As the dust settled on Friday’s landmark US$1 billion ruling against Samsung in a patent lawsuit brought by Apple, Reuters analyzed what the decision means moving forward.
One facet of the saga: What happens to the Apple-designed — and Samsung-supplied — chips that help power the iPad and iPhone?
Samsung will continue to supply the chips, according to Reuters. There is a “strict internal firewall” separating Samsung’s handset business — the one slammed by Friday’s U.S. court ruling — and its components operations business, which is the sole supplier of some of the key components Apple needs to build its devices. An emergency meeting Sunday reiterated this divide.
The contract for the chips is worth billions to Samsung, according to Reuters. And regardless the outcome of its inevitable appeal, Samsung will likely be unwilling to jeopardize its lucrative parts deal — which accounts for more than one-quarter of the component costs of the iPhone.
Friday’s court ruling also had huge ramifications on the stock market. Samsung Electronic’s shares dropped 7.5 percent Monday, while shares of Nokia — which, along with Microsoft, stands to gain from Friday’s decision — leapt 10 percent.
Brit Arrested After Racist Soccer Tweets
A 22-year-old in Essex, England, was arrested on suspicion of a “racially aggravated public order offense” after racist tweets directed at a professional soccer player, according to The Guardian.
Forward Carlton Cole of West Ham was the target of the tweets, which were sent after West Ham lost Saturday to Swansea. Cole, who is black, retweeted the racist messages, which chided his performance using a racial epithet.
This is not the first time an English soccer players has been the victim of racist tweets. Nor, for that matter, is it the first time Cole has been the target of racism: Almost three years ago to the day, fans directed monkey chants at him.
Foxconn’s Higher Wages – and Possibly Fewer Jobs
Foxconn, the Apple supplier made famous over allegations of worker mistreatment, announced that it has raised wages for production-line workers in Zhengzhou by 16 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Foxconn, which was lauded last week for following up on its promises to improve working conditions, has more than 1 million employees throughout China and about 150,000 in Zhenghou.
ZDNet had a different take on the Foxconn story. Citing a Chinese-language article, ZDNet pointed out that Foxconn’s pledge to cut hours — which it has indeed followed through on — has actually been bad for some employees.
An unnamed employee said that most workers actually preferred to work overtime hours because it enables them to make the most amount of money in the shortest timeframe.
Bugs Plaguing French Telecom
Orange, France’s largest mobile network, has been hit by another bug that left hundreds of thousands of customers without access to their voicemail, according to Giga OM.
About 800,000 customers lost access to their voicemail for about four hours, according to Giga OM.
The company has reportedly fixed the problem, but outages are nonetheless turning into something of a pattern for Orange. It also had a massive outage in July which left millions without the ability to make call for about 12 hours.
Alas, outages might not even be Orange’s biggest problem at the moment. The company is under pressure from increasing domestic competition, while the company’s former CEO was indicted in July on charges relating to the suicides of more than 30 employees.
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