Apple

The legal odyssey between Apple and Qualcomm is continuing to escalate as the chipmaker is now accusing Apple of defying the court ordered iPhone 7 & 8 sales ban in Germany.

Now, Qualcomm is seeking fines against Apple, claiming available iPhone units sold throughout early January in Germany “intentionally defy the court order”.

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New patents granted to Apple today reveal some of the possible problems its now-fabled AirPower mat might have needed to resolve before its public release, including what Apple calls a “magnetic vision system”.

Recently, we’ve been hearing reports of AirPower hitting the production stage, however, with Apple still tight-lipped on the product since last year, today’s patents offer another glimmer of hope.

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A report from CNBC this morning says Apple has cut over 200 employees from its top-secret “Project Titan” autonomous vehicle program. In a statement, however, the company says it still sees a “huge opportunity” in the space.

An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the changes, but attributed them to staff restructuring rather than layoffs.

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A report from Bloomberg details how Apple’s director of cellular systems architecture, Matthias Sauer, testified that the company sought 4G cellular modems from an array of different companies besides Qualcomm, however, none were able to provide market-ready 4G modems in time.

The news is a big boost to the chipmaker’s case, who is fighting claims that its near market monopoly has forced phone manufactures to pay fixed, inflated prices on chip licensing royalties.

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Apple has been slowly but surely growing hiring rates for jobs related to “health” fields. The company’s job openings with the word specifically mentioned in the career title have increased 400% as the company continues to view health as its “greatest contribution to mankind”.

According to new data by Thinknum, Apple has 75 open job listings with the word “health” in the career title, as compared to just 15 openings in October 2017.

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A report from China’s National Business Daily says Chinese iPhone vendors received word yesterday regarding price cuts to iPhone 8, 8 Plus, XR, XS and XS Max.

The biggest price cut comes to the iPhone XR, which allegedly is seeing a 450 yuan (~$66) discount, bringing the total XR price to 5250 yuan (about $770). Generally though, most iPhones are seeing a 400 yuan (~$59) reduction.

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On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with CNBC and spoke all-things Apple, including a defense of the company’s recent rare earnings miss, calling out reports of a failing iPhone XR and the future of Apple’s services business. During the interview, Cook was quick to address the ongoing lawsuit with California-based chipmaker Qualcomm.

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NVIDIA is having a strong CES. After announcing powerful new RTX 2000 series GPUs last year, the company took to Las Vegas this week to show off an array of new laptops featuring the accompanying mobile RTX series.

Powerful gaming laptops are getting thinner and increasingly more capable, and these new chips are certainly the best on the market. The only question left is, will we ever see these featured in a Mac?

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Analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch have suggested that Apple is facing a potentially worrisome “informal boycott” from consumers in China and India. A survey conducted by the bank’s equity research team, cited by Bloomberg, shows user interest in upgrading to iPhone dwindling, with most of the excitement coming from Samsung or Huawei products.

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Since 2008, Apple has implemented the same 70/30 revenue split on all App Store purchases. Recently however, companies have been actively fighting against the cut.

The matter has even wondered near the US Supreme Court, with arguments being heard by the court last November.

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As reported by TechCrunch, Apple is pushing HomeKit hard at CES this year. It coordinated with manufacturers to demo key new HomeKit smart home announcements to the tech press ..,

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A report from the Wall Street Journal today details how Apple (AAPL) lost $9 billion this past year due to a single “underperforming investment” — itself. The report explains that after the surplus of cash the company had through Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul, Apple bought back AAPL shares at peak prices, essentially overpaying for themselves.

Even though AAPL yesterday saw its best single-day performance in over five years, the ~$10 gains made on the share price pale in comparison to the significant losses the stock saw over the past weeks.

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As the heated legal saga between Apple and Qualcomm only continues to intensify, the California chipmaker is now insisting that after asking Chinese courts to impose an all-out iPhone ban in the region, it won’t rule out imposing Chinese civil procedure to fine or detain legal representatives from Apple for disobeying the sales ban, according to Global Times China.

A lawyer representing Qualcomm said that under Chinese rules of civil procedure, Qualcomm has the right to ask a court to fine or detain Apple’s four legal representatives in China or bar them from leaving the country.

Further, the company is said to be dissatisfied with Apple’s flippancy towards the Chinese injunction as compared to the recent German one, which saw Apple immediately ban sales of iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 in the country.

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