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The Apple-Nokia patent battles could continue on for more than two years, according to a report published March 12.

Pointing to a court filing, Reuters reported that the companies are asking that a trial on their respective patent lawsuits be scheduled for mid-2012, putting the industry on notice that the legal struggle between the mobile handset giants could take some time to resolve.

If Nokia has its way, however, that time frame may be cut short. Reportedly, Nokia has also asked a U.S. District Court judge to throw out Apple’s antitrust claims, saying that the accusations are taking away attention from Apple’s infringements on Nokia patents, according to a Business Week report, citing court papers filed March 12.

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Motorola is the leading handset manufacturer in the United States, while BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion leads the smartphone space, according to market research firm comScore.

Google also is gaining share in the smartphone space, though Microsoft is slipping a bit, comScore said March 10 in a report detailing trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during a three-month timeframe from October 2009 to January.
 
comScore found that 234 million Americans 13 years and older are mobile subscribers, and among them, Motorola was a top mobile phone choice, commanding 22.9 percent of the market share, followed by LG, with 21.7 percent, Samsung, with 21.1 percent, Nokia with 9.1 percent and RIM with 7.8 percent.
 
The ranking order was consistent with an earlier report, with a three-month time frame ending in October 2009, though between the two reports, Motorola, LG and Nokia each dropped small amounts of percentage points, while Samsung and RIM rose slightly.

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Apple and Google’s Android OS were best performers in 2009’s mobile phone and smartphone markets, says Gartner. While phone sales slipped slightly over the year, the fourth quarter finished strong, leading to projections of double-digit growth for 2010.

The worldwide mobile phone market finished 2009 strong, with sales to end users exceeding 340 million units in the fourth quarter, for a growth of 8.3 percent over the final quarter of 2008, Gartner said in a Feb. 23 report.
 
The research firm added that the best performers of 2009 — in which overall worldwide sales slipped 0.9 percent from 2008, totaling 1.211 billion units — were Apple and Google’s Android operating system, with each growing its market share.
 
“The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices,” Carolina Milanesi, a research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

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Symbian Foundation has announced its completion of the open sourcing of the Symbian Platform with the release of Symbian 3.

The Symbian Foundation has announced its completion of the open sourcing of the Symbian Platform with the release of Symbian 3.

On February 4, Symbian Foundation officials said the organization had successfully completed the open source release of the source code for the Symbian Platform, which has become the world’s most widely-used smartphone operating system.

Indeed, the Symbian Platform, which has been developed over more than 10 years and has shipped in more than 330 million devices around the world, is now completely open and the source code is available for free under the Eclipse Public License (EPL).

Initially, the foundation projected that its effort to open-source the Symbian Platform would take until June of 2010, but the team was able to beat that mark by four months.

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Google’s Android mobile operating system will become the second most-popular mobile platform by 2013, according to a new report by IDC.

Who will continue to rule the cell phone roost? Symbian, according to the research firm.

By 2013, IDC forecasts that worldwide shipments of smartphones will surpass 390 million units, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 20.9 percent.

“Mobile operating systems have become the key ingredient in the highly competitive mobile device market. Although the overall look and feel of the device will still play an important role in the buying process, the wrong choice of operating system coupled with an awkward user interface can mean the difference between success and failure,” said Stephen D. Drake, vice president, Mobility and Telecom, in prepared remarks.

Key takeaways from the report:

• Symbian will remain the No. 1 mobile OS worldwide, thanks to Nokia’s strength outside the U.S.
• Android will experience the fastest growth of any mobile operating system: from 690,000 units in 2008 to 68.0 million units by 2013 (that’s 150.4 percent compound annual growth).
• Linux and webOS handsets “will struggle.” Android will suck most of the life out of other Linux platforms and Palm’s webOS, despite steady growth, will be limited by restrained deployment and availability of devices across multiple carriers.

No mention of BlackBerry overlords RIM in the announcement, but judging by Android’s growth, that’s not a good sign for them, either.

Either way, there’s no way development market can sustain so many different platforms. And with Symbian (and Nokia) resting on its innovation laurels, it’s no surprise Android stands to benefit.

