Apple I- Phone

Apple on Friday filed suit against Motorola Mobility in a U.S. district court over the use of Qualcomm chips in Apple's iPhone 4S.

The appeal to the Southern District of California court has a bit of a twist. The iPhone maker isn't claiming that Motorola is infringing on Apple's own patented technology. Rather, Apple is suing Motorola Mobility for breach of contract with regards to Motorola's own IP, which is used by Qualcomm in its MDM6610 baseband processors. Apple is asking the court to bar Motorola from suing Apple in Germany for using those chips in its latest iPhone.

The suit in U.S. district court follows a ruling in Germany on Friday that dismissed one of Motorola's more general claims regarding Apple's use of 3G/UMTS wireless technology.

Apple says in its U.S. filing that it has been assured by Qualcomm that "Qualcomm has already paid Motorola for the licenses and covenants for Qualcomm and its customers, including Apple."

At stake is Motorola's claim in Europe that Apple has infringed on its patent. Apple claims that Motorola's declaration to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ("ETSI") that the technology is essential to practicing the ETSI's GPRS standard makes this a matter of what's called "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" or FRAND licensing.

What that means, according to Apple, is that Motorola is in breach of a commitment to FRAND licensing, which is an agreement by companies owning standards-setting technology to extend licensing under fair terms to rivals when technology essential to a meeting a standard could be withheld to block market access.

"Apple believes that parties who commit to license their standards= essential patents on FRAND terms have obligations they cannot ignore, evade, or apply only prospectively after an abuse has occurred," Apple's lawsuit states.

In earlier litigation brought by Motorola last spring against Apple in Germany for alleged infringement on its GPRS-related technology, Motorola makes no mention of the iPhone 4S, which hadn't been released yet. But in a January 2012 response to an Apple appeal, Motorola did reference the iPhone 4S, claiming it was subject to a German court's December order to Apple to cease and desist selling products infringing on Motorola's patent.

But Apple's counter-claim Friday holds that the contract between Motorola and Qualcomm includes a covenant Motorola made to not sue Qualcomm customers for infringement of the patent in question. As a third-party beneficiary of that contract, Apple contends it cannot and should not be sued by Motorola in any jurisdiction.

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ARM CEO not impressed by Intel's 'Medfield' chips for smartphones, tablets

By Katie Marsal

Published: 10:22 AM EST (07:22 AM PST)

The chief executive of ARM, which supplies the reference designs for Apple's custom chips found in the iPhone and iPad, has said he doesn't view Intel's newly unveiled smartphone and tablet chips as competitive.

ARM Holdings Chief Executive Warren East said in an interview with Reuters at the Consumer Electronics Show this week that Intel's latest Atom-based mobile chips are "good enough," but don't match up with ARM's reference designs.

"They (Intel) have taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones and they've literally wrenched those designs and put them in a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones," he said.

When it was developing the iPad, Apple originally utilized Intel's low-power Atom processor, but ultimately determined that the Atom wasn't efficient enough to run its touchscreen tablet. Instead, the company developed its own custom silicon in the form of the A4 processor, which is based on ARM's designs.

With most mobile devices now powered by ARM's low-power, low cost chips, Intel is attempting to muscle its way into a market where its presence has been limited, particularly compared to the traditional computing landscape it has dominated for years.

At CES, Intel unveiled its new Atom Z2460 "Medfield" platform designed for smartphones and tablets. Motorola Mobility and Lenovo also announced plans to build devices based on Intel's new Atom mobile processor.

As Intel looks to gain ground in the smartphone and tablet space, ARM is poised to chip away at Intel's control of the traditional computing market. That's because the next major version of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 8, will offer compatibility with machines powered by ARM-based processors.

There was even a rumor last May that Apple had secretly built a prototype MacBook Air powered by the same A5 processor found in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. It was said that Apple officials were impressed by the results, as the test machine performed "better than expected."

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Samsung has launched several good devices this year, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab are few of them. Samsung recently launched the Nexus S along with Google, which is the first phone to run Android 2.3. Samsung also launched some Windows Phone 7 devices, Samsung Omnia 7 is one of them, which is one of the best WP7 devices in the market. Samsung is looking forward to bring out some good devices, and hopefully we will see Nvidia Tegra 2 in those devices, because according to an analyst, Samsung has placed a major deal with Nvidia for Tegra 2 chips, and it’s reported that the purchase could be worth around $250 million to $350 million. A few weeks ago, Eldar Murtazin told us that he is playing with the Galaxy 2, and he said that the device features a dual-core processor, so it looks like the rumor is true. Today, we also saw the first phone with Tegra 2 chip, the LG Optimus 2X. So I am sure that next year, we are going to see a lot of devices with the  Nvidia Tegra 2 chip inside.

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