The U.S. Justice Department is starting its legal pursuit of one of the biggest companies in America, Apple is being pursued for the alleged e-book price fixing that can go the edges of an antitrust law suit and is likely to end in a big loss for Apple. “It’s a harder case against Apple than the publishers,” says Geoffrey Manne, who teaches antitrust law at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Oregon and runs the International Center for Law and Economics. The Justice Department has put a 36 page complaint that actually puts into play a breakfast in a London hotel and dinners at Manhattan?s Picholine restaurant with all of the publishers without Apple actually even being present for the meetings. The Department of Justice “has a far better case against the publishers than Apple,” says Dominick Armentano, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Hartford and author of Antitrust and Monopoly who’s now affiliated with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. “If the CEOs of the various publishers got together in hotel rooms to discuss prices, they are sunk” and might as well settle, he says. So it will be interesting if this battle is really between the DOJ and Apple or the publishers. I will be keeping a close eye on this case and what ends up coming from it.
Over the past year the smartphone market has seen a trend of screen size increasing from around 3.2/3.5 inches to 4.3, 4.65 and as high as 5.3 inches in the case of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The iPhone screen however, has remained at 3.5 inches since its debut in 2007. Many have speculated on the iPhone 5 from the size to the glass. There were reports that the charger port would even change to support other devices they may have to add into the iPhone. Mainly the LTE device. Most believe that the bigger screens are actually attributed to the LTE hardware and its size. The question is will Apple go bigger? As people well know Apple is very hardcore about their products and how they are internally made and the screen of course. Well I read that Apple could have a way to keep things pretty much the same but make a bigger screen. All iPhones have had a 3.5 inch display with 3:2 aspect ratio, and since the iPhone 4 they have had a resolution of 960 x 640. 3.7 isn’t really a significant enough bump to justify a change and the earlier mentioned 4.3 and 4.65 inch sizes force the overall device to be simply too big. All iPhones (and iPod touches) have had an aspect ratio of 3:2. Would Apple change the aspect ratio to increase the screen size while maintaining the same 326 ppi? What aspect ratio would need to be to hit that 4 inch mark? And most importantly how could app fragmentation be avoided? Many of these questions can be answered in theory but could they actually be put to the test? Hopefully Apple will make the 5 a 4 inch screen, in theory it can be done without sacrificing the Apple quality.
Facebook has acquired Instagram for almost a billion dollars in not only cash but also in stock. This apparently has been in the works for awhile so much so that within the last year the purchase of this company has been rumored to be sold for anywhere from $100 million to $500 million so it is no surprise the sale was close to a billion. Most have speculated that this purchase was to acquire on of its strongest competitors. The idea is that Facebook has always been about sharing not only your life but photos and Instagram did that and did it well. This purchase is one of the biggest of Facebook history and the question is did they purchase this company to eat up competition or to use it to make Facebook bigger and better.
AOL has struck a deal with Microsoft to sell over 800 patents it owns to Microsoft. There is also talk that Microsoft will also be non-exclusively licensing over 300 additional patents and applications along with the 800 purchased. The deal is worth $1.056 billion in what is believed to be a cash deal. The terms of the deal are as follows, AOL will continue to retail over 300 patents and patent applications that go over all types of technology from advertising, searches, content management, social networking and mapping, among others, following the sale. This monster deal is said to be completed by the end of 2012. I want to keep a close eye on this as who knows what Microsoft is planning to do with these patents but after spending just over a $1 billion in cash, I am sure they have some bright ideas.
If you have been following my blog you know Microsoft has hit a big snag with some of the major app developers for phones. Many do not want to put the time or effort into actually working out the code to make their apps work on the Windows Phone. Well there are reports that Microsoft is willing to invest in getting more Apps into the Windows App Store. So what Windows is doing is adding incentives like free phones and promises of top spots in the apps store and Windows Phone advertising. Microsoft is also going to finance development of high profile aps to work on Windows Phones. The numbers could be anywhere from $60,000 to $600,000 depending on the complexity of the app. The app store for Microsoft does have about 70,000 apps on the market so far and some well-known ones at that such as Netlfix, Youtube, Fruit Ninja, etc. However Apple has 600,000 and Android has 400,000 apps. So Microsoft has some moves to make and big ones at that. So there is no surprise that Microsoft will pony up some big dollars to get games like Angry Birds Space on their platform.
As reported a few blogs ago Google is entering the tablet market on the hardware side of things. Following in the footsteps of Apple and Amazon. Reports I read said this device could be out as early as May but the newest reports state that Google is looking for a July release so they could tweak the device. The device will have Ice Cream Sandwich on it and reported that it will be a 7 inch screen and will priced around $199. Although part of the reason we could see a July release is so Google can introduce its newest OS called Jelly Bean but most believe it will not be ready and you will have Ice Cream Sandwich on it. This will be big if they do price it this low, to compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire.
