless Internet pricing is still way too high from big mobile providers like Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint have cause to be excited as Voyager Mobile officially made its service available to New York State residents on Tuesday. Offering unlimited wireless plans starting at only $17 per month, Voyager aims to bring affordable wireless service to the U.S., already offering the service in a number of states.
Sprint Nextel, a company that offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services, announced that its Sprint Direct Connect Push-to-talk (PTT) service has now surpassed the one-million customer milestone. O2 in Europe has selected Cisco to be its public Wi-Fi network provider.
A new study from UCLA suggests that the way carriers track how much wireless data usage per user is occurring may not be accurate, and that users need to become aware of this issue. Meanwhile, the recurring issue of whether or not LightSquared’s network causes GPS interference continues to be an issue, with the FCC at first issuing an approval for its gear and then backtracking.
Apple, Lawsuits and the iPhone 5
Apple was recently able to claim a patent victory against Motorola, then needed to turn around and bear the news of a loss in another patent case when a German court dismissed Apple's lawsuit against Samsung and Motorola Mobility. The entire thing is turning into a roller coaster ride. The real story this week however, is that Samsung has decided to add the iPhone 5 to its hit list of mobile devices it claims infringe on its patents. We don’t believe it will pay off for Samsung, but the company will continue to play the legal hand – as will of course Apple.
The iPhone 5 launched on September 21, 2012. All indications are that the launch will be huge. CExchange, for example, has reported that trading volume on older iPhones and the iPhone 4 and 4S are running sky high, a sure sign that users are going to make the iPhone leap quickly.
Finally, we have two different views of the iPhone itself.
We now have a very solid estimate of just how much it costs Apple to build one. It’s $199 for parts, and $206 or so once manufacturing costs are built in. Apple adds a $100 to the cost of each iPhone 5 as its memory increases – so that the 16 GB version starts at $649 (list, the contract cost is $199), the 32 GB version goes for $749, and the 64 GB version jumps to $849. Do these reflect Apple’s real costs? No way! Read the article for details. Apple loves those higher memory iPhones.
Last, but far from least, we also have the actual physical teardown of the iPhone 5 itself. The folks at iFixit.com trekked out to Melbourne, Australia (where September 21, 2012 hits a lot earlier than in North America) to be the first in line to both grab a new iPhone 5 and to, well, tear into it (albeit they did so very carefully). Lots of interesting details lurk inside the phone. Check it out.
Those are the week's mobile highlights. For much more, make sure to scope out Mobility TechZone directly.
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