In February we posted a report titled "New Smartphone Kill Switch Legislation Tabled in California may Force Apple and Others to Comply." The proposed law 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. Today it's being reported that major US wireless carriers and smartphone makers such as Apple have agreed to introduce tools to enable users to lock their devices and wipe them clean of data if stolen, responding to pressure on the telecommunications industry to do more to stem theft.

On the fifth of April Apple opened their doors to their latest flagship Apple Store in Istanbul, Turkey with the typical opening door hoopla that's common around the globe. The day before the store opened we illustrated a twitter traffic map generated by iPhone users in Istanbul that was quite substantial. Today, the new gets better. Patently Apple was just contacted by a Turkish Company who has just completed one of the largest single day iBeacon deployments at Istanbul's ANKAmall. Boni advised us that they're planning to deploy more iBeacon systems in other shopping malls. In fact they're already working on new projects this year that could rack up another 4,000 iBeacons. While the technology will work with iPhones and Android phones, it's just a fact that more iPhone users in Turkey will be able to take advantage of this this new service immediately.

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 37 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover two major iDevice technologies and five design patents. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

When it comes to pure rumors of silly schematics of the next iPhone magically falling into the hands of little blogging sites, I cringe. Then there are the rumors that could fall into the big "maybe" camp. Today, iPhon.fr (France) found a unique photo of a plausible next generation iPhone faceplate showing a much wider design. Is it the real deal? That's for time to tell, though the dimensions would seem to be right for a larger iPhone. Unless Apple has a new radical design in the wind to surprise us all with, the rumored photo has to be considered.

Yesterday we posted a report titled "Samsung's Galaxy S5 is a Dud According to Korean Carriers." In a new article published today in the pro-Samsung website Korea Times, they make a rather startling statement: In order "to appeal to the new jury and judge, Samsung needs to provide evidence. That's why the company is heavily pushing the S5." The report also noted how Samsung had shipped 63 million Galaxy S4 units in the past but only sold close to 40. This is a continuing tactic of Samsung's to promote what they're shipping in their interviews with the press instead of what they're actually selling to fool the market and consumers.

Behind the worsening performance at Korea's CrucialTec, it was revealed during their annual shareholders' meeting that they failed to strike a supply deal for fingerprint sensors in Samsung's new Galaxy S5. With their performance on shaky ground, CrucialTec's CEO recounts a tale of his meeting with Apple's top brass including the  late CEO Steve Jobs.

Late last week a news report from Korea delivered a blow to Samsung by exposing just how poorly their new Galaxy S5 is really selling. Considering that this is Samsung's home turf, if the Galaxy S5 is selling that badly, it's likely being mirrored around the globe. Our report will show you just how bad it is.

If developers are wondering what platform to choose for their beacon technology rollout, it's a no brainer. The current score has 87% of iOS devices ready and 2.5% of Android devices ready at this very moment. Here's a trend Google apparently never saw coming. A new slideshow is now available that can provide everyone with the ABC's of beacon technology and applications. It's not iBeacon specific, but it does illustrate Apple's iOS dominance in this area of technologies.

Last month Patently Apple pointed to a new wearable computer idea from Google that will be one of their Google Glass spinoff devices involving smart contact lenses. While our other IP blog called Patent Bolt will be covering many of Google's many patents on this subject throughout the coming week, the one that I wanted to bring to Patently Apple is one that discusses Google's intent to integrate micro cameras right in the very fabric of a future contact lens system. There's an adage that states "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer." Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt knows that tune all-too-well as he was able to weasle himself right onto Apple's Board of Directors and learn what he could about Apple's coming iPhone to help Google's secret Android OS project. So even if you don't like Google, you still might want to understand what the other side is up to in repsect to important future trends like wearables. Additionally, if you happen to be a contact lens wearer yourself, then this idea my pique your interest. And yes, there are millions of contact lens users around the world. For more on Google's latest invention regarding contact lenses with built-in cameras, check out Patent Bolt's latest report.

One of the reasons why developer's love Apple's iOS so much is that it's adoption rate within Apple's iDevice ecosystem is the fastest in the industry. Case in point, iOS 7 was introduced to the Apple community on September 13, 2013. Seven months later it's now on 87% of iDevices. Yet a quick look at Chitika's latest statistics on Android for smartphones it's clear there's a deeply fragmented landscape in place that's a nightmare for developers.

