iPhone Daily News Digest

The folks over at HTC have finally released an official answer to Apple’s recent lawsuit against them over patent infringements and while we don’t know yet if they are planning to countersue, they apparently have the intention to “fully defend themselves”.

Their timid press release, released earlier tonight, mostly emphasizes on HTC’s “passion for innovation” while reminding about their long standing presence on the market. It’s pretty dull if you ask me, but here is it:

HTC Disagrees with Apple’s Actions

Seattle – March 17, 2010 – HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple’s legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people’s lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators.

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone. In 1999 we started designing the XDA and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, our first touch-screen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

The industry has recognized HTC’s contributions through a variety of awards including Fast Company’s 2010 Top 50 Most Innovative Companies and MIT Technology Review’s 2010 50 Most Innovative Companies. The GSMA also recently awarded the HTC Hero as the “Best Phone of 2009.” Some of HTC’s technology firsts include:

First Windows PDA (1998)
First Windows Phone (June 2002)
First 3G CDMA EVDO smartphone (October 2005)
First gesture-based smartphone (June 2007)
First Google Android smartphone (October 2008)
First 4G WIMAX smartphone (November 2008)

In 2009, HTC launched its branded user experience, HTC Sense. HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the center by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. This experience was fundamentally based on listening and observing how people live and communicate.

“HTC has always taken a partnership-oriented, collaborative approach to business. This has led to long-standing strategic partnerships with the top software, Internet and wireless technology companies in the industry as well as the top U.S., European and Asian mobile operators,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America. “It is through these relationships that we have been able to deliver the world’s most diverse series of smartphones to an even more diverse group of people around the world, recognizing that customers have very different needs.”

For more information on HTC’s history of innovation, please visit: www.htc.com/history.

[via Gizmodo]

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Research firm Crowd Science says that almost 40% of Blackberry owners they polled are willing to ditch their device for an iPhone when next they need new hardware, and 32% said they would jump ship to a Nexus One. That leaves a dismal 28% willing to rough it with their Blackberry.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

There are two main reasons that Blackberry users are wanting to jump ship. For years Blackberry has always been known as a business tool and not a device someone would purchase for regular day to day use. RIM has made two attempts to embrace the growing full-screen form factor, the original Storm and Storm 2, but neither have managed to catch on.

Then there is the lack of apps available for Blackberry devices. 7 days prior to the survey, 67% of Blackberry users did not download a single free app and 91% did not purchase any apps. Now when compared to Apple hitting the one billion download mark last April or even the successful Android market, things don’t look that good for RIM in app terms.

Before this survey was completed I personally witnessed this trend take place while spending a lot of my time within our forums as well as the Android Central forums. I was astounded to see so many people abandoning their Blackberry for a Motorola Droid or iPhone 3GS.

When it comes to iPhone and Android users, 90% plan on being loyal with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

How about you, did you come to the iPhone from a BlackBerry?

Blackberry Users Ready to Bail on RIM for iPhone and Android is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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MobileGuerilla.com

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Open source developers ditch iPhone for Android IT PRO A new report has shown Google's Android platform is enticing open source developers away from creating apps on the iPhone. By Jennifer Scott, 17 Mar 2010 at … Meet Tim Bray, New Face of the Google-Apple RivalryPC World Open Source Developers Pick Android Over iPhoneInternetNews.com Google's Tim Bray Hates Apple's iPhoneInformationWeek BBC News (blog) -Apple Insider -ZDNet (blog) all 365 news articles »

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Google's Tim Bray hates Apple's iPhone The Money Times I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom's not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient," … Google's Tim Bray Hates Apple's iPhoneInformationWeek A very personal Google Android vs. Apple iPhone war just got some more personalityZDNet (blog) Web guru — Apple's goal for iPhone is a "Disney-fied walled garden"Computerworld (blog) Wall Street Journal -Netbook Boards -TopNews United States all 303 news articles »

ZDNet (blog)

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France24

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Gmail may only be the 3rd most popular email service on the planet (behind Yahoo! and Hotmail) but it ranks first in the hearts of geeks everywhere and can be used in a variety of ways on the iPhone:

• IMAP (or POP if you’re really old school) right from the iPhone Mail app. With its prominent place, and huge button, on the Account Setup page, it’s a default for many users. While it (still!) doesn’t support IMAP-IDLE push, plain old IMAP will keep all your accounts in sync, even if Google’s implementation is eccentric to say the least. (Labels mapping to multiple folders, simultaneous connection limitations, etc.)
• GoogleSync right from the iPhone Mail app. It licenses ActiveSync from Microsoft and fills up your lone Exchange slot on the iPhone but it does provide push if that’s what you need (even if it’s been a tad error prone).
• Gmail Web App from Mobile Safari. It supports all the Gmail goodness like labels and stars and threads and thanks to HTML5 it even has local storage and an almost native app-like feeling to it, even if it’s not a snappy as the real thing.
• As a spam-filter for another email account. May sound strange, but some people merely forward their Gmail to a different IMAP or webmail account, using Google’s excellent spam filtration but wanting a different service or front end for the actual mail.

Of course, some no doubt wish there was better built-in support for the unique Gmail attributes within iPhone mail, or a separate Gmail app like on Android, but given Apple’s App Store policies we don’t see that coming any time soon. So, given the choices above, how are you using Gmail on your iPhone? And if you have any pro-level or ninja tips for iPhone Gmail, let us know!

How Do You Use Gmail on Your iPhone? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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TechCrunch links to noted developer Tim Bray who’s taking a position as “Developer Advocate” at Google for Android but who announces it while taking a swipe at Apple’s iPhone and the closed nature of the App Store:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

Which is completely and utterly wrong, of course. That’s Apple’s vision of the mobile, curated App Store which they intend to be a family friendly, corporately liable software repository. Apple’s vision of the mobile internet is Mobile Safari and its WebKit rendering engine and other technological underpinnings, most of which are open source and heavily supported by Apple.

You can, now, today, get porn on the iPhone via Mobile Safari. You can get Google Voice. You can pretty much get anything and everything without any interference from or need for approval by Apple. It’s the definition of the Winer-ian vendor-less platform Bray quotes. Never mind:

I’m going to have to get savvier about HTML5-based applications, because a lot of smart people think the future’s there, that the “native app” notion will soon seem quaint.

And HTML5 (which allows web-based apps to behave more like native apps) is something Apple has been pushing very hard as well (from promotion at Apple’s Developer Tech Talk World Tour to WebKit.org itself). And again, now, today, you can code and run some of the best, most robust HTML5 applications for mobile to run well on iPhone Safari — and other WebKit-based mobile browsers.

We’ve said many times Safari is Apple’s open app store, and Apple even includes it beside Mac and iPhone on developer.apple.com. That’s what confuses us about comments like Bray’s and TechCrunch’s mention of former Facebook for iPhone developer Joe Hewitt (who has since said the iPad is “everything he’s wished for”).

It’s awesome for Bray and Google and Android and developers, and we congratulate and wish all of them well on his new position. But it’s important to point out that while Apple’s App Store might be “closed”, Mobile Safari is wide open; if you’re a web developer it’s delivering as well or better than anyone else on the promise of of that platform today.

Confusing: Developers Who Complain Apple’s iPhone is Closed AND Think HTML5 is the Future is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Pocket-lint.com

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