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Topic: Apple iPhone

January 11, 2007, 10:35 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

Linksys iPhone online banner

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: ZDNet blogger Ed Burnette spoke today with a trademark and patent attorney, whose research has apparently turned up that Cisco failed to file a Declaration of Use document with the US Patent and Trademark Office, necessary for it to extend the use of the "iPhone" trademark it picked up in the acquisition of Linksys, by the November 16, 2005 deadline. "It is possible that the Declaration of Use is defective," the attorney tells Burnette, "as there was no continuous use, and the sample that Cisco submitted was for a product not released until seven months later."

So quite possibly, Apple may have had good reason not to return those licensing papers Cisco says it submitted. If the attorney's claims prove correct, and if Cisco was aware of this deficiency, the question then becomes, was Cisco's offer of trademark licensing to Apple in good faith?

Topic: 3G

January 10, 2007, 12:36 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

If you're wondering what's missing from the Apple iPhone and the Palm Treo 750, it could be epitomized by Nokia's N76. Calling this a multimedia device is not a stretch in the capacity (up to 2 GB on SD) and throughput department, but may be a stretch in the display department. Depicted here with a speaker, it may make a more effective selling point in the audio department. But underlying the N76, in a statistic Nokia doesn't even tout as loudly as it does its 2.4" display, is its theoretical 3.6 Mbps maximum throughput. So the choice seems to be shaping up: very fast throughput you may need a magnifying glass to appreciate, or slower throughput on a screen large enough for a user to detect just how much slower it really is.

Topic: WiMAX vs. UMB vs. HSDPA

January 8, 2007, 2:33 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

The biggest and most active battle in consumer electronics may not be in the high-definition format space, since after all, the technologies there are pretty much decided - all that remains is an outcome. Indeed, the big battle is over whose technology will serve as the infrastructure for wireless broadband service. In the US, the big carriers are clearly choosing sides: Sprint Nextel is making a huge WiMAX push at CES, while Verizon - by virtue of having backed EV-DO all this time - is now the de facto supporter of Ultra-Mobile Broadband (UMB, the former EV-DO Rev. C), while Cingular stands squarely behind the upgrade to its services, which would bring its EDGE network up to the 4G specs of HSDPA.

Maybe if Internet broadband service were roughly the same, it shouldn't matter who picks what technology, if it ended up looking the same in the end to the consumer. But flexibility is key to winning customer appreciation, while at the same time, one of these technologies - probably not all three - will be key to the next generation of mobile computing platforms. Intel has an edge there, and can drive WiMAX adoption, but that doesn't mean every mobile computing platform in the foreseeable future has to be Centrino. This could be a big, long, brutal battle, with all the major players on a roughly equal footing.