Patently Apple has discovered that Apple has been granted two design patents for their new Mac Pro in Hong Kong China. Apple filed for these design patents just days before officially putting the Mac Pro on sale. Today, China's Hong Kong IP Office published Apple's granted design patent documentation. During Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) opening keynote on June 10, 2013, Apple's VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller introduced the radically redesigned Mac Pro. In a radical departure from the previous designs, the new Mac Pro's cylindrical design was wildly applauded. The Mac Pro is assembled in Texas in a state of the art facility using robotics.

On Monday we reported that Apple's iBeacon was ready for the Minnesota's Twins game opener. As we noted in our report, Major Legal Baseball has installed iBeacon at 20 of their 30 stadiums including San Francisco. It was also announced just yesterday that Apple's iBeacon will be debuting at a stadium in Australia this weekend. In January Forbes noted that Apple's iBeacon was the future of mobile shopping and noted that iBeacon based mobile shopping had kick started this past January in more than 150 U.S. Giant Eagle and Safeway supermarkets. Today, a brief overview of a new ABI study claims that iBeacon technology could break 30,000 indoor location installations by the end of the year.

Earlier today Patently Apple discovered a patent application filing that listed one of Apple's leading product design engineers. The patent application was published under its inventor's names as a means of avoiding being published under Apple's name at the US Patent Office. Legally speaking, Apple only has to appear as the assignee after the patent application has been granted. This is a somewhat common practice that Apple uses to keep specific intellectual property out of the lime light until the last possible moment. The discovery today covers a rather simple invention. It's about providing Apple TV with a much larger heat sink. Today's Apple TV supports a 32-bit single-core A5 processor. But if Apple should ever decide to adopt their faster A7 or future A8 64-bit single or multi-core processors to support gaming, it would need a larger heat sink. In context, last Wednesday iFixit uncovered a larger heat sink in Amazon's new Fire TV that's aiming at Android gaming. The trend is obvious.

With all the hype about electronic health bands and the iWatch, Tim Cook's initial leeriness about consumer wearables in the form of a wrist band watch may have been more plugged in than you might think. At last year's D11 conference (between the 19-21 minute marks of the Walt Mossberg interview) Cook grumbled at the idea of a watch of any kind, though later admitted that "other wearables" could be interesting down the road. Today, a survey showed that only 4% of UK consumers are interested in a wearable device like a Samsung Gear smartwatch. That's not to say that Apple couldn't create an iWatch and take the whole category to new level like they did with smartphones. Yet for now the data confirms Apple's initial research that ten to twenty year olds have no interest in wearing anything on their wrists as Cook eluded to. Apparently Apple's head-fake put Samsung on the fast track to nowhere. Report Updated March 11, 5:20 AM PST.

In March, Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a statement about a new book about the tech giant called, "Haunted Empire," saying that it was "nonsense" and failed to capture Apple or former CEO and Co-Founder Steve Jobs. Cook indirectly included the book's author Yukari Iwatani Kane as just being one of Apple's many doubters throughout the years. Today, Kane takes a kick at Tim Cook interestingly enough from a publication in Samsung's home turf of Korea. It actually makes one wonder if the timing of Kane's book wasn't purposely designed as a pre-trial publicity stunt by Samsung.

Earlier this week we posted a report titled "Apple Secretly Moves Next-Gen iPhone Baseband Processor Development In-House to Possibly Enhance Security." Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that may reveal yet another aspect of Apple's future radio systems. Apple's new patent relates to the field of wireless communication, and more particularly to a system and method for performing location-based updating of subscriber identity information in an iDevice which utilizes an embedded subscriber identity module (eSIM).

In late March Patently Apple posted a report entitled "Facebook to buy Oculus for $2 Billion," where noted that Apple's acquisition of PrimeSense could advance Apple's previous work on a video headset. Today the US Patent and Trademark Office reveals that Apple has revisited their patent application regarding their video headset that could be a future Apple TV accessory or an Apple TV iDevice for those on the go; A nice spin-off product if you will. Coincidentally news surfaced late yesterday from KGI securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo is claiming that Apple will revamp their Apple TV device later this fall. It would be very cool timing if the Apple TV accessory would be ready at that time to create some major buzz in the industry. However, it's unclear if Apple is really committed to such an iDevice or accessory. It would be great for gaming and a way to get ahead of Oculus. But for now it's just an open question mark. In this report we also note that Apple has filed a continuation patent regarding their Shanghai Apple Store Building.

News from Zurich this morning states that technology group Kudelski said its OpenTV and Nagravision subsidiaries have filed a lawsuit against Apple in a court in northern California alleging the iPhone maker has infringed five U.S. patents. On March 28, 2010 OpenTV became a fully owned subsidiary of the NAGRA Kudelski Group – Nagravision.

