HTC

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

With 8.7% market share, Apple has 75% of cell phone profits

Between them, Samsung and Apple are sucking up 91% of the winnings

Asymco's Horace Dediu on Friday updated his quarterly review of mobile phone profits, and the news for everybody but Apple (AAPL) just gets worse.

As the iPhone's share of the market in terms of units shipped has grown from 3% in second quarter of 2010 to 8.7% last quarter, Apple's share of the profits has swelled from 39% to 75%.

Dediu's chart of MORE

Apple wins limited ruling in important Android patent suit

Not the knockout blow Steve Jobs sought; Google has until April to find a workaround

Apple (AAPL) has won a partial victory in an intellectual property case that Steve Jobs had famously vowed to fight to his "last dying breath."

The U.S. International Trade commission ruled Monday that the software in some of HTC's Android smartphones violated one provision of an Apple patent and that those phones would no longer be allowed into the MORE

Trade commission postpones Android import ban decision

The new deadline in a key Apple vs. HTC patent infringement case is Monday, Dec. 19

There are six more days of nail-biting ahead for Apple (AAPL) and HTC.

A final decision on a closely watched case before the International Trade Commission that was due on Dec. 6 and then postponed to Dec. 14 has been postponed once again to Monday, Dec. 19.

This is a big one.

In the worst case scenario for MORE

Canaccord: iPhone smartphone share to grow 42% this quarter

From a 14.3% share of the global market in September to a 20.3% share in December

A note to clients issued Tuesday by Canaccord Genuity's T. Michael Walkley had good news and bad news for Apple (AAPL) investors.

The bad news, which we reported here, was that he expects sales of Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle Fire to cut sharply into the iPad's dominance of the worldwide market for tablet computers, reducing its unit MORE

Canaccord Genuity: Kindle Fire will take 15.3% of tablet market

Estimates the iPad's share will drop from 74% to 53.2% by the time Christmas is over

The chart above is what Canaccord Genuity's T. Michael Walkley thinks the worldwide tablet market will look like this quarter after Amazon gets through disrupting it by selling a few million Kindle Fires at or below cost.

In a note to clients issued Tuesday, he estimated that ...

Apple's (AAPL) share of units sold will drop MORE

Top Android phone maker faces possible U.S. import ban next week

Shares of HTC are down sharply in advance of a ruling on a key Apple patent suit

HTC shipped more than 5.7 million smartphones to the U.S. last quarter, according to Canalys, beating out Samsung and Apple to become the country's leading smartphone vendor.

So there's a lot at stake for the giant Taiwanese phone maker -- and indeed for the manufacturers of all Google (GOOG) Android phones -- in the ruling MORE

ExtremeTech: Carrier IQ-gate is best reason to buy an iPhone

A cellphone eavesdropping scandal casts a shadow on Apple's competitors

Have you heard that every text message, every e-mail, every phone number, every keystroke made on a Google (GOOG) Android phone may be secretly recorded, logged and sent to your cellular provider by a tracking service called Carrier IQ?

No? That's a surprise, because it's a scandal that's been brewing for several weeks -- ever since security researcher Trevor Eckhart discovered Carrier MORE

Why the mobile patent wars got so hot

Intellectual property law sounds like fodder for think tanks and PhD candidates — so why is Silicon Valley suddenly tearing itself apart over a seemingly sleepy subject?

By Daniel Roberts, reporter

FORTUNE -- If you feel like you've been seeing more news about patents than ever before, you have. In July, a consortium that included Apple, RIM and Microsoft made a move on Nortel's patent portfolio, outflanking Google. In August, Google hit MORE

Today in Tech: Gamestop testing Android tablet

Fortune's curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* Gamestop (GME) president Tony Bartel revealed that the videogame retail chain is testing the sale and distribution of a branded Android tablet that will likely stream console games to it. (GamesIndustry)

* It's (still) official: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington confirmed at the tech blog's Disrupt conference yesterday morning that he's no longer an AOL MORE