Apple consortium wins $4.5 billion Nortel patent trove auction; Google, Intel lose bidding battle

Friday, July 1, 2011 · 9:04 am · 33 Comments

“A group including Apple and Research In Motion has paid $4.5 billion to snatch Nortel Networks’ patents from under the noses of Google and Intel , stealing a march on their rivals in a litigious market,” Renju Jose and Georgina Prodhan report for Reuters.

MacDailyNews Take: Boom!

“Nortel had put up for sale 6,000 patents and patent applications in the largest public sale of its kind, a potential treasure trove for latecomers to the market such as Apple, Google and Intel,” Jose and Prodhan report. “The price was about three times what the sale had been expected to raise, underlining the defensive value of intellectual property in the fast-changing telecoms world, where established players are seeking to keep out newer rivals.”

Jose and Prodhan report, “The winning parties — the others are Microsoft, EMC, Ericsson and Sony — are expected to share the patents to maximise their scope to pursue patent litigation, though they did not disclose details… Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, with its three-year-old Android software platform, has a weak patent portfolio compared with telecoms rivals and will now be more vulnerable to lawsuits from the auction winners.”

MacDailyNews Take: Patent infringement is a crime. Crime is evil.

Jose and Prodhan report, “The search engine market leader had opened the bidding in April with a $900 million stalking-horse bid, and had been expected to be a winner.”

MacDailyNews Take: Wah-wah-wah-waaahhh.

Jose and Prodhan report, “BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will pay $770 million of the purchase consideration, and Ericsson will pay $340 million. The other parties did not immediately say what their share would be… Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura Securities [said] ‘And then the consortium will go out and seek to make a return by prosecuting the other people, particularly the Android camp.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: No way Jobs was letting Google rip off Apple again.

Related articles:
Intel gets antitrust approval to bid on Nortel patents – June 24, 2011
Apple gets U.S. antitrust approval to bid for Nortel patent trove – June 23, 2011
Apple, Intel among bidders for Nortel patent trove – June 17, 2011
Nortel delays patent auction one week citing significant interest – June 16, 2011
RIM looks to outbid Apple, Google, and Nokia for Nortel’s patent treasure trove – April 18, 2011
Google bids $900 million for 6,000 Nortel telecom patents in quest to boost patent portfolio – April 4, 2011
Apple reportedly bidding for Nortel patent portfolio – December 13, 2010

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Mobile payments users to grow by 40% to reach 2.5 billion globally by 2015

A new report by analyst firm Juniper Research forecasts that the number of mobile phone users making payments for digital goods will reach 2.5 billion worldwide by 2015, up from 1.8bn forecast for 2011. This represents a growth of 40%.

Mobile tickets for transport and entertainment were found to be two of the key sectors influencing growth although new service and application adoption will also be very important.

Senior analyst David Snow gave more details: “Whilst the mobile payments sector offers substantial growth opportunities, it needs to be seen by innovative players as a platform from which to develop new value added applications and services such as personalised mobile coupons, loyalty schemes, and novel augmented reality offerings.”

However, the Juniper report also warned that fraud levels with certain types of payments such as PSMS and direct billing are on the increase with mobile security becoming a key issue in the not too distant future.

Further key research from the Mobile Payments for Digital & Physical Goods report shows:

• The Far East & China region will be the largest, accounting for nearly 30% of the total by 2015;

• The Indian Sub-Continent is forecast to exceed 400 million users by 2015.

The report uses an innovative new approach to compare the positioning of some 17 mobile payments vendors. These vendors are also profiled in the report, enabling the reader to identify and compare their strategies. In depth market forecasts provide detailed five year regional data for mobile digital & physical goods payments, showing key parameters including subscriber take-up, transaction sizes and volumes. The report also reveals the strategies that are being used to enable users to pay by mobile through case studies from companies such as Virgin Media and Badoo.

View the original article here