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Nokia announced it will be offering free maps, free navigation and free content — from partners including Lonely Planet and Michelin — with its new version of Ovi Maps. It’s available immediately for 10 handsets, and beginning in March will arrive on all GPS-enabled Nokia smartphones. It also allows Nokia to better compete against Android and Google’s Map feature.

Nokia is rolling out a new version of Ovi Maps on Jan. 21 that will offer free walking and driving navigation to users of Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones.

The new Ovi Maps is immediately available as a free download to 10 particular handsets — the Nokia N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, E55, E72, 5230, 6710 Navigator, 6730 classic and Nokia X6 — at www.nokia.com/maps.

Beginning in March, however, all new GPS-enabled Nokia smartphones will come pre-loaded with the new Ovi Maps, which will include map data for the country it’s purchased in, as well as data from Nokia partners, including Weather.com, Lonely Planet and, in Europe, the Michelin guide.

Ovi Maps includes turn-by-turn voice guidance in 74 countries and 46 languages, detailed maps of more than 180 countries, and traffic information — diverting drivers around accidents or heavy traffic areas — in more than 10 countries.

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About 2,000 of 10,000 workers at a Wintek branch in East China are striking over rumored cancellation of bonuses and use of a dangerous substance in the production of screens—screens used by Apple, Nokia and others.

It’s not totally clear how this will affect production, especially since Wintek is claiming that they’re no longer using n-hexane (a banned substance that workers claim caused death and paralyzation of workers) and that bonuses won’t be cancelled after all. But evidently the workers ain’t buying it, because this strike looks pretty severe. Hopefully the workers and management settle the problems and will be able to get back to work. Because if they don’t, western gadget makers will definitely struggle to get their devices to market.

Nokia filed a patent on Jan. 14 for a flexible interface technology that could potentially be applied to not just smartphones but laptops, PDAs, e-readers and other devices. “Folding” a device could serve numerous functions, such as both answering a call and blocking wind from the mouthpiece.

A flexible form factor such as laptops adjusting themselves into tablet PCs are nothing new. But a flexible display interface is quite another thing, and it appears from a patent applications that Nokia is working on just such a display interface.

On Jan. 14, Nokia filed a patent for a flexible interface with the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office, Go Rumors reported. The technology is described in the patent abstract as a “user interface including a flexible display configured to display graphical objects and a controller configured to detect a first bend and determine a resulting first foldline, determine a graphical object being intersected by the first foldline and execute a function associated with the graphical object.”

Associated images show a plane folded end-to-end, in a shape like a soup can; another image is bent lengthwise into a C with its open face up and labeled a bowl. Another image is labeled “tent/roof” is similarly bent but with its open side facing down.

The idea is that a smartphone wouldn’t simply be able to bend into these shapes—and, for example, be worn on a cuff—but that folding the device in a certain way would convey to it certain instructions, such as to place a call or perform a particular search.

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First Nokia sued Apple. Then Apple sued Nokia. Last week, Nokia went to the International Trade Commission and requested a ban on the import of infringing Apple products. Today, Apple asked ITC to ban the import of infringing Nokia products.

This game of patent-infringement ping pong dates back to October, when Nokia first sued Apple for violating 10 patents, including holdings related to GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN. About a month and a half later, Apple countersued, claiming that Nokia was attempting to steal their technology. Since then, both sides have filed further lawsuits claiming further patent violations of various sorts.

This week, the squabble’s staged has moved to the International Trade Commission. A few days ago, Nokia requested that the ITC ban the importing of any and all Apple products, from MacBooks to iPhones, that make use of the patents in question. Today, Apple fired back, requesting the same ban on Nokia’s mobile phone imports.

The ITC’s evaluation process takes 15 months, so don’t worry about these companies’ products disappearing from shelves anytime soon. But Apple’s latest filing reminds us that we shouldn’t expect this this legal game of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better to go away anytime soon.

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 LG Electronics Inc, the world’s No. 3 mobile phone maker, aims to increase handset sales by 20 percent this year and is pinning its hopes on Google’s Android operating system to beef up its smartphone range.

The South Korean company faces stiff competition in 2010 due to its relatively weak footing in the booming smartphones business against Apple Inc, Research In Motion and Nokia.

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