Today the Trademark Office in Hong Kong China published a trademark application from Apple concerning a new iOS icon. The new trademark represents Apple's upcoming CarPlay.

App Annie is a business intelligence company and analyst firm, co-headquartered in Beijing, China and San Francisco, USA. It produces a range of business intelligence tools and market reports for the apps and digital goods industry. Today, App Annie posted a brief report on the Apple – IBM partnership. They reflected back to Apple's Q3 2014 earnings call on July 22 and the prior announcement of the partnership with IBM on July 15 in an effort to create more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions. Some of these included native apps developed exclusively from the ground up for iPhone and iPad. During the earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook repeatedly emphasized the importance of enterprise apps.

Only a few Apple inventions per week out of dozens filed present fresh ideas of things to come. Today we published an interesting one about future iWallet security features. Beyond this main invention, we noticed a few other inventions that might interest a few Apple fans. In March Apple was sued in a class action lawsuit by the blind and we pointed out how Apple has done more for the disabled than any other tech company. Then a report in July surfaced about how the disabled wanted Apple to do more for them. Today, two new inventions have come to light that will assist the disabled in different ways at some point in the future on both iDevices and Macs. Another hot topic of late has been the EU's blind attack on Apple regarding In-App transactions. Today a new patent application surfaces that covers the inner workings of Apple's In-App program. And lastly, another invention was published today covering more about Apple's Touch ID fingerprint enrollment feature.

On July 31, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals new security control features for their future iWallet application. The new security system will work with an iPhone and Apple's iTunes Store on a Mac. The controls will allow parents to set boundaries for spending and track all purchases. Apple's patent also introduces us to the digital wallet processing engine. Last week a new rumor surfaced that discussed Apple's iWallet working with Visa's Digital Solutions sometime in the next year. Whether Apple's iWallet will make it to the iPhone 6 is unknown at this time.

We reported on July 8 that "Samsung Profits Plummet 24% on Slow Smartphone Sales." The numbers were based on preliminary estimates of what was to be announced later in the month. A report that we posted yesterday presented Samsung's decline in smartphone market share in Q2. Today, Samsung's official Q2 financial results were announced in Korea and it was actually worse than expected. Samsung said its net profit fell for the first time in nearly three years in the second quarter on weaker-than-expected smartphone sales.

According to a new Korean report, Samsung Electronics will be unveiling its new phablet ― the Galaxy Note 4 in Berlin on September third. The executives at Samsung's top-tier suppliers further noted that Samsung is apparently looking to rush the Galaxy Note 4 out the door in an effort to combat Apple's next generation iPhone 6 which is to debut later that month.

The Westboro Baptist Church, an insane cult that is widely described as a 'hate group', will picket Apple's headquarters on August 12th from 1:15 – 1:45 PM, reports iClarified. Westboro Baptist Church often protests military and celebrity funerals as well as public events because of people's tolerance to homosexuality.

Patently Mobile, our other IP blog, covered a very important Samsung patent application this past June regarding the future of their smartwatch development in a report titled "Samsung Reveals New Circular Interface Smartwatch with Rotating Ring Controller, 3 Gesture Levels, new Charger & More." It was a meaty patent filing that you could really sink your teeth into and get a real feel for where Samsung wants to go with their smartwatch. Yesterday, the US Patent and Trademark Office published four new smartwatch related design patents from Samsung that directly supports their in-depth patent filing. It appears that Samsung is clearly open to altering their Gear interface design should Google's Android Wear watch design prove to be more popular than theirs in the coming year. I also chuckled thinking that Samsung probably wanted to make sure that they had at least one distinct smartwatch design patent on record that was defined with "rounded corners" – just in case their smartwatch design is ever challenged by those in Cupertino.

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly sat down with Walt Mossberg today. One of the top topics on the table was tablets. He noted that "the tablets boomed and now are crashing. The volume has really gone down in the last several months." Yet on a positive note, Best Buy's CEO thinks that the laptop has something of a revival because it's becoming more versatile. "So, with the two-in-ones, you have the opportunity to have both a tablet and laptop, and that's appealing to students in particular. So you have an evolution. The boundaries are not as well defined as they used to be."

On July 11, we posted a report titled "China's CCTV Raises NSA Fear Tactics against Apple's iPhone." We posted a follow up report days later covering Apple's official response to the allegations. According to a new report, "Russia has proposed that Apple and SAP hand the government access to their source code to make sure their widely used products are not tools for spying on state institutions."

We reported on July 16 that Apple had signed up with a new supplier which has already solved the battery design bottleneck for Apple's larger 5.5 inch iPhone 6. The supplier who provided Apple with a flexible battery solution was Simplo. Today we've learned that Apple's largest OEM Foxconn is now planning to enter the battery business in an effort to gain more contracts from Apple.

It's being reported today that South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in the smartphone industry plunge in the second quarter from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, dented by the rise of Chinese players vying with low-end models.