MacRumors

Asymco yesterday published a pair of charts providing an interesting perspective on mobile phone company performance for the first quarter of 2011, comparing units sold against profitability.

In the first view, the eight largest mobile phone brands are depicted according to share of units sold during the quarter, with Apple (shown in dark orange) checking in at about 7% share among those top vendors. Apple is joined by Research in Motion and HTC in a category of "smartphone-only" vendors that were responsible for 16% of the overall units shipped during the quarter by the top vendors.

But in looking at the profitability of those top eight vendors, a very different view emerges with Apple accounting for about 57% of total profits and Research in Motion and HTC pitching in to give the smartphone-only vendors over 75% of the total profits among the top vendors. In addition, three of the five "diversified" vendors (LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson) drop out of the picture entirely in the new view as they were each unable to turn a profit on their mobile phone businesses during the quarter.

Asymco's Horace Dediu argues that the trend of smartphone vendors dominating industry profits will force the "diversified" vendors to refocus on smartphones, further driving the shift away from so-called "dumb phones" and leaving that market to lower-tier vendors.

I've suggested before that I don't see non-smart devices being interesting to vendors in the near term. Each additional dumb phone added to a portfolio will decrease a company's operating margin. The market dynamics are such that I think non-smart phones will disappear entirely from branded portfolios in 3 to 5 years.

Apple's profit share of around 57% for the quarter is up from 50% in Asymco's study for the fourth quarter of 2010 and continues a trend that has seen the company grab an increasingly large portion of industry profits over the past several years.

Just one day after a research analyst claimed that Apple will not be including near field communication (NFC) capabilities in the next-generation iPhone, BGR reports that Apple has been making changes to its retail store payment setup and iPod touch-based EasyPay system that could allow the company to begin accepting NFC payments. The development would of course argue in favor of Apple deploying NFC capabilities in the iPhone sooner rather than later.

First off, Apple's POS devices - its iPod touch-based wireless payment terminals - recently all went offline for "maintenance" for an entire day, leaving customers unable to purchase some items or return merchandise. Additionally, we have been told that there were recently multiple "overnights" in Apple retail locations, which required store employees to "assist in installing TBD devices" throughout the stores "as the retail segment of Apple grows." Lastly, sources tell us that there have been new tables installed in stores that have different wiring compared to Apple's standard tables.

The report notes that the changes may have something to do with behind-the-scenes retail store activity potentially related to a 10th anniversary event or product launch but that at least one source has indicated that the new point-of-sale systems will support NFC technology.

According to The Guardian, Apple is "actively investigating" the recent controversy that has seen patent holding firm Lodsys targeting small iOS developers with notices of patent infringement and giving them 21 days to purchase licenses for technology related to in app purchase and upgrade links within apps. The company is also said to be preparing a response to be issued later this week.

Apple's legal department is understood to be "actively investigating" claims by Lodsys, a patent holding company based in Texas, to have a claim against iPhone and iPad developers who use in-app purchase systems.

So far Lodsys has served papers on about a dozen iOS developers who it says are infringing its patent 10/732,102, which it bought in 2004 from the inventor, who filed it in the 1990s, covering user interaction over a network.

Apple is not expected to respond to the claims, which have been passed to it by affected developers, until later this week.

At least one of the affected developers had reached out to Apple's legal department immediately after receiving the notice, seeking advice on how to respond to the claims and whether Apple had any position on the situation. It has been unclear, however, whether Apple would take up an active role on the issue, given Lodsys' claims that Apple, along with Google and Microsoft, already has a license for the technology for its own apps.

Word of Apple's investigation into the matter comes as Lodsys continues to target developers with notices, as Talos Tsui of The Iconfactory sent out a Tweet a short time ago sharing that his company has just been "Lodsysed". It is unclear, however, whether this is a fresh batch of notices or if stragglers from the original round of mailings are still coming through.

PCWorld reports that while Hewlett-Packard (HP) had considered using Thunderbolt in its newest desktop PCs, for now it's sticking with USB 3.0.

“We did look at [Thunderbolt]. We’re still looking into it. Haven't found a value proposition yet,” said Xavier Lauwaert, worldwide marketing manager for desktops at HP.

According to Lauwaert, everone seems to be content with USB 3.0 so they don't see the value of including Thunderbolt in their desktop machines.

Thunderbolt is the high speed interconnect system that was introduced by Intel in February. Apple was the first customer to adopt the new connector with the launch of its early 2011 MacBook Pros. Apple has since released new iMacs also supporting Thunderbolt. Due to the newness of the connector, there is presently little 3rd party support, though Intel is said to be opening up Thunderbolt development this quarter.

HP is notable for being the largest U.S. computer manufacturer accounting for 26% of the market in the 1st quarter 2011.

As noticed by Stop it, AT&T, Apple has posted a job listing looking for a "Carrier Engineer" located in the Kansas City, Missouri area to work with carriers on technical issues. The listing was posted on April 2nd.

