Jordan Kahn

Going up for sale as a Kickstarter campaign later this week, ex-Apple engineer Addison Shelton is launching the Swiss Army knife of iPhone cases with a new product called “TaskOne.” Made of sturdy aircraft aluminum and polycarbonate, the TaskOne’s enclosure houses 16 tools including a 2.5″ knife, saw, screwdrivers, and 11 other tools such as a bottle opener, kickstand, pliers, wire cutters, wire strippers, 6 allen wrenches, and a ruler.

By diligently sticking to his design goals of combining the best features of a multi-tool with the protection and slim fit of a well-designed case, Task One bridges the gap between an iPhone case and a multi-tool. “I utilized advanced materials and manufacturing to create a slim multi-tool case that can stand up to heavy use, keep your phone safe and be so slim it adds little more bulk than other common cases,” says Shelton.  It can be used in any situation requiring a multi-tool, from a camping trip to a home repair – the tools are robust and always stored in the phone case for near instant access.  Sliders on the back of the phone make for easy access to the tools, and integrated spring and detents assemblies lock the tools in place both when in use and during storage.

There are a few products for iPhone that build in some of these tools, but by all accounts this looks to be the ultimate multi-tool actually made and tested for real world use. Shelton explained the product in a video posted to the company’s Facebook page.

The Kickstarter project for TaskOne will officially go live at noon on Wednesday and we’ll update this post with links when it does.

Update: It’s live on Indiegogo and close to meeting its funding goal.

CNN reported a White House official confirmed President Barack Obama spoke with CEOs of four Fortune 500 companies over the weekend to “discuss the so-called fiscal cliff and economic growth.” The discussions with the select group of CEOs follow a larger meeting of a dozen American companies at the White House last week. One of the four CEOs invited to join the discussions was Apple’s Tim Cook.

According to the White House, the conversations were part of the President’s “outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward.”

The official said Obama spoke with the CEOs of four Fortune 500 companies over the weekend after gathering a dozen CEOs of other major American companies at the White House on Wednesday

The other CEOs included in the discussions were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Costco’s Craig Jelinek, and Jim McNerney of Boeing.
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[tweet https://twitter.com/Ivan_Kir/status/270439163025838081]

Update, Nov 2o: RIA Novosti reported today, citing sources familiar with Apple’s product plans in Russia, that iTunes music in the country could be “delayed indefinitely” as Apple runs into issues getting necessary licensing from artists. Another report from Vedomosti claimed  iTunes senior executive Eddy Cue and iTunes Europe Director Ben King went to Russia for the launch originally scheduled for November 20. The newspaper also cited sources close to Apple as saying the launch is now scheduled for the first week of December, possibly to coincide with the launch of iPhone 5 in the country.

In September, a report from Russian language publication vedomosti.ru cited industry sources and noted Apple was preparing to launch iTunes music in Russia by the end of year. The report also noted that songs would be sold for less than their 99-cent U.S. counterparts, somewhere between 11- to 20 rubles each (roughly 35- to 65 cents USD). It appears Apple is getting ready to launch the service today, with several Russian readers reporting music is now searchable on the App Store in the country. The search provides users with a link to “Continue search in Store…”, and Twitter seems to confirm that many Russians can access music using this method.

Interestingly, as noted in previous reports, iPhones.ru confirmed songs are indeed listed for less than the U.S. store, with most songs currently selling for 15 rubbles (roughly 50 cents USD). We expect Apple to roll out full access the store in Russia shortly.

In July, a 10K filing showed that Apple acquired security company AuthenTec for $356 million. At the time, we noted Apple was presumably after the company’s various fingerprint-related technologies, while companies such as Samsung, Motorola, and others entered in deals with AuthenTec for its secure VPNs, encryption algorithms, and security-related products. Today, NFCWorld (via TechCrunch) reported Authentec has now sold its embedded security solutions division to NFC company Inside Secure. The sale would seem to indicate that Apple was indeed specifically after the company’s fingerprint and NFC solutions:

The sale suggests that Apple’s interest in acquiring Authentec lies with the company’s innovative combined fingerprint and NFC solution, which is not part of the division being acquired by Inside Secure, and will lead to renewed speculation that Apple will include NFC in future iPhones and other devices…. NFC and contactless chip provider Inside Secure is to acquire the embedded security systems division of Authentec, the fingerprint and secure solutions specialist which Apple agreed to buy for US$356m in July 2012. The transaction is valued at up to US$48m.

