Updated: Apple said Tuesday that it is suing HTC for infringing on 20 patents related to the iPhone and pursuing a permanent cease and desist order that could derail a wide range of Android devices.

Specifically, Apple is suing HTC in a Delaware district court and the U.S. International Trade Commission for violating patents related to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” Apple didn’t detail the specific patents involved.

In a statement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Funny that’s what everyone in the smartphone food chain says. The ITC is going to be quite busy evaluating all the patent lawsuits against various mobile phone players.

HTC wasn’t commenting until it reviewed the complaint.

Also see: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ take and court documents (PDF).

• Smartphone wars: Apple fires back at Nokia; Court skirmishes heat up

For those keeping score at home, here’s the ITC’s plate:

• The ITC has launched an investigation into Eastman Kodak’s complaint that Research in Motion and Apple are infringing on its patents.
• The ITC is investigating a complaint by Motorola against RIM.
• And the ITC is investigating a complaint by Apple against Nokia.

The big question is whether Apple’s first serve against HTC will escalate into a bevy of countersuits like the Nokia patent war has. It’s unclear that HTC has the history or intellectual property to countersue Apple into a cross-licensing pact. Apple signaled that it wouldn’t let competitors run off with its intellectual property a little more than a year ago and hasn’t disappointed.

Apple vs. Android

It’s hard not to take Apple’s HTC suit as an indirect shot against Google. HTC is a big partner of Google and is launching an army of Android devices that are clearly aimed at the iPhone. Bottom line: Google’s Android encroachment is the biggest threat to the iPhone and a patent suit could be a nice way to distract HTC. Would it be surprising if Apple also sued Motorola too?

Email alerts: Smartphones, Google, Apple

Indeed, Apple’s complaint mentioned Android just as much as it does HTC. Devices targeted by Apple include HTC’s Nexus One, Dream, Magic, Droid Eris and Google G1 among others.

Should Apple be successful it could derail the marketing and importation of many Android devices in the U.S.

In a footnote to its complaint, Apple said:

The categories listed are a shorthand summary of products currently accused of infringement by complainants. These descriptions, and the examples given therein, are not intended to exclusively define or otherwise limited the categories of accused products. Respondents have announced their intention to release additional products in the future that will infringe the asserted patents.

Then as an example Apple mentions that HTC will sell the HD2 in early 2010.

It’s also notable that Apple hasn’t sued Google directly. By going after device makers individually Apple could hamper the hardware partners that Google needs to bring Android to a bevy of devices.

A look at the patents

Apple’s suit involves a bevy of patents ranging from user interface features such as scrolling and scaling to touch screen methods to power consumption to graphics.

The laundry list:

• ‘331 Patent, entitled “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States”
• ‘949 Patent, entitled “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics”
• ‘849 Patent, entitled “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image”
• ‘381 Patent, entitled “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display”
• ‘726 Patent, entitled “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device”
• ‘076 Patent, entitled “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices”
• ‘105 Patent, entitled “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality”
• ‘453 Patent, entitled “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor”
• ‘599 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Graphic System”
• ‘354 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods”

What to watch going forward

As we look ahead to the next chapter in this Apple-HTC spat the following questions pop out:

• What other Android bandmates of Google will be targeted? Motorola seems like a potential target.
• Will there be a chilling effect on the Android ecosystem?
• Will the discovery process in the HTC patent suit reveal whether there’s Apple code in Android? While HTC, a hardware company is being targeted, most of the named patents have a software component and could tie into Android.
• Does HTC have the intellectual property portfolio to countersue Apple? Let’s face it these patent suits usually turn out to bring both parties into a big co-licensing deal. Nokia, Motorola, Palm and others have the portfolios to countersue Apple. Does HTC, which was founded in 1997, have the history or patent portfolio to compete?

