Apple CEO Tim Cook ordered to testify in ebooks case

   

Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook must sit for a deposition in the U.S. government's lawsuit against the company over alleged price-fixing in the e-book market, a judge ruled on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan granted the Justice Department's request to compelCook to testify for four hours in the lawsuit, which accuses Apple of conspiring with five publishers to raise e-book prices.

The government had argued that Cook likely had relevant information about Apple's entry into the e-books market. It also said Cook likely had conversations related to e-books with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Apple had fought the request, saying Cook's testimony would be "cumulative and duplicative" since the government had already deposed 11 other executives at the iPad maker.

Cote, on a teleconference, cited the death of Jobs as a key reason in ordering the deposition.

"Because of that loss, I think the government is entitled to take testimony from high-level executives within Apple about topics relevant to the government case," as well as to counter Apple's defense arguments, she said.

A spokesman for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple is the only remaining defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed in April 2012 in U.S. District Court in New York.

The five publishers - Pearson Plc's Penguin Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers Inc, CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster Inc, Hachette Book Group Inc and MacMillan - have already settled. The last to settle was Macmillan in February.

A trial is set for June. The government is not requesting damages but is seeking a finding that Apple violated antitrust law. It is also seeking an order blocking Apple from engaging in similar conduct.

Teleconference arguments
During the teleconference, Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Apple at the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, called the government's request to depose Cook a "fishing expedition."

Snyder said the testimony of other executives should be sufficient in the case. Depositions of 11 other Apple executives have already taken place or been scheduled, according to an earlier letter Apple sent the judge.

"This effort to depose Mr. Cook, Apple's CEO, reflects the fact the government cannot meet its burden of proof in this case," Snyder said.

Lawrence Buterman, a Justice Department lawyer, said on the call that Cook had submitted a written declaration in the case in which he said he played no "meaningful role" in the events at issue.

The Justice Department wants to know what Cook "means by his qualifier," Buterman said.

The government believes it is likely, because of Cook's "position and closeness" with Jobs, that they had private conversations about e-books, Buterman said.

"It means Mr. Cook is the only potential source of information," he said.

The case is United States v. Apple Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-02826.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

Netflix goes social with Facebook integration

    

Netflix on Wednesday took the long awaited step of letting US users share with Facebook friends what they have been watching at the film and television show streaming service.

A change made to the decades-old Video Privacy Protection Act late last year by Congress cleared the way for California-based Netflix to join the slew of music sharing services that have synched with the leading social network.

Netflix has previously integrated its service with Facebook outside the United States.

"There are few better ways to find a movie or TV series you'll love than hearing about it from your friends," said Netflix vice president of product innovation Tom Willerer.

"Facebook already makes it easy for our international members to connect with friends over TV shows and movies and we're thrilled to now bring this experience to our US members."

Synching with Facebook is optional for Netflix users. Those who connect to Facebook will see lists of shows or films viewed by friends at the social network, according to Netflix.

"Over the years, Netflix has deepened its Facebook integration to enable people to discover movies through friends and to share what they're watching," said Facebook's Justin Osofsky.

"With their integration, Netflix has a new opportunity to reach the more than one billion people on Facebook."

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch gets a price cut

Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday it cut the price of its largest Kindle Fire tablet, part of an effort by the world's biggest Internet retailer to get the device into the hands of as many consumers as possible.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 inch Wi-Fi tablet will now be priced at $269 in the United States, down from $299. The 4G wireless version now starts at $399, compared with $499 before, Amazon said.

Amazon is launching its larger tablet in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Dave Limp, president of Amazon's Kindle business, said the company has increased production of the devices in conjunction with the overseas launch. The cost of making the tablets has fallen with greater economies of scale, letting Amazon cut prices, he said.

"Whenever we are able to create cost efficiencies like this, we want to pass the savings along to our customers," Limp said in a statement.

Amazon launched its first Kindle Fire tablet in 2011 to compete with Apple Inc's dominant iPad and other tablets from companies such as Samsung that run on Google Inc's Android operating system.

Amazon sells its devices at cost, undercutting Apple prices. Amazon aims to make money when customers use its tablets to buy physical and digital products from the company, such as movies, music, games and apps.

However, Amazon's strategy rests on selling a lot of tablets. This may not be working well yet for its larger 8.9 inch Kindle Fires, according to recent research by Chad Bartley, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.

Amazon does not disclose device sales numbers. But Bartley said in a research report last month that demand for the larger Kindle Fire tablet was weak, citing checks with contacts in the device supply chain.

Amazon's price reductions on Wednesday may be designed to try to maintain sales during the early part of the year, which is typically a slow period for retail sales, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners.

Amazon may also be cutting prices before it comes out with new versions of its tablets later this year, when sales normally increase during the back-to-school shopping season and the holidays, Gillis added.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the price cuts were not driven by weak demand, but rather the cost benefits of increasing production for overseas sales.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

China Mobile hopes 4G and next iPhone will unlock huge Apple demand

   

China Mobile Ltd hopes to tap pent-up demand for Apple Inc smartphones by rolling out new 4G technology this year and having an iPhone model that will finally run on it.

