Finally peace between Nokia and Apple, regarding long-running legal dispute between the two firms

Nokia and Apple eventually decided to end the long battle about patent dispute, and coming up with a technology licensing agreement which will  end the long-running legal dispute between the two companies.

"The agreement will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies," Nokia said.
Nokia said Apple had agreed a one-off payment, the value of which was not disclosed, and continuous royalties to use its technologies.


Nokia sued Apple for patent infringements in 2009 and extended the action in December last year. However this outcome  could lead to same accuses from Nokia to be repeated to  phones using Google's Android software over the same set of patents it has just licensed, suggests one observer.
Apple had countersued, accusing Nokia of infringing its patents.



Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop said on the firm's legal success: "We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees."

"This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry-leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market."

Apple stated that two companies had agreed to "drop all of our current lawsuits and enter into a licence covering some of each other's patents, but not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique".

"We're pleased to put this behind us and get back to focusing on our respective businesses."

Nokia's several claims against Apple included alleged patent infringements of touch interfaces, caller ID, display illumination, and 3G and wi-fi technologies.

Apple had additionally claimed that Nokia had infringed many of its patents.

Both sides had always denied each other's claims.

"This is the first positive news from Nokia for a long time. They can both focus on their businesses now, and the dispute was settled to Nokia's advantage," said Mikael Rautanen at research group Inderes in Helsinki.

At the end of last month, Nokia said it expected sales and profit margins for the current quarter to be well below its previous forecasts.

Nokia has been struggling to reposition themselves in the rapidly-growing smartphone market, where it is attempting to make up ground lost to rivals such as Apple's iPhone and mobile phones using Google's Android operating system.

Apple inc Replies Regarding iPhone Location Tracking Issues.

Apple has got officially replied to the iphone and ipad 3G position tracking issues which has raised privacy concerns.

Apple has responded that it is not monitoring the location of the iPhone or iPad 3G as claimed by Security researchers last week. Apple has additionally confirmed that it has in no way done so and has no plans to ever do so. Apple seems to have responded to all the relevant queries relating to the location tracking matter in a Q&A form:

  

  1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?

    Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

    2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?

    Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

    3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?

    The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

    4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?

    The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).

    5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?

    No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

    6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?

    This data is not the iPhone’s location data-it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

    7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database? It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

    8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?

    Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

    9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties? We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).

    10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?

    Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

    Software Update

    Sometime in  the following weeks Apple will launch an iOS software update that:

        decreases the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
        ceases backing up this cache, and
        deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

 

Apple inc Declares White iPhone 4 Coming out Today, April 28th

Apple Announces As of today April 28th white iPhone 4 will be available,  from Apple’s online store and Apple’s authorized resellers in following countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and UK.  

We heard rumours before about white iPhone coming but, but is better to hear it from Apple. Apple issued a statement yesterday April 27-th. Apple has stated that the wait has been longer from what we thought, although it was in fact really worth the wait and that they have every single detail of the phone correct.  Nearly 12 months delay had been caused due to complicated manufacturing issues.  This delay that was initially meant to be just a couple of months turned into almost a year, with most people surprised that Apple even bothered when it is so close to releasing the iPhone 5.  Actually quite a few white iPhone addicts gave up and either got the black model or even decided to go with a different type of phone.