Apple's First South China Apple Store to Open on Saturday

Apple's first store in South China will open on Saturday at the Holiday Plaza in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen. It will be the seventh Apple store on the Chinese mainland, with the other six located in Beijing and Shanghai.

Denny Tuza, Apple's retail director for greater China, said on Thursday that the company is excited with the Shenzhen store since China is a very important market for the company, and most Apple products are assembled in the city.

Apple Loses iPhone Battle with Mexico's iFone

A judge has denied U.S. technology giant Apple an injunction that would have allowed it to continue selling iPhone-branded products in Mexico, ruling that the company iFone had the rights to that brand name earlier, an attorney for the Mexican firm told Efe.

The Mexico City-based court handed down the ruling last Thursday, Eduardo Gallastegui told Efe. "It's the third time Apple has lost," Gallastegui said, adding that "iFone is fully entitled to the use of its brand name."

Google Search for iOS: the Product & Patent Debut Simultaneously

Since people first began talking to their iPhone's Siri, there have been complaints that the service doesn't do a good job with voice recognition, isn't accurate in its answers, and that Apple supposedly alters the answers to questions it doesn't like. This week Google released its Google Search for iOS, a straight-talking service that is said to be fast and accurate; it just doesn't always talk back like Siri.

While Google has had voice search for some time, the Apple competitor just released the app in the iTunes store for iOS devices including iPhone and iPad. Google Search isn't so much about talk, but it is about action, reports redOrbit.

Yesterday, Patently Apple was first to discover one of Google's patents regarding Voice Search that according to their filing, could run on Apple's Safari, OS X and/or Dashboard.  

Google's Patent Abstract filed under serial number 545438 states the following:

"A computer-implemented method of multisensory speech detection is disclosed. The method comprises determining an orientation of a mobile device and determining an operating mode of the mobile device based on the orientation of the mobile device. The method further includes identifying speech detection parameters that specify when speech detection begins or ends based on the determined operating mode and detecting speech from a user of the mobile device based on the speech detection parameters."