Member of the Carrier Engineering team that supports taking products through technical approval at the carriers. A Carrier Engineer team is responsible for day-to-day technical interactions with the one or more carriers to track down issues reported by the carrier, assist the carrier with testing they might be conducting and working with program management, software development and test teams to get products approved by the carriers.

Kansas City is not a typical staffing location for Apple's engineers, leading to speculation that the position is specifically related to working with Sprint, which has its headquarters in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas.

Late last week, Jeffries & Company research analyst Peter Misek claimed that Apple's next-generation iPhone will debut in September, with service expanding to include Sprint and T-Mobile in the United States before the end of the year.

Update: Apple has changed the location listed on the job posting, now citing the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

- English American Accent – Samantha
- English British Accent – Serena
- French Canadian – Felix
- Spanish – Monica
- Finnish – Mikko (seen in screenshot)
- German – Yannick (seen in screenshot)
- Mandarin Chinese – Mei Ling

The new voices are distinct improvements over the previous text-to-speech voices.

Rumors had pegged Apple's Nuance negotiations to be centered around iOS 5 rather than Mac OS X Lion, although there could be a broader agreement between the two companies. Apple's interest in Nuance seems primarily due to their speech recognition technology rather than text-to-speech functionality, as Siri had used Nuance to power their voice-activated search. Apple acquired Siri in April 2010 and is expected to integrate its technology into iOS.

Making good on its promise to roll out more titles on the iPad, Conde Nast today released in-app subscriptions and apps for Vanity Fair, Glamour, Golf Digest and Allure.

The monthly magazines will run $1.99 per issue or $19.99 per year on the iPad, with current print subscribers receiving the iPad issues for free. Print subscriptions are available directly through the magazines' websites for the same price as the iPad versions: $19.99/year, notably keeping Conde within Apple's pricing guidelines for in-app subscriptions.

From an internal memo by Conde Nast President Bob Sauerberg:

Today's rollout follows last Monday's successful debut of iPad subscriptions for The New Yorker, which was the top-grossing app for most of the week. We're clearly tapping into the enormous appetite consumers have for our award-winning content.

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to bring this next important step in our digital growth to market on schedule. We should all be exceedingly proud of each and every milestone.

A Conde Nast spokesperson declined to comment when asked about iPad subscription numbers for The New Yorker.

With in-app subscriptions for five Conde Nast magazines now available for the iPad, subscriptions for the publisher's remaining three iPad magazines (Wired, Self and GQ) should be rolling out by the end of the month.

MacStories reports that Apple retail stores are holding all-hands employee meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. While it's not unusual for Apple to hold such meetings, the early timing of the meeting seems strange.

Store meetings at 7AM Sunday across United States. Unusual time. Expecting some announcement. All stores, brand-wide US. Don't know about other countries.

While there had previously been some speculation about some sort of 10th anniversary Apple retail event, we'd heard that this may simply be due to training.

Boy Genius Report also details some of the seemingly extreme measures:

- There's an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
- During the overnight shift, it's going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
- There are a wide variety of roles, we're told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
- Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
- Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
- Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, "training" in a password-protected zipped folder that won't accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
- Lastly, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meeting are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.

The on-again off-again rumors around Apple including Near Field Communications (NFC) in the next iteration of the iPhone took an off-again turn this morning in a research note from Bernstein, courtesy of Business Insider. According to the report, Bernstein analysts claim that the next iPhone will not have mobile payment support via NFC. From Business Insider:

Apple's next iPhone, said to be called the 4S, will not have the mobile payment support through NFC (near field communication) says Bernstein in a note this morning.

We don't have the full note, just highlights from a Bloomberg terminal.

NFC in the iPhone would allow users to pay for things by waving their phone at the register or get airline tickets electronically and check in with a wave of the iPhone. The technology has not, however, taken off yet in the United States to the degree that it has in other areas of the world, and Apple may still see the inclusion of NFC capabilities in the iPhone as premature for either technical or logistical reasons.

Most indications suggest the next version of the iPhone, rumored to be called the iPhone 4S, won't be a sea-change device like the jump from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 was, although the inclusion of NFC could be an important enhancement should Apple choose to adopt it. Rumors of Apple including NFC in the next iPhone have been the subject of a seemingly endless back-and-forth, and while it appears that NFC will be included in some future iPhone revision, there is scant evidence that the next-generation iPhone in particular will have the technology. The New York Times claimed in March that Apple will include NFC in a "coming iteration" of the iPhone, but stopped short of declaring when that inclusion is scheduled to take place.

Last late week, we reported that patent holding firm Lodsys had apparently begun targeting small iOS developers with notices of patent infringement for providing in-app purchase and/or App Store purchase links within their apps. Lodsys was requesting that the developers obtain a license within 21 days or face the prospect of a lawsuit.

Lodsys has finally written publicly about the notices, putting together a blog offering responses to a number of questions about the company's actions. Among the interesting revelations:

- In addressing claims that the patents being used by Lodsys are overly broad and obvious and should never have been granted in the first place, Lodsys argues that with the patents dating back nearly 20 years, that much hindsight naturally makes such inventions seem obvious.