[via ZDNet]

Android

has been a pretty popular mobile OS for Google, and it’s been a hit with customers, developers and cell manufacturers, too. However, it’s hard to imagine that it’s this popular. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, giving a keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, mentioned that Google and their OEM partners are shipping 60,000 Android phones a day.

Obviously, all those units aren’t Nexus Ones. In addition to the phone’s steep price, reports on the internet

say the phone is selling poorly. However, unlike the iPhone OS, there is a wide variety of phones shipping worldwide that carry the Android OS and some of them are pretty cheap, and appealing.

If you do the math, then by Eric Schmidt’s logic, you can expect 21.9 million Android phones to ship over the course of 365 days. While that may seem like a lot, it might not be. There were 8.7 iPhone sold in the last three months of 2009, which, would mean 34.8 million iPhones sold over the course of a year.

When comScore analyzed the smartphone OS marketshare earlier this year. They found that the iPhone OS made up 25%, while Android carried only 5.2%. You can expect this to change – though. Only one company sells and manufacturers devices that use the iPhone OS on a mobile phone. Multiple companies make Android phones and sell them at multiple price points.

Furthermore, a wave of “cheap” smartphones could be coming. We’ve seen Marvell and ST-Ericsson show off low-cost smartphone chipset platforms that are designed for Android. As you can imagine, these low-end handsets will only further expand Android’s marketshare.

Not 24 hours after Steve Jobs told his minions that Google’s Don’t Be Evil mantra was “B.S.” (or “crap” depending on who you listen to) Google answers by pushing out an Android update to Nexus One users that includes multi-touch (and other Android goodness).

Google, up until yesterday, left multi-touch off its U.S. Android phones, presumably in deference to Apple’s multi-touch patent.

It was also rumored that Apple asked Google not to release multitouch in the U.S. to avoid the IP aggression we’ve seen it take against Palm for including multi-touch in the Pre.

I’m not saying that Google released the Nexus One multi-touch update because of Jobs’ comments, but it may have been pushed out a little sooner because of them.

More evidence of how the relationship between Apple and Google has chilled lately.

The N1 update takes the Android/iPhone battle to a new level and frankly, the ball’s in Apple’s court. Jobs promised that the next iPhone would be A+ and that Android won’t be able to keep up with it.

Them’s fighting words, Steve!

If Apple doesn’t address a majority of the items on my iPhone wishlist (background apps, voice search, improved home/lock screens, widgets, etc.) with its “A+” release we’ll know that Jobs was just trash-talking and that Android has clearly taken the lead in the smartphone wars.

Note: Impatient Nexus One owners can force the firmware update by following this technique. It preserves your data and apps and doesn’t require root access.

[via ZDNet]

Developer Cyanogen has modified Google’s Android 2.1 mobile operating system to endow Google’s Nexus One smartphone with multitouch, which lets users navigate the device with more than one finger at once. The absence of this function has been a the source of great consternation for some users, and many speculate the reasons are legal in nature. Some believe Apple has locked down multitouch patents and guards them. Erick Tseng, product manager of Android at Google, attempted to clarify Google’s position when in an interview with Engadget.

A developer has modified Google’s Android 2.1 mobile operating system to endow Google’s Nexus One smartphone with multitouch, which lets users navigate the device with more than one finger at once.

Wired found out that Steve Kondik, whose developer handle is Cyanogen, Jan. 21 released files and code to enable fellow developers to add multitouch to the device.  
Google began selling through its Webstore Jan. 5 and users quickly noticed that multitouch was not active on the device. Pinch-to-zoom, popularized by Apple’s iPhone, is the most common multitouch use case.

Many Android smartphone users want their Android devices to be the iPhone without actually being an iPhone. In other words, they want a quality smartphone that isn’t made by Apple and ruled by its Draconian application farm.

Some Android devices, such as the Android 1.6- based HTC Droid Eris, was released to the market with active pinch-to-zoom capability. However, neither the Android 2.0-based Motorola Droid nor the 2.1-based Nexus One were released with active pinch-to-zoom.