To get a hold of AuthenTec’s Embedded Security Solutions Division, Inside Secure will reportedly pay $38 million in cash and another $10 million “subject to completion of certain post-closing transactions.” Products the division is responsible for are currently used in hundreds of millions of mobile and networking devices worldwide, with customers ranging from Samsung, Nokia, LG, and Motorola to HBO, Cisco, and Texas Instruments. Last year, the division brought in sales of $25.3 million.
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Bloomberg reported Apple and Google’s Motorola unit are currently in negotiations to resolve their several patent disputes and have apparently exchanged “proposals on using binding arbitration to reach a licensing agreement” for standard essential patents. According to the report, Apple said in a court filing that “such an agreement could lead to a global settlement of all of their patent disputes.”

The companies have been exchanging proposals on using binding arbitration to reach a licensing agreement over patents that are essential to comply with industry standards on how phones operate. Such an agreement could lead to a global settlement of all of their patent disputes, Apple said in a filing yesterday.

“Apple is also interested in resolving its dispute with Motorola completely and agrees that arbitration may be the best vehicle to resolve the parties’ dispute,” Apple said in the filing… Motorola Mobility first raised the issue of arbitration on Nov. 5, before a federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, threw out a breach-of-contract case that Apple had filed. The Cupertino, California-based maker of the iPhone claimed its mobile-phone competitor was misusing standard-essential patents to demand unreasonable royalties.

Earlier this month, Apple and HTC announced they reached a global settlement in multiple patent-related cases that some analysts estimated could be worth as much as $180 million to $280 million annually. As for Samsung, following the HTC settlement, many reports quoted Samsung’s Shin Jong-kyun as claiming the company does not “intend to (negotiate) at all.”
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Days after executives from Google, Amazon, and others were grilled by regulators in the United Kingdom over the issue of tax avoidance in Europe, The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that Apple’s Australian arm has been hit with a $28.5 million bill for back taxes in the country:

APPLE AUSTRALIA has been hit with a $28.5 million bill for back taxes, statements lodged with the corporate regulator in April show… News of the Tax Office bill comes as European governments put global technology companies under intense pressure over their complex ownership structures that rely heavily on a network of tax havens… Apple’s Australian arm reaped $4.9 billion in revenue last year through the sale of its computers, iPads and iPhones. The bill takes its total tax tab for the year ending September 24, 2011, to $94.7 million.

Earlier this year, The New York Times profiled how Apple uses tax havens, such as Nevada, Ireland, and Luxembourg, to sidestep taxes in both the United States and Europe. The U.K. isn’t the only country putting pressure on technology multinationals over tax avoidance schemes, SMH also noted the French government requested $252 million USD in back taxes from Amazon, a company that also uses Luxembourg as a tax haven for its Europe operations, earlier this week.
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Update: AllThingsD weighs in with its sources today following the Jefferies report:

Sources tell AllThingsD that Apple has indeed had talks with a few large cable operators about some new TV product. It makes sense that one of them might be doing its due diligence on capacity issues and whatnot… But the idea that a “potentially … imminent” launch is in the works seems harder to take seriously.

A new report from Jefferies & Co.’s analyst James Kisner, citing ” discussions with industry contacts” (via Barrons), claimed a new Apple TV product is “imminent” with “at least one major N. American MSO” currently working to find out how much additional capacity would be necessary on its network to handle the new product:

Our discussions with industry contacts suggest that at least one major N. American MSO is working to estimate how much additional capacity may be needed for a new Apple device on their broadband data network. We believe this potentially suggests an imminent launch of the Apple TV, a positive development for ARRIS, who is directly exposed to data traffic growth from incremental IP video streams on cable networks… 