- The company also seeks to defend its business model as the most efficient way to handle intellectual property licensing for small inventors such as Dan Abelow, who filed the patents in question. While some have criticized Lodsys for pursuing licensing rights for technology it neither invented nor directly uses, the company argues that its existence creates efficiencies that improve the level of innovation, noting that Abelow was able to sell off his rights to the patents in order to focus on new inventions rather than having to focus on the task of licensing. In passing that responsibility off to another entity, each party is able to focus on what they do best and extract value from inventions.

Apple Already a Licensee?

- Lodsys is targeting developers not because it is seeking to put pressure on Apple, as Apple has already licensed the intellectual property for use in its own products and services, as have Google and Microsoft. Lodsys states that each developer should be responsible for licensing the technology in individual apps, rather than Apple being responsible for an overarching agreement, making an analogy that a hotel owner rather than the owner of the land beneath the hotel is responsible for all services provided to guests.

Licensing Terms

- Lodsys' proposed licensing terms equal 0.575% of U.S. revenue for in-app upgrades, with developers also being responsible for past usage.

In the case of an Application doing an in-application upgrade (and only this scenario), Lodsys is seeking 0.575% of US revenue over for the period of the notice letter to the expiration of the patent, plus applicable past usage. So on an application that sells US$1m worth of sales in a year, the licensee would have an economic exposure of $5,750 per year.

Death Threats "Seriously Uncool"

- Finally, Lodsys notes that it has received a significant amount of hate mail and even death threats from a number of parties, apparently even including those developers who have received notice of licensing requirements. Calling the death threats in particular "seriously uncool", Lodsys argues that such behavior doesn't help the situation and that the company, like the developers, is simply trying to sell its products and make a profit.

Apple.pro has posted photos comparing parts of the iPhone 5 camera components alongside the iPhone 4 camera components. (via 9to5mac) Notably, the iPhone 5 rear camera does not come with an integrated Flash attached to it. This would suggest that the case photo posted earlier today may be accurate, and that the next generation iPhone's camera flash will be located separately from the camera.

Apple.pro offers this photoshop mockup of the camera and flash in separate locations:

Patently Apple points to a newly published patent application which could show one possible reason Apple is so interested in Nuance's speech recognition technology. Apple is rumored to be in negotiations with Nuance for the use of their speech recognition engine in iOS 5.

The patent application offers a possible solution to two different scenarios where it would be hard for someone to answer a phone in the usual way.

Problem One: Communicating in Noisy Environments
A smartphone user may sometimes have to make or answer a phone call in a noisy environment. Noise could interfere with a phone conversation to a degree that the conversation is no longer intelligible to either conversing party. A user in the noisy environment may try to scream into the phone over the noise, but the screaming and the noise may render the voice signal unintelligible at the other end.
....
Problem Two: Unable to Communicate During a Meeting
In another scenario, it may be inconvenient for a user to talk on a phone. For example, users may be in a meeting and don't want to draw attention to themselves by speaking into the phone. The users may try to whisper into the phone, but the whispering may render the conversation unintelligible. The users may choose to send a text message to the other party, but the other party may be on a landline where texting is unavailable, or may not have a texting plan. It could be frustrating to conduct a telephone conversation when the environment is noisy or the circumstance is inappropriate for a user to speak.

In either scenario, the user is offered the possibility of communicating with the incoming phone call using text-to-speech and speech-to-text capabilities. If receiving a phone call in a loud restaurant or quiet meeting, you might be able to choose the ability to answer using text messaging. The text would later be then turned into speech for the caller to hear, and the caller's verbal responses would likewise be converted back into text.

Now, this is a novel implementation and the likelihood of Apple's implementing it into iOS 5 is probably low. Other perhaps more likely possibilities include the use of voice for search, phone navigation, and dictation for email/sms messages.

GadgetsDNA points to a new Chinese case design found on Alibaba that claims to be for the "iPhone 5G".

1.100% brand new high quality crystal case for iphone 5g .
2. Provides a comfortable grip, added protection against accidental drops .
3. Perfectly fits the iPhone 5g, easy to insert and remove .

What's unusual about the case is that it seems to depict a very thin-bezel design as well as a distinct camera design. (It should be noted that their iPhone 4 "crystal" designs also have little in the way of bezels") The camera flash appears to be on the opposite side of the case rather than adjacent to the camera itself.

While there's been talk of these more dramatic changes, the most recent reports have claimed that the next iPhone will actually only contain minor cosmetic differences over the iPhone 4.

It's possible we could see these design elements in the future if not the next release, as the iPod Touch camera was found in case designs a full release cycle ahead of the ultimate release.

Update: It should be noted that their iPhone 4 "crystal" cases also share the same thin edge, so the camera design alone may be main difference in the new iPhone case design. This would fit with the "minor cosmetic differences" described in the previous report.