Patent firm to ban the sale of HTC’s 3G smartphones in Germany

HTC’s smartphone woes look set to continue after it emerged that German patent firm IPCom announced plans to ban the sale and distribution of all of its 3G-enabled smartphones in Germany, Reuters reports.
IPCom had won a previous ruling against the Taiwanese smartphone maker after it was found that it was infringing on the German company’s UMTS (a 3G cellular technology) patents. The company has also pursued Nokia in recent years.
The company said in a statement:

“IPCom now intends to execute this injunction in the shortest possible time,” the company said in a statement. “… we will use the right awarded by the courts, likely resulting in HTC devices disappearing from shops during the crucial Christmas season.”

IPCom sued HTC after acquiring Bosch’s mobile patent portfolio, which counts amongst it over 160 collections of patents, including a patent that covers how a mobile phone first establishes a connection to a mobile network.
Earlier this week, HTC moved to warn investors that increased competition in the smartphone market and a hostile economic climate would affect revenues in the coming quarter, slashing estimates by as much as 23% as sales are seen to slow quarter-on-quarter for the first time in two years.
Strong sales from Apple and Samsung has led HTC to predict its fourth-quarter revenue will be the same as it was in 2010, reaching around $3.4 billion. It previously issued guidance that it would see sales upwards of $4 billion.
A ban on its 3G-enabled devices in Germany could see vital Christmas sales impact the company yet further, making it difficult for the smartphone maker to return to growth early next year.

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Get Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit for free on Galaxy S II

I’ll be honest: there’s not a lot of good reasons to open up Samsung’s custom App Store, an included “bloatware” app that’s been showing up on all its devices for months. But there may just be a good reason now: Samsung is giving away copies of EA’s racing game Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, normally $6.99 in the Android Market, for free, nuthin and gratis. According to SammyHub you’ll need a Galaxy S II to take advantage of the deal.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is the latest in a long line of racing games with a twist. You get the normal race and time attack modes, but a Hot Pursuit mode pits street racers against cops on fictional California highways. You can use deployable spike strips, EMP bursts or just slam your opponents into submission to make it to the finish by any means necessary. The console and PC version of the game got rave reviews, though it’s only got 3.5 out of 5 stars on the Android Market.
Apparently the deal is restricted to certain regions, at least at the moment. The game may be available for free on other phones, but a quick look at our Galaxy S II Skyrocket review unit isn’t showing it at the moment. Note that this is a different (and probably better) game that Need For Speed: Shift, which is included on many Android phones by default.

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Infinity Blade developer snubs Android over piracy concerns

There’s a lot of high-profile games either out or coming soon for Android, but even the staunchest Android evangelist (this guy!) would have trouble denying that the gaming market on iOS is more robust at the moment. The current posterboy for iOS graphics is Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade, a hack-and slash action game with some undeniably incredible visuals. When asked when they’d bring the series to the even more popular Android platform, the devs cited fears of piracy as a reason not to create ports.

Mashable asked the two brothers who designed the game why it hasn’t appeared on high-powered Tegra devices yet, and their response was that a “wild west” business environment had left the door wide open for piracy. “We’re confident that will be worked out and it will become a viable place for game developers, but that hasn’t happened yet.” The developers said they were open to creating Android games in the future, but at the moment it’s not part of their plans.
It’s true that piracy is a problem for Android. Most apps sold in the Android Market don’t have any sort of copy protection (and I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing). But to develop exclusively for iOS out of a fear of piracy is a flawed argument to say the least – piracy is also a problem on iOS, and a quick Google search shows that Infinity Blade is available to any unscrupulous iPhone users who wish to take it without paying. There’s a lot of good reasons not to port a game, like extra development cost for a platform that typically renders fewer direct sales. Piracy isn’t necessarily one of them.
For the record: do not download commercial software without paying for it, on any platform. It’s illegal just about everywhere, and you’ll make Santa cry.
[via Phandroid]

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Dreamcast favorite ChuChu Rocket comes to Android

Ah, the Sega Dreamcast. A little grey box with a lot of memories. One of the very first titles to appear on Sega’s underdog gaming system was ChuChu Rocket, a puzzle game from the makers of Sonic the Hedgehog. iOS gamers have been playing it for over a year, but Sega‘s done the right thing and brought ChuChu Rocket to the Android Market.

If you’ve never heard of ChuChu Rocket – an unfortunately common occurrence among western gamers – it’s a puzzle game in which the player must guide a torrent of squeaking mice through a minefield of cats and other hazards, by re-directing their motion. In terms that current mobile gamers would understand, it’s kind of like the tower defense genre, except that the goal is to get everyone to the end safely. The original game was one of the very first to take advantage of Internet multiplayer on a console, and has since been ported to the Game Boy Advance.
The Android version looks almost identical to the original, but thanks to high-density screens the graphics actually surpass it. The original 500 levels of ChuChu Rocket are faithfully recreated, though unfortunately the multiplayer element seems to be missing. ChuChu Rocket is only Sega’s second Android game, behind the new RPG Fallen Realms earlier this month. We live in hope of a Sonic Generations or Super Monkey Ball port, but for now, you can pick up ChuChu Rocket for just 99 cents in the Android Market.