The absence of this function has been a the source of great consternation for some users, and many speculate the reasons are legal in nature.

Some believe Apple has locked down multitouch patents and guards them. However, Google Android creator Andy Rubin has said Google would consider activating multitouch on the Nexus One in the future.

Multitouch on the Nexus One looks like this.  However, there are two caveats to Kondik’s solution, one trivial, one serious. Kondik said hackers who modify their Nexus One will initially lose their bookmarks and browser settings by doing this. Second, hacking the phone could also void its warranty.

Phone makers don’t like it when their devices suffer jailbreaks. Google, which is imposing a $350 equipment recovery fee for Nexus One owners who buy the phone and cancel their T-Mobile service within the first four months, is likely no exception.

Meanwhile, Erick Tseng, product manager of Android at Google, attempted to clarify Google’s position when he told Engadget Jan. 19:

“When people say ‘why doesn’t Android have multitouch?’ it’s not a question of ‘multitouch’… I want to reframe the question. We have multitouch — what people are asking for is specific implementations in the UI that use multitouch, like pinch-to-zoom, or chording on the keyboard.”

Engadget’s Nilay Patel cut through the semantic tap-dancing, noting that the lack of specific multitouch implementations is still a huge issue and become a growing distraction for Android. In fact, he compared it to the brouhaha generated by the lack of copy-and-paste before iPhone OS 3.0 came out.

Some folks are just harder to please than others. Patel also asked the right questions about why Google didn’t use Motorola’s pinch-to-zoom code in the Droid, but used HTC’s code in the Droid Eris, only to not use it in its new Nexus One.

“Until someone can answer these questions in a reasonable way, they’re going to keep coming up over and over again,” Patel noted. “Google prides itself on transparency and openness, and a secret deal forbidding Android from having pinch-to-zoom flies in the face of that culture.”

Could be that Google has an agreement with Apple to not use pinch-to-zoom in certain instances, putting Google at a major disadvantage as it seeks to expand Android’s footprint in the uber-competitive smartphone market.

[via eWeek]

Apple and Google, once close allies, are battling on a growing number of fronts

SMARTPHONES

Apple has ridden the iPhone to 14% of the smartphone market in three years. Google’s original plan to let hardware partners make phones running its Android software has garnered only a sliver of the market. So Google, risking the ire of Android phonemakers, is launching its own Nexus One phone.

MOBILE SOFTWARE

The 125,000 apps iPhone users can download bolster the popularity of Apple devices and give it influence over how people use their phones. Rather than use Google’s search, iPhone users can fire up the New York Times app for news or Yelp for local restaurants. Google is well behind with 18,000 Android apps.

ADVERTISING

Google’s core business is advertising, with virtually all of its revenue coming from the text ads that pop up alongside search results. Apple aims to break into the mobile advertising business Google has been eyeing by creating new ways to advertise within apps on the iPhone and other Apple devices.

PERSONAL COMPUTERS

Apple still gets almost 40% of its revenue from Mac computers running its operating system. Now Google is developing Android to run competing machines and has designed a separate operating system, Chrome OS, for simpler computer Web surfing. Both companies will soon back tablets, too.

ENTERTAINMENT

While Apple has become the world’s largest music retailer, Google just began using its search engine to direct people to Apple rivals to play and buy songs. Google owns YouTube, and Apple is adding more video to iTunes, reportedly including a push to offer cable-like subscriptions to shows from CBS, ABC, and others.

ACQUISITIONS

Apple and Google, with $23 billion and $22 billion in cash and short-term securities, respectively, are competing increasingly for the same startups. Google won out in bidding for the ad service AdMob, then Apple outbid Google for the music site LaLa Media last year. Apple is adding people and processes to better compete for deals.

[via BusinessWeek]

Currently, Android OS-based smartphones can only run software stored in their internal memory, which severely restricts the number of apps that can be installed. Google intends to remove this limitation, though.