The world's largest mobile carrier - with more than twice as many subscribers as there are people in the United States - already has more than 10 million of its customers owning an iPhone even though the gadget doesn't properly work with the Chinese firm's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G technology, which is not compatible with global technologies.

That inferior technology, and the failure to offer customers an iPhone contract - which its main rivals do - has been a key reason for China Mobile's slowing profit growth.

The company, valued at $220 billion or half an Apple, is expected to say on Thursday that its net income rose just 1.2 percent last year to 127.4 billion yuan, according to a Reuters poll of 13 analysts - the slowest growth since profits actually fell in 1999.

While many of China Mobile's iPhone users have found clever ways around some of the carrier's limitations, the company wants to close the gap with its two smaller rivals - China Unicom and China Telecom which already offer iPhone compatible technology.

Industry experts expect Apple's next iPhone will support China Mobile's TD-LTE 4G technology, even though this will be less widely used than the FDD-LTE standard.

"Apple's iPhones will be like a killer app for China Mobile once its gets its 4G up and running," said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura International in Hong Kong. "That will definitely boost user numbers, though it will weigh on the bottomline in the first year or so as China Mobile will most probably have to provide heavy handset subsidies for the iPhone."

China Telecom, which signed up to sell the iPhone last year, increased its spending on handset subsidies by 50 percent in the first half of last year, and has seen its profits fall in the last three quarters on higher marketing and subsidy costs.

No-frills
Most of China Mobile's 715 million subscribers are no-frills users attracted to its wide network coverage across the vast country. Only a small number are premium, tech-savvy consumers.

Just 13 percent of its users are on 3G, compared with one third at China Unicom and 44 percent at China Telecom, which use other variants of CDMA 3G technologies developed by global players such as Japan's NTT Docomo and Qualcomm Inc.

Using the iPhone on China Mobile's homegrown 3G network can be as sluggish as being hooked up to a 2G network, but many users take advantage of the carrier's many wi-fi hot-spots for heavier data-crunching applications such as playing games and downloading software.

Demand for the iPhone has spawned a cottage industry, with some local phone vendors selling SIM card cutters that act like a hole-punch to trim bigger cards to fit the smaller iPhone slots. Some China Mobile sales outlets offer on-the-spot SIM-trimming services as well as wi-fi cards that iPhone users can use in most hot-spots.

China Mobile is aggressively pushing for 4G to improve the user experience in a market where chatting on Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat and checking microblogs on Sina Corp's Weibo are the norm among smartphone users.

Analysts expect China Mobile to spend $3 billion this year on developing its 4G network, from a total capex budget of around $35 billion. The company's chairman Xi Guohua said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year that the carrier planned to build a TD-LTE 4G network with 200,000 base stations to cover more than 100 Chinese cities, home to 500 million potential users.

While Beijing is likely to grant 4G licenses as early as the second half of this year, it will take at least 18 months for the technology and the handset market to be mature enough for large-scale commercialisation, SWS Research analyst Jim Tang wrote in a recent report.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

Samsung Galaxy S IV sighted in leaked 'hands-on' video

Samsung Galaxy S IV has made its first 'public appearance' via Chinese website  bbs.52samsung.comwhich has posted what it claims is a video of Samsung's forthcoming smartphone.It is the same forum that had posted a few purported shots of this smartphone and claimed that these pictures are of Samsung Galaxy S IV's dual-SIM variant, which will be available through China Unicom (A mobile operator in China).
There seems to be some similarity between the smartphone in the video and the teaser image posted by Samsung on its Twitter page. Furthermore, from this video it appears that Samsung Galaxy S IV has borrowed its design architecture from Galaxy Note II.
The video also indicates that Samsung Galaxy S IV will indeed come with a plastic body, as pointed out earlier in some of the leaks. More importantly, this video highlights that Samsung Galaxy S IV will come with removable back panel and hot-swappable microSD card slot. It also indicates that there will be 2,600 mAh battery powering the Galaxy S IV.
Just to recap, as per the previous leaks, the Samsung Galaxy S IV is expected to come with an Exynos Octa 5410 processor, which clocks in at 1.8GHz with 2GB RAM along with PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. There will be options of 16/32/64GB for internal storage.
The Samsung Galaxy S IV is likely to come with 4.99-inch full-HD (1920X1080) display and run Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. There will be 13-megapixel rear camera on-board and a 2.1-megapixel in the front. Connectivity options will include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and wireless charging support.
More recent leaks also indicated the presence of Smart features like Smart Scroll and Smart Pause, Black and White colour variants, new green PHOLED display technology, floating touch and a Photosphere-like function called Samsung Orb.
Samsung will be launching this smartphone at unpacked event that is taking place in New York on March 14. The company has been teasing the launch of this event through various tweets and videos.