The Times of India reports that the Delhi high court has banned Xiaomi from both importing and selling smartphones in India following a patent infringement claim by Ericsson.
Hearing a case filed by Ericsson India against Xiaomi, the court on Monday passed an ex parte order forbidding the popular Chinese manufacturer from importing and selling its smartphones in India […]
It is not clear if the order will impact all Xiaomi devices sold in India or specific devices that violate the patents.
However, as the patents concerned are Standard Essential Patents – patents which are so fundamental to a particular product category that the patent owner is obliged by law to license them on reasonable terms – it appears likely that the ruling applies to all Xiaomi handsets … Expand Expanding Close
The Moving Picture Experts Group, otherwise called MPEG, announced a draft of a new video compression standard known as High Efficiency Video Coding, or H.265, that will be twice as efficient as the current H.264 standard. Ericsson Research Manager for Visual Technology Per Fröjdh, who also serves as chairman of the Swedish MPEG delegation, explained the standard could hit commercial products by 2013:
“There’s a lot of industry interest in this because it means you can halve the bit rate and still achieve the same visual quality, or double the number of television channels with the same bandwidth, which will have an enormous impact on the industry”… Fröjdh believes that the HEVC format discussed by MPEG in Stockholm could be launched in commercial products as early as in 2013… “It will take time before it’s launched for a TV service, but adoption is much quicker in the mobile area, and we’ll probably see the first services for mobile use cases next year,” he says.
While Sony recently made a deal to cut Ericsson out of their smartphone business, we’ll inevitably have a few more Ericsson branded devices before Sony rebrands their smartphone lineup, if at all. Today we’re getting our first sneak peak at the rumored Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD (model number LT26i), bringing their smartphone lineup up to the what seem to be the new standard high-end Android specs– 720p 1280×720 4.3-inch display, and a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. It looks like every major Android manufacturer is producing a 720P display phone, except Motorola, and that is only a matter of time.
The device, previously referred to as the “Nozomi”, made its first appearance over at iAndroid.co.il this weekend, giving us not only a look at the device itself but also showing some Quadrant benchmark stats. Unfortunately, those benchmark tests are designed for single-core processors, so they don’t really give us the whole picture. However, we expect the device to rival performance by other high-end Android devices with similar specs- think Galaxy Nexus or HTC Rezound.
Other specs you can expect from the Xperia Arc HD include 1GB of RAM, and an LED illuminated strip near the hardware buttons which wraps around the backside of the device as well. It is also slated to run Gingerbread, although an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade is likely considering the device probably won’t hit market for a few months. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more. More images after the break. Expand Expanding Close
We reported earlier this month that the Wall Street Journal was claiming Sony was close to closing a deal to buy out swedish partner Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson’s 50% stake of the Sony Ericsson brand. Today the deal has been made official with Sony buying out Ericsson for 1.05 billion euros ($1.5 billion). According to the press release, the move will allow Sony to better integrate smartphones into its other product lines– tablets, PCs, TVs, and games consoles. It will also give them full ownership over “five essential patent families” related to wireless smartphone tech, which could obviously help the company easier implement tech being used in their smartphones into other devices.
Sony’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Sir Howard Stringer noted the deal would allow the company to put its “four-screen strategy in place” and allow them to offer services like the PlayStation and Sony Entertainment networks on all devices. We know Microsoft is focused on integrating Xbox Live and their other services with Windows phones, and it looks like Sony has plans to give the same treatment to their smartphones going forward with help from the PlayStation. Maybe the Xperia Play wont be the only PlayStation certified phone in the near future.
Its clear Sony isn’t going to just let the failing Sony Ericsson brand, which only captured approximately two percent of the worldwide mobile phone market last year, fall by the wayside in an Apple and Samsung dominated smartphone market. Even with considerable success since forming the partnership in 2001, Sony Ericsson’s brand recognition has arguably never been on par with the Sony brand associated with the Walkman, PlayStation, Sony TVs, and other iconic Sony products most of us grew up with. On top of acquiring the patents necessary to integrate smartphones with their other products, perhaps dropping Ericsson and branding devices simply as “Sony” smartphones will bring back some of that brand recognition that has obviously done companies like Apple well.