Android devices have slots for removable memory cards, but these can’t be used to hold software that’s been installed on the device. Instead, apps go into a small internal partition that’s not directly accessible by users. This was done to prevent users from easily pirating software, but it also restricts the number of apps that can be installed.

After yesterday’s unveiling of Android OS 2.1, Google’s revealed a plan to allow users to install software onto a removable memory card in an encrypted form. This will both prevent easy piracy while also allowing users to store many gigabytes of app files.

At this point, it’s not clear when this feature will be add to the Android OS. The fact that a Google executive is willing to talk about it in public is a sign that it could be relatively soon, though.

[via Brighthand.com]

I’m seated here at a press event at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley. We’re expecting news on the Android front, presumably details on Google’s own Android phone, called Nexus One. Check back here for updates. I’ll be updating this post live as events are revealed.

10:05 am: We’re getting started with a welcome. Today, Google is unveiling next stage in evolution in Android. But first, a history of how we got here. Open Handset Alliance was meant to foster innovation on mobile when it launched back in November 2007.

A year later, there was T-Mobile’s G1 phone – but that still wasn’t enough. The company wanted a thinner device. soft keyboard and widgets for the home screen – and the MyTouch for T-Mobile was born. But still, that wasn’t enough. CDMA support was added. and there were new enhancements to the hardware.  Now, Android is on 20 devices with 59 carriers in 48 countries and in 19 languages.

In 2009, there were four major software releases. Android today is contributing to more and more users accessing the Web from their mobile phones. In fact, Google has seen 5x mobile searches than previously.

10:15 am: Now, it’s time to shift to next step in Android evolution. It’s been a great year but no big celebrations yet. These are just the early stages of Android. There are some great devices out there running Android – and the company rattled off a few: the Droid, the Cliq, the MyTouch. But the company wants to do more.

What if the company worked even closer with partners to bring devices to market to showcase “very very quickly” the software.  Today, the company announces the Nexus One, the device where web meets phone. It’s part of an emerging class of phones called “SuperPhones,” the company said.

The Nexus One was designed in close partnership with HTC – a company that has taken risks and bet on Android phone from beginning. Now taking the stage: HTC CEO Peter Chou.

10:20 am: Now, we’re hearing more about – and seeing – the Nexus One. It’s slim and sleek and fits well into the hand. It pushes the limits of what’s possible on a mobile phone today, Chou said. The combination of Google’s software and HTC’s hardware design makes this a “groundbreaking product” for the two companies.

10:23 am: Now, it’s time for a closer look at the software, as well as some additional hardware specs. Erick Tseng, senior product manager, takes the stage. First, the hardware3.7 OLED display, which provides deep contrast and rich colors. Under the hood is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, something Tseng called “really fast,” especially when you start running multiple apps. The device also comes with a multi-color notification LED trackball – yes, to help you navigate the UI but also to notify users of new mail, messages or incoming calls. It also has GPS, an accelerometer. It also comes with a light sensor, which allows for adjustments for power savings. A proximity sensor dims the phone as it’s raised to the ear.

The profile is slim – 11.5 mm thin, about as thin as a pencil. It weighs 130 grams, about as much as a keychain swiss army knife. It also comes with 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. On the audio. it comes with stereo bluetooth and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Something new with this device is Active noise suppression. With two microphones, the engineers are able to adjust the experience by cancelling out background noise.

Finally, there’s a metal bezel wrapped around the phone – a nice look, but there’s an open space for some engraving.

10:30 am: Now, on to the software innovations. Nexus One is running on Android 2.1, the latest update. The apps and features from Droid – such as Google Maps navigation or one-click Facebook integration – can be found in the Nexus One. But there are new features, too. The Nexus One now has five home screen panels (instead of the previous 3) for more customization with room for additional widgets.

