Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: The Almost iPad III Edition

Apple is expected to deliver its heavily anticipated next generation iPad later this week. Rather than print all of the massive amount of rumors we are just noting at this point and will fill in the gaps when the company takes the wraps off its latest product.

It is likely that this week will mark the start of a number of tablet releases within the next month or so including a Toshiba offering expected the day prior to Apple’s announcement and we will try and stay on top of all of the noise and news.

Archos aims at kids market with Child Pad tablet
Speaking of tablets, Archos has unveiled the Child Pad, a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.0 that is designed for the children’s market. With a $129 SRP it is significantly lower than most tablets, aside from eReaders; the Child Pad has a number of features designed for the young consumer.

Archos is using what it calls a kid-friendly user interface and it will come preloaded with 28 kids’ apps and will have access to a Kids App Store that has 10,000 apps including games, entertainment and communications. No word on educational apps.

The tablet will feature a 1GHz processor and have 1GB of RAM and will feature parental controls. Archos said that it will be available by the end of March.

RSA Panel suggests enterprise ban smartphone BYOD
If an enterprise wants to truly have secure data it should ban the cost effective method of allowing employees to use their own phones and tablets as work devices. It said that the cost of supplying employees a smartphone that can be controlled by the organization is much smaller that the potential cost to the corporation if sensitive data is lost.

Security officials speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco last week said that patches and bug fixes are hard to apply to a fragmented phone market and that it makes more sense to have control over the devices but that often execs and other individuals push back on IT.

AT&T caves in on ‘unlimited data’ plans-sort of
After a spate of negative stories around the nation about how its attempt to throttle back the top 5% of data users who had its unlimited plan, AT&T has relented and changed its policy, at least somewhat.

One of the complaints was that users with unlimited plans would get throttled, or have their data download speeds greatly reduced, well before they hit the level that was available to users of lesser plans from AT&T, 3GBs.

While it has retired the ‘unlimited plan’ existing plan members were grandfathered in, and they pay $30 more than the 3GB tiered level, but have often found that they would be throttled as the closed in on 2GB. A recent small claims court award of $850 to a member that had his plan throttled might have had some impact on this deal. However the company said it will continue to slow down data for users’ as they near 3GBs.

Patent News: It was a busy week for Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Microsoft and a host of lawyers

Apple wins latest round in German Patent ruling
Apple has won a preliminary injunction against Motorola Mobility that could force Motorola to recall smartphones that infringe on Apple patents. I think two weeks ago it was the exact opposite-maybe they will open the door to rivals as both companies phones will be banned?

Anyway a German Court has ruled that Motorola has violated an Apple patent that deals with “portable electronic device for photo management” which apparently is something that Motorola uses with its photo gallery implementation in its phones.

According to Foss Patents, Apple has the option of having the injunction enforced which would mean a ban on Motorola smartphones in Germany. Apple has won an injunction against Motorola two weeks ago on a different topic in Germany and won on this won in a Dutch court as well. Be interesting to see if Motorola changes its tune on licensing deals for its technology to Apple.

Apple and Samsung get a split decision
Also in Germany, the Mannheim Regional Court issued a pair of rulings involving Apple and Samsung regarding patents. The court threw out a Samsung vs. Apple lawsuit, the third in a row, which has to deal with 3G/UMTS patents.

At the same time it threw out one of the two slide-and-lock patent disputes that Apple has filed against Samsung, and a decision on the second of the two is expected within a few weeks. Samsung has said that it will appeal the ruling and it is expected that Apple will do so as well.

Microsoft/Motorola ruling to be reviewed
The U.S. International Trade Commission is undertaking a review of a judge’s decision that said that Motorola infringed a Microsoft patent in Android smartphones. The ruling comes from a complaint that was originally filed in 2010 claiming that a total of 9 patents were infringed.

Two patents were dropped from the case and the judge found that one of the remaining seven did in fact infringe on a Microsoft patent. A final decision is expected sometime this spring and both Microsoft and Motorola said that they look forward to the results.

For fans of Futurama only
A group of hackers from the University have broken into the e-voting system in Washington D.C. and gotten their write in candidate to the 2010 school board elected-one Mr. Bender Bender Rodriguez, the robot from the cartoon Futurama.

The effort, from a few years past, was not some group seeking to over throw the will of the people but rather to answer a dare to see if anybody could break into the system and so was engineered by a Professor and a team of students. They found that they could change all existing and future votes in the system.