A new report published late yesterday states that a security researcher has discovered a way to take over roughly 70 percent of Android devices via a Web page or app. It's not known if anyone's actually using the exploit to attack people's phones, but the researcher's findings are nonetheless a reminder that Google faces a growing headache because it lacks any way to effectively distribute security updates to the hundreds of millions of devices running its software worldwide. Many of those devices have outdated versions of Android.

It's being reported this afternoon that Apple will open its first Latin American Store in Rio do Janeiro tomorrow. The bad news is that Brazilian Apple fans will be met with sticker shock of $1,1174 for Apple's sexy iPhone 5S; No kidding.

Some rumors are really out there. Like you, I shake my head at some of the craziest tech rumors that surface every week. A lot of them are about what Apple's future iPhone 6 will be offering this fall, but not all. One of my favorites this week was the "iAnywhere" daydream that J.P. Morgan analysts sent out in a note to clients: "With replacement cycles elongating and competitive pressures likely increasing, we think iAnywhere could provide Apple a leapfrog event ahead of the competition." While I'm still shaking my head on that one, another doozie came out of the woodwork yesterday. What was interesting about this one was the depth of its conviction. IC Insights gave the public a peek at their theory that Apple and Intel could possibly work together on a future 10 nm iDevice processor; One that they claim would give Apple a chance to leap well ahead of Samsung and TSMC capabilities and deliver powerful products. The news bulletin put out by IC Insights was only the tip of the iceberg, as it's a part of a 900 page in-depth report. Our report covers IC Insights full bulletin.

Last July the buzz was on for LG to successfully deliver an advanced fingerprint scanner ahead of Apple's upcoming iPhone 5S. While the anticipation was high, they ultimately failed to deliver it at their special event that was held in New York in August. A month later, Samsung failed to deliver the very same feature that their rumor mill had been hyping. They later weaseled out and blamed their problems on delivering that feature squarely on their one time partner Validity. Last month the rumors began again that LG would finally be bringing their fingerprint scanner to market at the Mobile World Congress trade show starting on February 24. But LG has stumbled once again as the specs for their new smartphone were made public today and a fingerprint scanner didn't make the cut. As the pressure mounts for Android OEM's to deliver this feature, Korea's CrucialTec has just introduced a new solution that's much closer to Apple's Touch ID feature. Our report covers the basics of the CrucialTec's announcement.

On February 13, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals new techniques for generating and using disposable email addresses. Apple notes that "some reports have claimed that spam email accounts for 90% of all email, with trillions of spam emails being sent." Although numerous approaches to stopping spam email from reaching consumer's inbox have been tried in the past with varying degrees of success, spam continues to be a problem for many people. Apple's invention is out to change that.

On February 13, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Flexible Displays." Apple's work on flexible displays began to surface back in August 2012 and several key patent pending flexible display inventions have surfaced since. Earlier this week a Korean report surfaced suggesting that Apple may be working on a bezel-free version of the iPhone. Today's patent revelations revolve around the technical techniques of reducing a display border by bending the sides of a display surface. The invention could apply to a future iPhone, iPad or wearable smartwatch-like computer and beyond.

A new Chitika report continues to show that Apple's iPad remains the number one tablet in terms of web traffic in Canada and the US. Their latest report focuses in on the peak hour for all tablets, which happens to be 9PM ET. Report Updated with Additional iPad Statistics at 11:20 PST.

According to a new IDC report, the smartphone market passed an important milestone in 2013 when worldwide shipments surpassed the 1 billion mark for the first time, driven by continued momentum from Android and iOS. The report noted that Android and iOS accounted for 95.7% of all smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2013 (4Q13), and for 93.8% of all smartphone shipments for the year. This marked a 4.5-point increase from the 91.2% share that the two platforms shared in 4Q12, and a 6.1-point increase from the 87.7% share they had in 2012.

A new report from Japan's Nikkei states that Apple is in talks with Sony to double its supply of camera components for a new iPhone. Sony currently supplies nearly all of the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors for the current iPhone 5S's rear-mounted main cameras.