Tseng is showcasing a new weather widget that’s far more advanced than previous offerings, building on GPS to know where the user is, for example. As a side note: this is a nice app and an example of how Android could really challenge Apple and its iPhone App store. The look and feel of widgets on a big full screen is a nice experience.

On to media and 3D technology. The static wallpaper screen is now dynamic – Tseng shows a lake scene and taps it to create ripples in the water. A natural home for the 3D experience is the photo gallery app. There’s a new visualization for photos, utilizing technology that allows users to view their photos in a fun 3D way that gives some depth perception to the photos. There’s definitely some powerful processing going on under the hood to power these features.

Last area of innovation for Nexus One is around voice. The company wanted to take voice to the next level. The search by voice feature has been around since the beginning of Android and later, on Droid, launched voice commands.  A very cool demo: Tseng says “Navigate to IKEA” and the phone, using GPS, finds the closest location and launches navigation. With Android 2.1, the company is offering voice technology for every text entry form.  A demo worthy of applause: a voice-recognized e-mail reply that worked seamlessly. Nice.

But wait: a secret surprise. Here’s a sneak peek at the Google Earth app, which is not yet released. If you’ve ever played with Google Earth on the desktop, this is not much different – which is impressive on its own. The zooming, the panning, the “flying” over mountains is all very good – and it’s available on the phone. Even voice technology works in Google Earth. Tseng said “Mt. Fuji” while in Google Earth and… yeah, you guessed it.

10:45 am: The Nexus One is the first to come in this SuperPhone category. But, how does the product come to market? A new way: through a Google-hosted Web store. Objective of Google’s new consumer channel is to help users select an Android phone for them. A simple ordering process. A simple way to shop for plans. Can buy with service or without. With service, the device will be discounted and comparable to others.

Today, at google.com/phone, users can purchase a phone with service from T-Mobile – but there’s more coming. The store is going live as I type this.

10:49 am: Now, we’re looking at some screen shots of the Google Phone store. Here’s the order page: $529 for a Nexus One phone without service OR, with T-Mobile, it’s priced at $179. This Spring, Verizon Wireless for the U.S. and Vodafone for Europe will alongside T-Mobile.

Here’s something: to buy a phone, you need a Google account (already done if you have a Gmail account) and it uses Google Checkout to process the transaction.

10:54 am: Here comes the recap, which tells us that things are winding down. We’re watching a Nexus One video now and then it’s time for Q&A and demos.

[via ZDNet]

Google (NSDQ:GOOG)’s Android Market has crossed the 20,000 applications mark and is continuing to grow at a rapid clip, having nearly doubled in size in the last five months, according to a third-party portal.

A 20,000-app strong Android Market still puts Google well behind the titanic that is Apple’s App Store, but the progress suggests the Android Market is poised for explosive growth next year.

The 20,000 apps statistic comes from AndroLib, a portal and applications tracker that looked at the distribution of free and paid applications in Android Market and on Tuesday had the Android Market at more than 20,140 applications. Of those applications, about 62 percent are free and 38 percent are paid, according to AndroLib. Google’s Android Market saw the most software added in November 2009, around the time Motorola’s Droid smartphone was launched, AndroLib found.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt earlier this year suggested that Android’s growth would be explosive, and indeed, many of the fall’s hottest smartphones — from Motorola (NYSE:MOT), HTC, Samsung and others — run on the Android platform. Google itself has a Google-branded smartphone in the works called the Nexus One, scant details of which have started to emerge this week.

Most analysts suggest Apple (NSDQ:AAPL)’s App Store will hit 300,000 applications in 2010, with the Android Market expected to hit 50,000. In a presentation at the Raymond James IT Supply Chain conference in New York Tuesday, IDC Chief Research Officer John Gantz urged attendees to keep a sharp eye on how Google’s Android grows.

“Android is very distantly following the iPhone right now, but there will be some very interesting developmnts around the Google Android [platform] in the next 12 months,” said Gantz, who also predicted a “developer war like you’ve never seen” thanks to the number of mobile Internet users hitting 1 billion for the first time next year.