The report does not provide any information about what type of new Apple TV product this would be. It’s possible the cable company in question is testing its network for a rumored streaming service of sorts and not a hardware product. The note also added Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who several times in the past predicted the launch of an Apple HDTV, is still expecting “sales of 4.9 million units in CY13 and 11.6 million units in CY14″ for a full fledged Apple TV set:
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple today that covers various methods of detecting a user’s presence and augmenting the user experience accordingly. Apple has covered face recognition and presence detection systems in various patent applications in the past, notably for multi-user logins, security features, and an Android-like face unlock feature. Today’s patent application covers even more implementations of Apple’s presence detection technology that would utilize ultrasonic sensors, microwave radar, and camera and audio systems to detect and identify the user. PatentlyApple covered the highlights of the patent including the ability to activate or augment features using presence detection:

In some embodiments, the device may also be configured to track the user movements (e.g., position and velocity) and, in response to certain movements, provide feedback and/or enter or change a state of operation. For example, movement toward the device may activate more features, such as providing more options/menus in a user interface, whereas movement away from the device may reduce the number of features available to a user, such as reducing the number of menus/options and/or reducing or increasing the size of the options displayed.

PatentlyApple also described another interesting possible implementation that would allow for intelligent zooming based on the movement of the user:
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been making the rounds following the launch of Windows 8 and Surface, and yesterday he sat down for an interview in Santa Clara with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. TechCrunch pointed us to audio from the interview (embedded above), where Ballmer is asked about the role of Windows Phone 8 within the iOS- and Android-dominated smartphone market. Ballmer famously laughed about the iPhone’s high price point back in 2007, but apparently, the Microsoft CEO still thinks iPhones are priced too high. While claiming Android’s ecosystem is “not always in the consumer’s best interest,” Ballmer made a point of mentioning the high cost of iPhones abroad:

The ecosystem of Android is a little bit wild, from an app compatibility perspective, a malware perspective… maybe in a way that’s not always in the consumer’s best interest… conversely, the Apple ecosystem looks highly controlled, and by the way, quite high priced. The fact that we live in a country where almost every phone is subsidized, you may forget it. But I was in Russia last week where you pay $1000 for an iPhone.. you’re not going to sell that many iPhones… The question is how do you get the quality, but maybe not the premium price. A controlled, but maybe not quite as controlled ecosystem.

Reuters also has a quote of Ballmer from an event last night, when the CEO seemed to hint at the possibility of a Microsoft-branded smartphone:
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Camera+ version 3.6: A ton of new features for the Camera+ iPhone app (as well as the iPad version) including Front Flash, Horizon Level for taking straight photos, Live Exposure to see and change exposure parameters like ISO and shutter speed, Accurate iPhone 5 Framing, and much much more. Both apps are also on sale for a limited time to celebrate the updates.

imo messenger version 3.3: We gave you a preview of imo’s newly redesigned app last week and now the updated app is officially available in the App Store.

DataMan Pro for iPad: Just released on the App Store, the popular DataMan Pro app for getting real-time alerts on data usage is out with an iPad version today. To celebrate, both the iPhone and and new iPad version are 50% off for a limited time.

Palringo Group Messenger version 5.4.1:

• iPad support
Palringo now looks amazing running full-screen on your iPad, with benefits such as a bigger keyboard and split panels for chat and contact lists.
• Updated Themes
We’ve thrown in a new “Dark” theme for free, and another for Premium Account holders. What’s more is they’ve been expanded to many more screens around the app!

Expedia Hotels version 2.0:

• Check the home screen for beautiful pictures of the best hotels deals near you.
• Lightning-fast checkout lets you book in under 30 secs. Faster than a TSA scan!

Deals:

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Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12

Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.

With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out:

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While a native Google Maps iOS app has yet to hit the App Store, Nokia said today it plans to release a new free maps for iOS under the “Here” brand in the coming weeks. “Here” is a cross platform effort for mapping applications that the company described as “the first location cloud to deliver the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems.”

San Francisco, California – Today Nokia introduced HERE, the first location cloud to deliver the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems. With the new brand, HERE, Nokia aims to inspire a new generation of location services and devices that make the mobile experience more personally significant for people everywhere… To further extend its location services, Nokia is launching a maps application for iOS under the HERE brand. 

The new HTML5-based iOS app, also called “Here”, will arrive in the App Store in the coming weeks and feature “offline capabilities, voice-guided walk navigation, and public transport directions.”
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