Following Apple's intellectual property filings every week is one of the ways of getting a sense of future products and trends that the company may be thinking of adopting over time. Another way is to watch for new companies that Apple is acquiring. For example, last March Apple acquired WiFiSLAM, a specialty indoor location navigation company. Prior to that announcement we didn't even know that Apple had the least interest in that area of technology. Within days of the acquisition, an Apple patent application published by the US Patent Office revealed that Apple was indeed working on indoor navigation since at least late 2011. Three weeks after that, a second patent came to light about finding your car in an indoor parking structure using an indoor location application. Then in November, we learned that iBeacon, an indoor location technology, could also be used in conjunction with an e-ecommerce iWallet service. That revelation was found in four trademark filings from Apple for the word "iBeacon." Then last month we learned of iBeacon being strengthened for e-commerce security. In eleven months we've gone from not knowing anything about indoor location services to it exploding onto the scene. Today, an ABI Research report forecasts a huge wave of 800 million smartphones will incorporate indoor location technology by 2018.

Time is reporting today that Square has won a contract with Whole Food Market grocers in the US. Whole Food Market customers will be able to use them at counters that sell "ready-to-consume" products like pizza and sandwiches to coffee, beer and wine. Customers will be able to pay with credit and debit cards, cash and, in some locations, by using the Square Wallet smartphone app. When Square wins, Apple gains more sales of iPad's into the retail sector.

Amid the mounting rumors about the upcoming unveiling event from Samsung Electronics later this month, fresh speculation surfaced on Tuesday in Korea that Samsung Electronics would roll out bezel-free phones that support fingerprint scanning for their next-generation flagship models ― the Galaxy S5. At the same time the Korean report is stating that Samsung is still struggling with their fingerprint scanning technology. Earlier this month we reported that Samsung would be directly producing the fingerprint recognition module in-house, confirming they're ongoing struggle with integrating a fingerprint scanner into future smartphones. In a secondary Korean report published this morning we find that Samsung is also still agonizing whether to use its Exynos AP in the new Galaxy 5S or continue to support Qualcomm's Snapdragon AP.

Apple's iPhone 5C is likely to shift to ARM's latest Cortex-A17 CPU design later this fall. According to ARM, the new Cortex-A17 processor is optimized for maximum performance for mobile mid-range power budgets. The Cortex-A17 processor reaches a single thread performance of 60% over the Cortex-A9 processor, making it the fastest mid-range solution available.

It's being reported this morning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will use its 8-inch processing, instead of 12-inch, to produce fingerprint sensors for Apple's next-generation iPhone due to concerns about yield rates for 12-inch wafer-level packaging (WLP).

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 34 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's inventions pertaining to editing or moving text via gestures on an iDevice and the iPad's feature known as "peek mode." Our report concludes with a full list of the patents that were granted to Apple today.

A new report published late last night reveals that Apple's sapphire plant in Mesa, Arizona will be producing synthetic sapphire for future iPhones and could possibly be used to manufacture other parts related to solar cells and a smartwatch.

It's being reported today that Google lost a last-minute appeal to French courts on Friday, and was forced to display a huge, 13-point text block on its otherwise sterile Google.fr webpage for 48 hours. The text within the block refers to the €150,000 (US $204,400) fine that Google will have to pay for violating French data collection laws.

Despite the enormous amounts of money being spent each year on research and development, Samsung Electronics is at a loss for "the next big thing" to follow up its Galaxy lineup. Moreover, the buzz over Samsung phones is waning in light of Apple's iPhone 5S and the hype over what its upcoming Galaxy S5 will look like is nothing like the attention the earlier Galaxy S models received.

Last month we reported that Apple was still a top target of patent trolls with a total of 42 cases filed against them in 2013 and a total of 191 over the past five years, according to stats provided by PatentFreedom. In court and regulatory filings unearthed by the Los Angeles Times, we're able to get a rare look at Apple's view of the litigation it faces from patent trolls - companies whose main business involves threatening to file patent lawsuits against other companies unless they agree to make royalty payments.

New legislation unveiled in the state of California would require smartphones and other mobile devices to have a "kill switch" to render them inoperable if lost or stolen -- a move that could be the first of its kind in the country. The motivation behind the new law is that in San Francisco alone close to 60% of all robberies involve the theft of a mobile device, according to Police Chief Greg Suhr. In nearby Oakland, Mayor Jean Quan added that such thefts are closer to 75% of robberies.