[via ChannelWeb]

Called the Nexus One, the Google phone is coming in January 2010 after Google admitted it had given employees devices to test. The Android operating system device resembles the unlocked HTC Touch, runs Android 2.1 on a Snapdragon chip and has two microphones. There is also reportedly voice to text features for the phone. Google crafted and customized the smartphone’s software and will sell the device online. This is a leap for Google, which has never sold hardware and has been content to furiously upgrade the Android OS and let carriers T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Sprint sell Android phones.

The Google phone is real and it is coming in January 2010 to challenge Apple’s vaunted iPhone, according to a deluge of press reports in the wake of Google’s acknowledgment that a special device with new mobile features and functionality is being tested by its employees.

The Android operating system-based device, which people are calling Nexus One, resembles the unlocked HTC Touch, lacking a physical keyboard. It is also apparently larger and thinner those devices, perhaps coming close to the screen size of the Motorola Droid phone.

The device runs Android 2.1 (the Droid runs Android 2.0) on a Snapdragon chip and has two microphones. There is also reportedly voice to text features for the phone. The Unlockr has pictures of the device here.

Google ignited an avalanche of coverage when it gave devices to employees Friday for dogfooding, part of the company’s test process for soliciting feedback and suggestions. TechCrunch uncovered several tweets from Google employees who raved about the device, even when they were not supposed to discuss it.

“A friend from Google showed me the new Android 2.1 phone from HTC coming out in Jan,” wrote the GreatWhiteSnark in a poetic tweet. “A sexy beast. Like an iPhone on beautifying steroids.”

Google felt compelled to respond to questions about whether this so-called Google phone, a device the company is creating with a hardware partner but selling itself as a GSM phone independent of carrier help, Dec. 12.

Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management at Google, wrote in a company blog post:

“We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.Unfortunately, because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details. We hope to share more after our dogfood diet.”

Given Qeuiroz’ comments, it is quite likely the device is this very same Android Developer Phone 2 in a shadowy picture on the Android Developer Web site here. Google began offering SIM-unlocked gadgets for $399 a year ago this month to let programmers test and debug Android applications.

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile confirmed previous reports and added some details (paywall warning), confirming that it is an HTC-built smartphone upon which Google crafted and customized the software and will sell it online.

This is a leap for Google, which has never sold hardware and has been content to upgrade the Android OS and let carriers T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Sprint sell Android phones. That Google is allegedly eschewing the carrier crutch marks a bold step for the company for which there are many reasons.

Experts believe Google is doing this because Android is fragmenting — too many operating systems and custom firmware builds — and Google wants to make a device with which it is completely satisfied. Om Malik wrote:

Others say Google wants to “own” the device because carriers hew to the competition and and can get downright Draconian about what features run on devices they sell.

For example, the Google phone is expected to feature the company’s Google Voice phone management application. Verizon has said it would support Google Voice, though Apple rejected it from running on its iPhone, which is sold exclusively by AT&T.

Experts expect the iPhone to appear on other carrier networks in 2010; a Google phone such as the Nexus One could facilitate that move.

[via eWeek]

According to a trusted source who’s seen it with their own eyes, the Google Phone “is a certainty.”

And by “Google Phone” we don’t simply mean another Android handset. We’re talking about Google-branded hardware running a version of Android we haven’t yet seen.

Over the next few weeks, Google Phones (most probably in early, prototype form) will flood the Mountain View campus. They’ll don large LCDs while running a new version of Android—either Flan or the version of Android beyond it—which our source spotted running on Google’s handset as well as a laptop. (Whatever the software was, it most certainly wasn’t Chrome OS, we were assured.)

But maybe the most intriguing bit is what someone said to our source offhandedly, that the current Android, the we all know and love, is not the “real” Android. So what makes for a “real” version of Android?

Our best guess is an Android OS with Google Voice at its heart.

[via Gizmodo]