Google. Apple

Some two days after Apple's lopsided patent victory over Samsung, the Korean electronics giant's pseudo silent partner is breaking its silence.

Google, which provides the Android operating system that Samsung devices use, issued a statement this evening that sought to distance itself from the case, saying that most of the patents in question "don't relate to the core Android operating system."

The statement, provided to The Verge, also points out that an appeals court will review the verdict and that the U.S. Patent Office is re-examining "several" of the patents in the … Read more

Not long before his death, Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson, the author of Jobs' authorized biography, about his pure hatred for Google Android:

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Few things angered him more than Android, a mobile OS that he believed was copied from … Read more

Samsung Electronics isn't the only one stinging from today's overwhelming defeat at the hands of Apple; this is a massive blow to Google and Android too.

A San Jose, Calif., district court jury today awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages after it found Samsung had willfully copied the various design cues of the iPhone and iPad. In doing so, it just laid a smack-down on the entire Android community.

While the monetary damages are significant, they pale in comparison to the precedent set by this jury that Apple'… Read more

commentary With the trial between Apple and Samsung inching toward a resolution, it's a good time to break out the crystal ball and look at the potential ramifications of the case.

Every indication suggests that the verdict won't be a clean one. There will likely be damages on both sides, and it's still unclear whether there will be clear victor. In addition, the option to appeal could drag this case on for several more years. A separate appeals case between the two regarding software elements of Android and a potential ban on the Galaxy Nexus is set to start in 2014. … Read more

Friday's top headlines won't judge you by your megapixels:

The Curiosity Mars rover cost $2.5 billion, so why are the cameras just 2 megapixels? The answer comes down to time: Time the rover was planned, the time it takes NASA to test, and the time it takes to transmit larger file sizes.

As Apple and Samsung duke it out in court over patents and copycat claims, Google isn't sitting back quietly. CNET has learned that Google is quietly helping out it's Android partner Samsung with legal advice.

Not all NASA news this week has been … Read more

Apple disappointed Wall Street this week but enticed iPhone 5-eager consumers.

During its third fiscal quarter, which ran through June 30, Apple reported revenue of $35 billion and earnings of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per share. Wall Street was expecting Apple to pull in earnings of $10.35 a share on revenue of $37.2 billion.

Apple sold 26 million iPhones during the quarter, which was down from the 29 million Wall Street expected, though up 28 percent from the same quarter last year. Apple broke its previous sales record of 15.43 million iPads, selling 17 million … Read more

The Apple iPad is a deceptive little monster. And the companies that are getting caught up in its deception are paying dearly for it. HP Palm fell for it. RIM fell for it. Others fell for it to a lesser degree, and some are still in danger of suffering from it.

The problem is that when most of the traditional technology companies look at the iPad, they see the wrong things. They see an oversized smartphone screen that's extremely limited in what it can do. So they've said to themselves, "We can build one of those, add … Read more

April means lots of new first-quarter market share numbers. And research firms are stepping over each other to show that Samsung is faring well vis-a-vis its nemesis Apple -- which isn't doing too badly itself.

ComScore said today that Samsung is the top handset supplier among the 30,000 mobile subscribers surveyed in the U.S., with a 26 percent share in the three-month period ending in March. (see chart below).

In that period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, according to ComScore.

LG was No. 2 with 19.3 percent and Apple third with … Read more

During the Oracle v. Google trial, the value of the Android platform to the Internet giant has been a subject of inquiry. When Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page was asked last week by Oracle's attorney David Boies about the value of Android, he responded that Android is "important, but not critical." 

On Wednesday, Google's head of the Android platform, Andy Rubin, was asked by Boies what purpose Android serves for Google, He responded that it "makes it easier to access Google services." 

Boies queried Rubin on whether … Read more