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Mysterious Verizon Holiday Ad Appears Across The Web, Shows Galaxy Nexus For $199.99

Nobody is really sure what it means at the moment, but we definitely know the ad showing the Verizon Galaxy Nexus for $199.99 is real. As in, It's not fake since it's showing up on Android sites across the web (we've spotted it here at AP, at Phandroid, and DroidForums to name a few). These ads are run by NetShelter, which is a premium advertising network that deals directly with carriers and manufacturers and does not mess around - we know them all too well.
Clicking Learn More goes to this page that doesn't list the Galaxy Nexus, so either someone pressed the Launch button a bit too early or the ad was scheduled ahead of time and someone forgot to postpone it due to all the recent delays. One thing stands out, however - $199.99 is about $100 cheaper than we thought the Nexus would go for. Of course, it may be a holiday promotion, but hey - we'll take it.

Note the tag "cmp=BAC-OM-111129-HOLIDAYSAMSUNG" in the Learn More url, which seems to point at a mysterious 11/29 date. Could it be the date the sale will go online? In that case, we're definitely seeing it prematurely. That and the fact that it also lists the Droid Charge and the Stratosphere at $99.99, while right now the very same page you get by clicking Learn More shows the Charge at $199.99 and the Stratosphere at $149.99. Hmm...

 

Here are the relevant parts of the ad: [1] [2] - check them out for yourself while they're still working.
So, does anyone else have any other theories? Spill the beans in the comments.

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Android claims 40% of enterprise mobile web traffic

Internet security service provider, Zscaler, recently published some interesting usage data for the last quarter, including some insight into mobile browser usage. Although iOS may be winning device adoption over BlackBerry in businesses, it looks like the majority of Zscaler’s enterprise subscribers that browse the web on smartphones (40.3%) are doing so through an Android device, while BlackBerry claimed 37.26%, and iOS 22.38%. Zscaler further broke down those numbers into geographies; 75.34% of the Android users were from the U.S., followed up by Spain (5.48%), Israel (9.17%), and Singapore (2.76%). Zscaler even drilled down into what kind of sites were being visited, though a lot of the data is incomplete. Among Android enterprise users, 42.9% of browsing fell under the “other” category”, but social networking (16.95%) was top among registered metrics, followed up by professional services (10.55%), and corporate marketing (7.5%).
Though most consumers might be more interested in proper apps than the mobile web, in an enterprise environment, apps are harder to securely roll out and control. It’s not hugely surprising to see social networking taking the lead in web traffic, though iPhone users had a much higher percentage of professional services usage than Android (30.2%).
You can take a look at the full Zscaler report over here.
[via ZDNet]

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Samsung email blunder spills Galaxy Nexus buyer details

The UK Galaxy Nexus launch hasn’t gone quite to Google’s plan. Not only did exclusive retail partner Phones 4U accidentally sell a developer prototype in place of a consumer handset to the very first buyer, but now it seems Samsung has managed to share the contact details of the first 100 early-adopters with each other.

“Congratulations on being one of the world’s first owners of the Galaxy Nexus! You’ll receive your codes and redemption instructions within 14 days of purchase. And as a bonus gift, we’ll be sending you a £100 bonusbond gift voucher, which is redeemable at over 25,000 places in the UK. To receive your bonusbond gift voucher (also within 14 days of purchase), please reply to this email with your full postal address no later than Tuesday 29th November, 2011. Full terms and conditions to follow” Samsung UK email

The manufacturer ran a £250 media giveaway for the first 100 Galaxy Nexus buyers, and followed up today via email. Unfortunately, whoever is manning Samsung’s email made the rookie mistake of using the “CC” rather than “BCC” box, thus sharing all 100 email addresses with the group as a whole.
Of course, we imagine Google is too busy working on a volume bug fix to spend time scolding Samsung, so hopefully the early owners will treat the email blunder as a way to make new friends rather than as a great source of spam targets. As our tipster – who wanted to remain anonymous – said, “it’s a good thing we 100 Nexus buyers are good people…”
[Thanks anonymous tipster!]

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HTC G1 Gets A Taste Of Ice Cream Sandwich

Still rocking the HTC G1, the world's first Android phone? Didn't think so, but if you have one laying around somewhere, you may want to grab that thing and knock the dust off of it. Why, you ask? Because there's a "working" (I use that term loosely here) port of ICS ready to flash.

As you may imagine, it is incredibly slow and nearly unusable, but c'mon - you have to admit that it's pretty cool. Here's a video of it in action (again, I use that term loosely).

There are a few things that still aren't working in this build, like screen rotation, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Everything is else is go, so, at the very least, you can check out what ICS is all about. Very slowly.

While this is definitely not a practical port, one thing is certain: it's things like this that show how incredible the Android development community is. Fourth gen Android on a first gen phone? That's just stupid-sick. Hit the source to check it out for yourself.

[XDA Forums via Gizmodo]

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AT&T and T-Mobile withdraw FCC merger application

AT&T and T-Mobile have withdrawn their application to the FCC for their planned merger. Following the FCC’s decision to conduct a hearing on the validity of the proposed merger, the two companies have switched their focus to gaining approval from the Department of Justice. AT&T has also indicated it expects to book a pretax $4 billion charge in the fourth quarter for a break-up fee to T-Mobile should the deal fall through.

"This formal step today is being undertaken by both companies to consolidate their strength and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice," the two companies said in a prepared statement.

The Department of Justice sued to block the merger in August as it believed that the deal posed may violate antitrust laws. The companies believe that they can convince the DOJ that the concessions that they are prepared to offer to make the deal happen will not adversely affect consumers.

Both the DOJ and FCC have contended that the merger is inherently anti-competitive, knocking out a major carrier, and that no amount of concession is likely to change the reduced amount of choice.

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