2009 January - Part 3

The global credit crisis may have caused the decline in consumer and business spending that is assaulting the giants of technology. But as the dominant companies try to emerge from this slump, they may find themselves blaming people like David Title just as much as they blame Wall Street.

Title, 35, a new-media manager at a film production company in New York, has dropped his cable TV subscription and moved to watching most of his television online — free. While shopping for a new laptop for his girlfriend recently, he sidestepped more expensive full-featured computers and picked a bare-bones, $200 Asus EeePC laptop, also known as a netbook, made by Asustek of Taiwan.

“We’ve reached one of those moments in tech history when there are low-priced and free alternatives that are both user-friendly and reliable enough to make the switch,” Title said. “Then there’s the extra bonus of saving some cash.”

Silicon Valley — and technology centers elsewhere, like Taiwan — have been gripped by a growing sense that the economic retreat might do more than depress earnings.

There is too much ingrained optimism here to think that the technology sector will not bounce back, stronger than before. But the fear is that consumers like Title, and businesses operating with the same cost-cutting mind-set, will erode the high-margin businesses of the information technology industry — slowing some technologies and companies but giving new momentum to others.

The normally confident Steven Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, expressed this very fear last week after announcing the company’s first big reduction of its work force. “Our model is not for a quick rebound,” he said. “Our model is, things go down, and then they reset. The economy shrinks.”

This has happened before. The dot-com bust earlier in the decade dragged down highfliers like Sun Microsystems and America Online but…

Source: newsfactor.com

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During an earnings call last week, Apple COO and acting CEO Tim Cook told financial analysts that Apple would not tolerate other companies infringing on its intellectual property for the iPhone. Now it turns out that Apple has a major weapon in its defensive arsenal — a U.S. patent awarded shortly before Cook’s comments.

At the time of the call, the context of Cook’s remarks led most observers to assume that he was referring to Palm’s new iPhone competitor, the Pre. But the new patent raises questions about whether Apple’s target for potential infringers is much larger.

‘One or More Finger Contacts’

Patent Number 7,479,949 runs more than 350 pages. Its title — Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics — covers a variety of user-interface techniques relating to touch commands. The touch commands cover “one or more finger contacts” used for scrolling, a “two-dimensional screen translation command,” or a command for displaying items in a set, among other things.

Signed by Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs and more than a dozen other Apple employees, the patent covers such data-display gestures as pinch-to-zoom Web browsing and swipe-to-scroll.

In addition to whether Apple intends to sue Palm or others based on this patent, there is also the question of whether the patent will have a chilling effect on the rapidly innovating smartphone industry.

Several companies that could be litigation targets have been positioning themselves. In the now-famous earnings call, Cook tempered his remarks by saying they were meant generally, rather than pointed at Palm. But Palm apparently thought Cook’s remarks were directed at it, and a Palm spokesperson responded that the company is ready to legally defend its innovations if necessary.