Late yesterday Patently Apple discovered a unique patent application from Apple that was published in Europe. The patent contains a feast of cool new ideas floating around Cupertino's R&D labs. Apple's many inventions are illustrated on both MacBooks and a possible future iPen. Apple discusses varying flex display designs and a new illumination process that is very cool. Some of the features described in this latest patent filing could easily be applied to future wearable devices from Apple. All-in-all Apple's European patent application was a lot of fun to explore and I think that you'll really enjoy our report covering its many highlights.

On March 26 we posted a report titled "On the Eve of the new Apple-Samsung Trial, Apple reveals some of the iPhone's History." In that report we covered Greg Christie's look back at Project Purple, the secret iPhone project that Christie led in respect to the software that would go down in history as that which ignited a true smartphone revolution. That interview was bitterly objected to by Samsung's attorney in the latest Apple-Samsung patent infringement case which started last week. Tonight the news is hitting the wires that Christie may be about to retire after a dispute with Jony Ive.

In court on Tuesday Apple's damages expert testified that Apple should receive $2.2 billion in damages from Samsung for infringing on five of their patents, and to compensate for Samsung's sale of 37 million devices, which led to a loss of profits for Apple.

A new Korean report published today states that Samsung Electronics is expected to record an operating profit of 8.4 trillion won ($7.9 billion) in the first quarter, down 4.33 percent from a year ago, as the result of slow smartphone sales growth. The estimate did not provide figures for each of its business divisions. These will be made public in the last week of April. Yet looking forward, analysts are seeing the coming smartphone pricing wars being a negative on Samsung's bottom line going forward.

Two new rumors surfaced today courtesy of Taiwan's DigiTimes. The first rumor claims that Apple reportedly has plans to form a new Research and Development team responsible for developing next generation baseband processors for use in their 2015 iPhones. Apple recently hiring two former Broadcom engineers give this rumor some credibility. The second rumor that comes second hand from China's Economic Daily News claims that Apple is developing the iWatch processor in-house and is set to begin production this August. Whether this latter rumor is really describing an iWatch or other wearable-computer is unknown at this time. However, other industry rumors that have surfaced this year would suggest that an "iWatch" won't be ready in this time frame. That being said, we've added a translation of the Chinese rumor report about the iWatch for your convenience.

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 46 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's patent relating to a possible future Push-to-Talk iPhone and/or iDevice feature. We also cover a more advanced version of Apple's famed Slide-to-Unlock and two patents relating to avatar creation and editing for social networking, video conferencing and gaming. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business School (HBS) is creating a new kind of case study program that illustrates high profile companies like Apple via comic books. The first one is about the early years at Apple. The Wall Street Journal is saying that Harvard is trying to make case studies more relatable, especially for foreign students or just visual learners. Yet some of the comic book illustrations are terrible. One particular image was rather provoking if you're an Apple fan. You have to wonder what's being taught about Apple at Harvard these days.

Earlier this morning we reported on Apple's three new trademark applications for iBeacon icons in color and black and white. Yet the news on Apple's iBeacon doesn't stop there. Today, sources in Minneapolis reports that iPhone-toting Minnesota Twins fans will have their "MLB at Bat" app automatically start up instead of manually having to be started as in the past. That will happen due to Apple's new iBeacon technology. The new iBeacon services will begin this coming Monday at the team's game opener.

According to a Korean press source, a new standalone variant of the Samsung Gear 2, equipped with a universal subscriber identity module, or USIM, will likely be christened the Samsung Gear Solo. Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom are jointly preparing to release the new smartwatch.

Back in November Apple filed four iBeacon trademark applications which covered future financial services, e-commerce, consumer loyalty programs and much, much more. Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published three new Apple trademark applications covering the iBeacon icon in color and black and white. The applications were actually filed on April first but were delayed in being published to the public until today. Whether they wanted to avoid April fool's day is unknown at this time. Apple filed their icons under two International Classifications covering a wide range of applications including, advertising, business services, retail store services and a car audio apparatus which likely translates into being a part of Apple's CarPlay.

