Who's suing whom: Apple vs. Motorola edition

The social graph of telecom litigants just got a little more convoluted

With thanks and apologies to InformationIsBeautiful.net, whose lovely graphic we've updated to put Apple's (AAPL) countersuit against Motorola (MOT) late Friday into context.

Source: Information Is Beautiful

Note, as David McCandless and James Key pointed out three weeks ago when they posted the original, that the companies whose revenues are shrinking tend to launch more lawsuits than those that are MORE

iPhone: 4% of market, 50% of profit

Source: Asymco

When it comes to helping investors visualize the effect of Apple's (AAPL) entry on the mobile phone market, nobody does it better than Asymco's Horace Dediu.

It's not just that every new phone that arrives looks like an iPhone and comes with an app store.

Or that Apple has helped shift the industry from so-called "feature" phones, dominated by Nokia (NOK), to "smartphones," a market that was dominated by Research MORE

$44 million for Mr. Genius Bar

Another big payday for Apple's senior vice president for retail

Johnson in 2009 at the opening of NYC's third Apple Store

Ron Johnson, the man Steve Jobs hired from Target (TGT) to create the Apple Store -- and who famously persuaded his boss, over Jobs' initial objections, to include a Genius Bar -- has joined the string of top Apple (AAPL) executives taking advantage of the stock's recent run-up to cash MORE

A tale of two Android phones: T-Mobile MyTouch 4G and Virgin Intercept

The carrier makes all the difference.

MyTouch4G left, Intercept right

I received two separate Android phones this week to evaluate and I thought it would be interesting to put them up against one another even though they are aimed at different audiences.  The MyTouch4G from T-Mobile is an HTC phone running Android 2.2 with a nice candy bar form factor 3.7 inch screen, front-facing camera with a zippy processor and a strong metal MORE

Crowd-sourcing your investment portfolio with Quovo

From the wreckage of Lehman Bros., a young, pedigreed banker has a new take on using the wisdom of the crowds to help users make wise investment decisions.

By Mina Kimes, writer

Quovo founder Lowell Putnam

As Lehman Brothers slid towards its demise in the summer of 2008, many of the investment bank's younger staffers found themselves with time on their hands. One banker, Lowell Putnam, says his team passed the hours by working MORE

Larry Ellison's surreal year

Larry Ellison is never far from the public eye, yet it's hard to deny that in 2010 the 66-year-old billionaire is having quite the moment. Even for him.

Consider Ellison's winning streak:

* Oracle's (ORCL) acquisition of Sun closed in January, a relatively long eight months after Oracle announced it. In  short order, however, Oracle's strategy of owning a hardware company with some storied software under the hood went from being ridiculed MORE

Halo effect: Xbox success puts a glow on Microsoft's killer quarter

The company's blowout quarter came from nearly every division, but taking over the top spot in the video game world was its most surprising statement.

Despite a corporate restructuring, criticism that it's failing to innovate in certain sectors, the departure of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and analysts downgrading its stock, Microsoft (MSFT) trumpeted a record first quarter yesterday. Overall revenue rose 25% to $16.2 billion and net income rose 51% to MORE

If the iPad is the new iPod, is the new Nook an Atari Lynx?

Barnes & Noble decided it had to be first to market with a color e-reader, even if that meant not putting out a perfectly polished device. But in an iPad world, the dedicated e-reader race might not even matter.

When news leaked of the Nook Color, the new e-reader with a color screen from Barnes & Noble (BKS), the hype machine went into overdrive. Pundits frothed at that idea that this could MORE

Nexus Two from Samsung, Gingerbread rumors swirl

The time seems right for a sequel to Google's Nexus One.

Nexus Two? Via AndroidCentral.com

Reports from around the web seem to indicate a new Google phone is on the horizon that will usher in the latest version of the AndroidOS, codenamed Gingerbread.  But conventional wisdom says that Google has been going away from making its own handsets.

Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt told the Telegraph in July that they didn't need MORE

How iPhone joined the big boys

Source: Asymco

Asymco's Horace Dediu, whose spreadsheets of mobile phone data are a seemingly endless source of colorful and informative charts, has produced this one to commemorate Apple's (AAPL) ascension into the top tier of mobile phone -- not just smartphone -- manufacturers (see The iPhone is No. 4).

What strikes me in the chart above is how large Nokia's (NOK) lead still is, how far Motorola (MOT) has fallen and MORE