Samsung Electronics is abandoning their attempts to seek a sales ban on the Apple iPhone and iPad in Europe based on patents related to wireless standards. This may be a way for Samsung to stop regulators from investigating Samsung’s use of the standard wireless patents. Earlier this week Judge Lucy Koh refused to block the sales of dozens of Samsung mobile devices that a jury found violated numerous Apple patents.
Apple has announced that they have sold over two million iPhone 5 devices in the first weekend of sales in China. The iPhone 5 launched on December 14th in China. The iPhone 5 will be rolled out to over 100 more countries by the end of December. “Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China,” stated Apple CEO Tim Cook. “China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products.”
Wal-Mart has started selling the 16GB iPhone 5 for $127 with a contract. The discounted price is valid with a two-year contract form Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T. Wal-Mart is also selling the 16GB iPhone 4S and the 16GB iPad with Retina Display at a large discount also. The offer is valid across 3,000 Wal-Mart stores and will be available for around 30 days. The discounted iPhones are not available online either.
Flickr has released a new iPhone application today. Their new application has Twitter, Foursquare, and Tumblr integrated into it. One of the most notable features that have been added is photo filters. Flickr has 80 million users that can upload, edit, and add 15 photo filters through the iPhone app. The photo filters are named after animals like panda, chinchilla, mammoth, and aardvark. The photo filters are powered by Aviary, which is also the same photo filtering service that Twitter users for their app.
Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann has confirmed that T-Mobile USA will start selling the Apple iPhone in 2013. During investors’ day meetings today, Obermann said that T-Mobile and Apple have signed an agreement to “launch Apple products in the U.S. in 2013.” Obermann did not elaborate on what products, but we can almost guarantee that it will include plans for the iPhone. T-Mobile is the only telecommunications company out of the big 4 that does not have the iPhone on their network so they have a lot of catching up to do.
About 6 months ago, Google released a Gmail app for the iPhone and iPad. Now the company has released version 2.0 of the app with a new look and feel. The app has improvements like profiles pictures in messages and there are numerous animations for swivels, transitions, and infinite scrolling for message lists.
Samsung Electronics will be announcing the Galaxy Note smartphone at an event on August 29th, which is about two weeks before the new iPhone is expected to be revealed. This timing is likely not a coincidence as the rivalry intensity between the two companies is increasing. The two companies are fighting across multiple countries in the court systems regarding patents.
AT&T has reported their financial results for Q2 2012. Analysts beat the profit guidance and activated 5.5 million smartphones during the first quarter this year. Wall Street’s consensus for Q2 called for earnings of $0.63 per share on $31.72 billion in sales.
