HTC Corporation
Today in Tech: Why Spotify is worth "just" $3 billion
November 12, 2012: 5:30 AM ETAlso: Why Apple and HTC settled their patent fight; YouTube readies another round of convent investment.
Why Apple and HTC settled their patent litigation [THE VERGE]
Apple's victory over Samsung is much less a predictor of future succes than you might think. Apple had essentially a perfect storm of facts in the Samsung case: the large number of Samsung devices that look exactly like Apple devices, the internal Samsung evidence showing the company directly tried to copy Apple, the massive sales of Samsung devices that could be used to calculate huge damages. Apple isn't going to get so lucky again. Especially not against HTC, which has a very different design language and comparatively tiny sales.
Where did Spotify's billion dollars go? Ask Netflix [ALLTHINGSD]
But for Spotify, you can get a bit more specific if you want a reason to pass at $4 billion: Investors already know what a digital subscription business looks like at scale.
That would be Netflix, which has some 27 million subscribers at around $8 a month. Today, after Carl Icahn goosed it a bit, Netflix has a market cap of $4.3 billion.
Spotify says it has 4 million paying subscribers at around $10 a month. Bear in mind that if you value Spotify at $4 billion today, you're really saying it will be worth three times that — $12 billion — in a few years, when it would presumably go public.
Minding the (Apple) Store [MONDAY NOTE]
'Now you know the real reason for Browett's firing', a friend said, half-seriously.'How can you spend North of $15M on such a strategically placed, symbolic store, complete with Italian stone hand-picked by Jobs himself…and give no consideration to the acoustics? It's bad for customers, it's bad for the staff, it's bad for business, and it's bad for the brand. Apple appears to be more concerned with style than with substance!'
YouTube preps big new round of content investments [AD AGE]
Google's video giant will provide a second round of funding to 30% to 40% of its original partners and will start notifying those getting more investment in the next few weeks. "Our biggest objective was to kick-start the ecosystem, to bring in great creators, to deepen our relationships with advertisers and to grow viewership," said Global Head of Content Jamie Byrne.
The problem with measuring digital influence [TECHCRUNCH]
One of the reasons that brands don't understand digital influence is because they don't seem to realize that no one actually has any measured "data" on influence (i.e. explicit data that says precisely who actually influenced who, when, where, how, etc.). All influence scores are computed from users' social activity data based on some models and algorithms of how influence works. However, anyone can create these models and algorithms. So who is right? How can we be sure your influence score is correct? In other words, how can we validate the models that vendors use to predict people's influence?
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Today in Tech: Criminals mining LinkedIn breach to scam users
Samsung grooms a new CEO; Foursquare launches a new app.
Criminals exploit LinkedIn breach for phishing attacks [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
Shortly after the breach surfaced, LinkedIn users began receiving e-mails from what, at first glance, looked like LinkedIn. The e-mails asked users to confirm their e-mail address by clicking on an embedded link. But the link took users to scam sites, such as an illegal online pharmaceutical site that sells Viagra MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer - Jun 7, 2012 12:42 PM ET -
iPhone tops J.D. Power's satisfaction list for the 7th time
Battery life proves critical, as Samsung comes in third, below the industry average
In smartphones these days, according to J.D. Power and Associates, nothing matters more in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty that how fast the battery drains.
"Both carriers and manufacturers recognize the fact that battery life needs to be improved," said J.D. Power's Kirk Parsons in a press release issued Thursday. "However, the study uncovers the need for a MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 16, 2012 10:20 AM ETPosted in: Apple, HTC Corporation, iPhone, J. D. Power and Associates, Mobile, Samsung, Satisfaction, Smartphones -
Android's original standard bearer -- HTC -- falls from grace
Squeezed by Apple and Samsung, it had a bad quarter and expects the next to be worse
There was a time when HTC and Android were practically synonymous.
The Taiwanese manufacturer built the first commercially available Android phone -- the HTC Dream -- in 2008, and two years later collaborated with Google (GOOG) to build the Nexus One, the flagship of the Android line. Last November, it edged past Samsung, Apple (AAPL) MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 6, 2012 6:42 AM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Google, HTC, HTC Corporation, iPhone, Mobile, Research in Motion, Samsung -
Apple vs. Android: A grueling patent war of attrition
HTC was forced to drop one feature. Motorola may have to drop another. More to come.
Many commentators took at face value HTC's declaration of "an actual victory" after the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that it had infringed Apple's (AAPL) patent on software that allowed a user to dial a number embedded in an e-mail simply by clicking on it. That particular feature was only one of 10 patents Apple MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 23, 2011 6:58 AM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Florian Müller, FOSS Patents, Google, HTC Corporation, International Trade Commission, IP, ITC, Mobile, Motorola, Patents, Steve Jobs -
Google gets its hands dirty
Android's purveyor crossed a line when it sold arms to be used against Apple
U.S. patent No. 6,473,006, "a method and apparatus for zoomed display of characters entered from a telephone keypad," has a long and tangled history.
It was originally filed, according to FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, by a company called Phone-com, which assigned it to Openwave, which sold it to Purple Labs, which sold it to Myriad, which sold it to MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 8, 2011 10:58 AM ETPosted in: Android, Florian Mueller, FOSS Patents, HTC, HTC Corporation, iPhone, ITC, Mobile, Openwave, Patents, Steve Jobs -
Put on your 5-D glasses!
Visualize four years of mobile phone warfare through Asymco's snake-like bubble charts
Horace Dediu, who has been pushing the envelope of data visualization for more than two years, has outdone himself with the interactive chart he posted on his Asymco.com blog Sunday afternoon.
Most conventional graphs display data over just two axes, X and Y. If you want to see how the data in those dimensions change over time, you end up having to draw a MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 15, 2011 7:10 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Asymco, Cell phones, Data visualization, Horace Dediu, HTC Corporation, iPhone, LG, Mobile, Motorola, Nokia, Research in Motion, Smartphones, Sony Ericsson -
'Apple will push its legal claims hard and unrelentingly'
The payoff should Apple prevail in the patent wars: an estimated $30 billion
In a note to clients issued Thursday, Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi takes a hard look at the flurry of patent lawsuits Apple (AAPL) has launched against the manufacturers of Google (GOOG) Android phones.
All in all, he likes Apple's chances. The two key bullet points (we quote):
We anticipate that Apple will push its legal claims hard and unrelentingly and believe MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 28, 2011 12:50 PM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Berstein, Google, HTC, HTC Corporation, Intellectual property, iOS, IP, Lawsuits, Motorola, Patents, S3 Graphics, Toni Sacconaghi -
Apple vs. Google: Inside an Android patent violation
Steve Jobs claimed that Google "stole" this Apple innovation. Last week, the ITC agreed.
When an iPhone receives a message that contains a phone number or an address -- e-mail, Web or street -- those bits of data are automatically highlighted, underlined and turned into clickable links.
Click on the phone number, and the iPhone asks if you want to dial it. Click on the Web address, and it opens in Safari. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 16, 2011 7:45 AM ET -
The iPhone's vector of growth
If Apple's share of global profits is going up, others' must be going down
Last fall, Asymco's Horace Dediu introduced a new way of visualizing the dynamics of the worldwide mobile phone market.
He started with two sets of data -- market share and dollar share in 2007 and 2010 -- for the eight largest vendors in the mobile phone space, from Apple (AAPL), the smallest in 2007, to Nokia (NOK), the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 26, 2011 7:19 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Asymco, Horace Dediu, HTC Corporation, Market Share, Mobile, Mobile phone, Nokia, Research in Motion, Samsung Group, smartphone
