Submitted by Jon Reed on
On Friday, after five days of court proceedings, Apple's attorneys wrapped up their arguments in the company's suit against Samsung for patent infringement. Their last witness to take the stand was Apple's damages expert Chris Vellturo, who, according to The Verge, estimates that Samsung could be liable for close to a whopping $2.2 billion. A portion of that number (about $1.5 billion) was derived by adding up Apple's royalty figures, which range from $1.61 to $15.03 per feature, per device, which comes out to $40.10 for each of the 37.36 million units Samsung has sold in the U.S. Samsung argues that the five features in question (which include slide to unlock and text auto-correct) are a part of Google's Android OS, not Samsung's devices, and that Apple is suing the wrong company.
Also on Friday, Apple hired Wolff Olins Global (a branding agency) CEO and creative director Karl Heiselman to fill a new marketing communications role. He worked with Apple in the early 1990s as a design contractor before leaving for another job
and eventually settling at Wolff Olins for the past 14 years. According to Advertising Age, "Apple's move to hire yet another creative leader is a sign that it's still on the prowl for in-house creative and design talent, a strategy it ramped up last year." The move came just two days after Apple's human interface design leader, Greg Christie, announced his retirement.
On Saturday it was revealed by The Oregonian that Apple purchased a hydroelectric plant, known as the 45-Mile Project, in Jefferson County, Oregon. This is about 20 miles from Prineville, where Apple is currently building an enormous data center. The plant will generate from 3 to 5 megawatts, which could power 2,500 to 3,000 homes, but will only cover a fraction of the data center's demand. The data center will be comprised of two 338,000 square foot buildings. You can read more about this at AppleInsider.
After a major security flaw involving OpenSSL was announced early in the week, Apple announced on Thursday that neither iOS nor OS X, nor any of its web-based services were vulnerable to the flaw. Meanwhile, other large companies including Google, Yahoo and Facebook admitted that there were periods of time during which their services were vulnerable.IDC (International Data Corporation) reported on Wednesday that Apple's year-over-year growth in PC shipments declined 7% between 1Q13 and 1Q14, resulting in a 10.3% market share for the Cupertino giant and placing it fourth, just behind Lenovo (10.8%). HP led the pack with a 25.6% market share, followed by Dell's 24.5%. Gartner posted similar numbers, though it had Lenovo just behind Apple.
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According to a New York Times story last Monday, a class action lawsuit has been filed against some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel among others. The suit claims that the companies engaged in illegal hiring practices in an effort to prevent their employees from being poached by each other. The plaintiffs (and there are around 100,000 of them) claim that this resulted in lost wages - to the tune of a shocking $9 billion. The companies are now involved in negotiations and hope to settle the case within a few weeks.