Apple's new patent infringement case against Samsung began last week. Before the trial began Samsung tried to stop a video from being shown to the jury because it showed Apple products in a light suggesting that "Apple's products are innovative and patentable." Thankfully Judge Koh overruled Samsung objection. As the trial began, Samsung focused on trial theatrics with trying to paint Apple's Executive of Worldwide marketing as being panicked by a silly Samsung ad. Then jumped to Apple declaring a "Holy War" against Google trying to say Apple battle is really with Google. Yesterday AppleInsider's Daniel Eran Dilger posted an extensive report about Samsung's slavish copying that took years to copy Apple's "Slide to Unlock." Yet today, a European patent expert tries to tear down AppleInsider's editorial. The problem, however, is that the case is being tried in a US Court under US patent laws and standards, not those of the European Union. So why does this European patent expert continually diminish Apple's innovation and US patents.

Texas based Patent Harbor filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple late yesterday. The patent infringement lawsuit concerns Apple's iMovie and the Mac products that run that particular Apple application.

In the second California Apple v. Samsung patent trial that began this week, Samsung submitted a series of email exhibits from Apple discussing their product road-map that would be discussed at their "Top 100" executive sales retreat where the best minds of Apple would annually brainstorm for the year ahead. Samsung attempted to make hay with a single entry in these emails about a "Holy War with Google." Yet in context and under scrutiny their argument fails to have any punch whatsoever. Once again, Samsung has decided to shoot for theatrics. It may work in the press for a day or two, but in the end it's just dust in the wind; a feckess exercise.

Earlier this morning we posted a report titled "Apple's iPhone is King of Manhattan as Shown in Stunning Map." In that report we covered Business Insider's viewpoint that the iPhone's success in Manhattan proved the great divide in America between the rich and poor. They chose a series of New York maps to prove their point. However, that was a subjective slant to support their position. While I appreciate their report bringing some of this to light, the fact is that if you work with the source mapping service, you'll find a somewhat different reality that expands on Business Insider's viewpoint. Our report will provide with a large selection of maps outside of New York that paints a slightly different picture of the iOS vs. Android War.

They say that a photo is worth a thousand words. This is a clear example proving that out. The map illustrated in our cover graphic was created by Mapbox. It clearly shows us just how hot the iPhone really is in the richest part of New York: Manhattan. The iPhone is king in Manhattan in stark contrast to Newark, New Jersey where incomes are substantially less. It's an established fact that Apple's iPhone is adopted by more in the higher-end of the market, but this classic map gives visual life to those stats.

A Korean news site this morning picked up on data from a Strategy Analytics report released yesterday. It revealed that Samsung Electronics' global mobile AP market share (based on sales) as of the fourth quarter last year fell off a cliff. In the last quarter of 2013, Samsung's Application Processor business fell more than 50% from the previous year, due in large part to Apple.

According to a new Kantar Worldpanel report published today, the data clearly shows that Apple users are high quality users and lead the trend of multi-screen adoption. What's interesting about the study is that the trend appears to be occurring in urban China – one of the most important mobile markets in the world.

St. Lawrence Communications has filed a major patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung involving five patents. All five inventions were originally filed under VoiceAge Corporation that have been recognized as a pioneer in speech and audio compression for the modern mobile phone by the ITU, ISO, ETSI, 3GPP2 and others. The products allegedly infringing upon these five patents are extensive. They include Samsung's HD Voice phones including the Galaxy Light; Galaxy Note; Galaxy Note II; Galaxy Note 3; Galaxy S 4G; Galaxy S II; Galaxy S III; Galaxy S4; and the Galaxy S5.

It's being reported today that a diverse group of industry-leading companies such as Apple, DuPont, Ford, GE, IBM, Microsoft and Pfizer that have staked their businesses on innovation, have launched the Partnership for American Innovation (PAI) to safeguard America's position as a global innovation leader.

On April 3, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals their work on next generation multitouch technology that uses FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) and capacitive sensing. It's much like the technology that Microsoft calls PixelSense. It's a technology that could sense different pressure levels which could be used for an on-screen gaming controller. If you want speed, just push harder on the display and the car will accelerate. It may also be used for future virtual reality applications. With Apple's recent acquisition of PrimeSense, Apple definitely has something big that they're working on for 3D gaming and/or other advanced applications.

On April 3, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "System and Method of Detecting a User's Voice Activity using an Accelerometer." It appears that Apple is working to advance their EarPod with Remote and Mic headset so as to provide superior voice quality for phone calls in the future. Technically speaking, the new system will have a voice activity detector (VAD) system that uses signals from an accelerometer included in the earbuds of a headset with a microphone array to detect the user's speech and to steer at least one or more beamformers.

On April 03, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a simple yet sophisticated next generation SIM card tray ejection system. The system is activated on a future iOS touchscreen UI virtual button. The new system adds a new level of security for SIM cards which will be important as future iDevices may support bank related SIM cards for credit and/or debit.