Here is your daily Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for November 1, 2010. Rumors, lawsuits and small victories after the Halloween weekend, with Fortune magazine claiming that not only will there be a CDMA Verizon (NYSE: VZ) iPhone in early 2011, but it will actually be a remodeled iPhone 4. Next, Apple fires back at Motorola (NYSE: MOT), filing a suit that multiple phones from the competitor infringe on Apple’s multi-touch screen technology patents. Another rumor from Barron‘s says the next iPad will sport multiple cameras when it ships early next year. Finally, Apple’s campaign to promote HTML5 picks up steam as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) shifts development away from the Silverlight media platform in favor of the new web standard.
Fortune Claims Verizon iPhone in Early 2011: Rumors of the Verizon iPhone’s impending arrival in the opening months of 2011 settled in the back half of October with the flood of major reports from outlets ranging from Bloomberg to Taiwan’s DigiTimes quieting in anticipation and subsequent wake of Apple’s third quarter earnings report. Attentions had, for the moment, turned away from the iPhone’s future on disparate carriers in the United States and on to the current phone’s success. The break is over though, as Fortune magazine reporter Sarah Ellison “confirmed” last Friday that America’s biggest mobile carrier would be getting an iPhone of its own early next year.
The bulk of Ellison’s report is similar to those published in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the aforementioned Bloomberg earlier this fall, reiterating that Apple would ship an iPhone compatible with Verizon’s CDMA 3G Network in the first quarter of 2011. The new twist to the rumor, though, is that the new phone will in fact be a modified version of the iPhone 4. Previous rumors about the Verizon iPhone have said that the new smartphone would be an original model, with an iPhone 5 model compatible with 4G networks uniform across different mobile carriers.
Apple Fires Back At Motorola With Counter Lawsuit: Motorola, in an effort to give its Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android-powered Droid phones a leg up in the smartphone race, recently filed a complaint with a U.S. District Court in Delaware to have multiple Apple patents nullified in addition to filing a lawsuit that claims the iPhone infringes on multiple Motorola-held patents. Apple has now countersued Motorola. AAPL filed two lawsuits in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin that claim that nine of Motorola’s phones infringe on six of Apple’s multi-touch screen technology patents.
iPad 2 to Feature Multiple Cameras: It was heavily rumored earlier this year that an iPad 2 would be shipping out before the holiday season, one similar to the current tablet but with a 7-inch screen similar to the one on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. After Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that 7-inch tablets were not good for tablet app development during his company’s third quarter earnings conference call, it’s been a mystery what features the second generation iPad may have. A note from investment research group Detwiler Fenteon & Co. obtained by Barron’s has shed some light on the successor to Apple’s popular tablet. The new iPad will apparently have two cameras, one on the front and back of the device, allowing for Face Time video chat like the iPhone 4 and current iPod Touch. The note claims that OmniVision Technologies (NASDAQ: OVTI) will supply both the front-facing VGA camera and the 5 megapixel rear camera on the new iPad. Detwiler’s note goes on to say that Apple will ship 2.5 million of the new iPads during the first months of 2011.
AAPL Targets Silverlight Functionality on iOS: Apple’s ongoing campaign to promote HTML5-based video and other media rather than the kind encoded using Adobe‘s (NASDAQ: ADBE) Flash on its iOS-based mobile platforms is starting to have an effect on the wider software development community. Microsoft announced at its Professional Developers Conference that it would be winding down development of its Silverlight media platform, a Flash and Apple Quicktime competitor used by companies like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) for online video support. The company has decided to instead focus on developing content using HTML5. Microsoft president of Servers and Tools Bob Muglia emphasized the need to shift resources in order to support Apple’s iOS platforms like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. “HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including the iOS platform.” With rumors swirling that Microsoft or even Apple may acquire Adobe, it’s questionable whether Flash will be supported at all after the next few years.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