According to Chinese report filed by CNA, manufacturers have maintained a positive outlook for sapphire substrate applications in consumer electronics. However, due to Apple's sudden push into sapphire manufacturing, Taiwanese manufacturers are now scrambling to the patent office to file sapphire substrate patent applications.

Late last night, the Northern District of California Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over the Apple vs. Samsung trials, denied Samsung's request for a retrial in their patent dispute with Apple, but also chastised Apple's lawyers for making the Korean firm's "foreignness" an issue in closing remarks to the jury.

It's amazing how a single word can put an entire statement into question. A single word out of context or purposely interjected into a statement has the power to instantly change a positive statement into one that's rather murky. A case in point would be our byline. Take out the word "reasonably" and you have a positive statement. Yet by adding that one word to define Apple's confidence – and it opens the door to doubt. In a way, that's exactly what Wall Street Journalist Daisuke Wakabayashi did in yesterday's interview with Tim Cook. Whether it was by accident or design is unknown. Yet any writer would know that throwing in the word "reasonable" in the wrong place could end up turning a positive point into a slightly negative light.

Patently Apple was the first to discuss the possibility of Apple using sapphire crystal glass for future devices back in March 2013 before it was on anyone's radar screen. Since that time we've covered all of Apple's major patents concerning the use of Sapphire for displays in future iPhones. There was one covering a fusion process for adding a sapphire laminate layer to a future iPhone. Then there was the killer patent covering a futuristic sapphire flexible transparent display in December 2013 quickly followed by one covering techniques for using sapphire on iDevice displays in January. Today the news gets better as equipment for producing the sapphire materials has arrived at Apple's Arizona plant.

Steve Jobs stated during an interview with Walt Mossberg in 2010 that "PC's are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around. They're still going to have a lot of value," but that PC's, as clearly defined as desktops and notebooks, were going to be replaced by Post PC devices. Steve Jobs was talking up the Post PC era in that interview, a term which Jobs popularized back in 2007, according to Wikipedia. Since the roll out of the iPad, PC sales have been steadily falling off a cliff at a steady pace. In fact, Sony just announced that they're getting out of the traditional PC market – puff, gone. Apparently, the only ones that didn't get that memo about the Post PC era, was analyst firm Canalys.

Last August the rumors were flying high and fast that Samsung would beat Apple to market with a fingerprint scanning feature for their Note 3. In September, Samsung miserably failed to deliver that highly anticipated feature. They later blamed their US fingerprint sensor partner Validity for the misfire. We noted later that month that Samsung and LG were on the run to integrate inferior fingerprint technology into their future smartphones. In December we reported that smartphone players were scrambling to adopt fingerprint ID to catch up to Apple. As 2014 kicked in, it was revealed that LG will unveil fingerprint ID this year, if not later this month. And now, the Korean press is confirming that Samsung will offer this feature in their upcoming Galaxy S5. Yet the real news is that they'll be directly producing the fingerprint recognition module in-house.

Apple's latest iPhone 5s runs on the Apple A7 SoC that utilizes a 64-bit processor. The GPU in charge is the quad-core PowerVR (Series 6) G6430, which supports OpenGL 3.0, DirectX 10 and OpenCL 1.x. It's currently among the best of the market and eats benchmarks for breakfast. Today, Imagination Technologies extended their multi-year licensing agreement with Apple which gives them access to Imagination's wide range of current and future PowerVR graphics and video IP cores.

On February 06, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Touch-Sensitive Button with Two Levels." One aspect of the invention will allow a future MacBook to save power when the trackpad isn't in use. Apple notes that "scanning the touch sensor for touch events when the button is not depressed can be an inefficient use of power, especially in mobile devices running on battery power." Apple's workaround solution was to invent a two-level touch sensitive trackpad.

Apple's Retina Display is a brand name used by Apple for liquid crystal displays that have a pixel density high enough that the human eye is unable to discern individual pixels at a typical viewing distance. Apple created a special video to explain the breakthrough behind the Retina Display. Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a series of four patent applications from Apple that reveal their work on advancing the Retina Display through the use of Quantum Dots that will eventually sharpen colors to yet the next degree of outstanding quality.

On February 6, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Automatically Changing a Language for Electronic Messages." Apple's invention generally relates to technique for automatically choosing a language to use when sending a text message or email.

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Today, TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, announced the launch of the CIBC Mobile Payment App to TELUS mobile devices with Near-Field Communications (NFC) capability, allowing more Canadians to have access to mobile payments. The system currently only supports select Android and BlackBerry smartphones. Isis, a similar US based system, launched in mid-November. While there's no data readily available today to demonstrate whether the Isis Mobile Wallet has been a success, it's only a matter of time until the public warms up to the general idea of using an electronic wallet app on their smartphone to make purchases instead of using a plastic credit card. With major mobile payment systems now out in Canada and the US for Android phones, is there a chance that we'll see Apple deliver their iWallet solution by year's end?

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 40 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's granted patent for an inductive charging dock and more.

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 40 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we focus entirely on a radical new multidimensional file system for Macs and a gaming console. Our report is a brief overview, as this system is extraordinarily detailed and must be read to really rap your head around this new system that could replace Apple's current Finder.

Canadian Queen's University at Kingston and PARTEQ Research and Development Innovations, have filed a joint patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung. According to the Plaintiff's filing, Samsung's SmartPause feature that is now incorporated into the Galaxy S4 and Note 3 infringe upon their technology. The case that the plaintiff's make is an interesting one worth noting.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The patent infringement lawsuit concerns Apple's newest A7 processor and the products that it powers.

A New York Times report titled "Building a Better Battery" finally catches up to what patent watchers have known for years. The Times reports that "For its wristwatch, Apple has been testing a method to charge the battery wirelessly with magnetic induction, according to a person briefed on the product." In truth, Apple filed for a patent regarding "Near Field Magnetic Resonance power transmission" in 2012 that's far beyond "induction" and it's not just for wirelessly recharging an iWatch but rather for a great number of devices including an iPhone, iPad, keyboard, mouse and so forth. Most of what the NY Times reports on Apple's work on Solar for iDevices has been well documented in Apple patents for years. There's nothing really new.

Ever since Apple's computer band or iWatch patent came to light there's been a lot of speculation about Apple's device melding with a medical monitoring system. Tim Cook pointing to the Nike+FuelBand at the All Things Digital Conference last year helped to hype the idea. Last week it was reported that Apple's medical team for iWatch now includes former Masimo CMO Michael O'Reilly. The report presents a list of high profile hires added to Apple's medical team thus far. On Friday the New York Times Bits columnist Nick Bilton revealed that Apple executives met with the F.D.A. dot discuss medical applications. The report further noted that Kevin Lynch, the company's vice president of technology, is involved in creating software for the iWatch, and that SVP of Technology Bob Mansfield has also been looking at health-related tech to connect to the iPhone. The momentum is building and Patently Apple discovered an interesting patent last week that was developed by Naeem Ansari, the very same Ansari that was behind Apple's latest financial system patent application that we posted last Thursday. In our ongoing patent related research we discovered that Ansari filed for a medical related invention back in 2012 that is designed to work with Apple's iPhone. Today's report presents you with a detailed overview of this medical related invention.

Wow, what a week it's been for Apple's future iPen. It began on Tuesday with a surprise granted patent focused on iPen orientation detection followed by three detailed patent applications covering a multitude of features on Thursday. And while we were busy writing those reports we happen to stumble upon two more iPen patent applications that Apple filed in Europe that same day. The main patent filing is a spectacular overview of a modular iPen design that would allow users to choose different modules for different tasks. One feature, for example, would allow a student or business user giving a presentation to use this iPen as an advanced laser pointer. Apple's latest European filing is without a doubt one of the most sophisticated of them all to date. It's intelligently designed so that Apple will be able to introduce new accessory "expansion modules" over time so as to keep the iPen up to date with the latest and greatest features. In fact, Apple's patent application provides us with a number of possible iPen expansion module examples that they already have in mind.