The European Commission said Tuesday it suspects Samsung of not giving other companies fair access to patents it holds on standardized technology for mobile phones , despite committing to do so in 1998.

The Commission said that Samsung last year sought legal injunctions against other device makers in several EU states, alleging patent infringement.

The probe comes just as Samsung is locked in a battle with Apple over whether its Galaxy tablet too closely resembles the iPad.

A spokesman for the Commission couldn’t immediately say whether the patents also affect tablet computers.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BERLIN (AP) , A German appeals court has upheld a decision prohibiting Samsung Electronics Co. from selling two of its tablet computers in Germany, agreeing with Apple Inc. that they too closely resemble the iPad2.

The Duesseldorf state court ruled Tuesday that neither the South Korean company’s Galaxy Tab 10,1 nor the Galaxy Tab 8,9 could be sold in Germany because they were in violation of unfair competition laws.

But it said the successor Galaxy Tab 10,1 N is not affected by the ruling.

The ruling comes as part of a string of court battles between California-based Apple and Samsung over their tablet computers. In December, a Sydney court ruled that Samsung could sell its Galaxy tablet computers in Australia.

Microsoft’s Office software and other business programs helped profit exceed projections last quarter, even as sales of Windows suffered from sluggish personal-computer orders. Intel and IBM, meanwhile, both delivered rosier sales forecasts than some analysts had predicted.

Reports from the trio of companies, with a combined market value of almost $600 billion and an average lifespan of six decades, allayed investors’ concerns that a slowdown in Europe, anemic consumer demand and last year’s floods in Thailand would hobble the information-technology industry. Corporate customers haven’t let up on orders, lifting sales at all three companies, while Intel is getting an extra boost from emerging markets.

«Old dogs can still hunt,” said Pat Becker Jr., a fund manager at Becker Capital Management in Portland, Oregon. His firm has invested in all three companies.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, climbed 5,7 percent to $29,71 today in U.S. trading. Intel rose 2,9 percent to $26,38, while IBM advanced 4,4 percent to $188.52.

‘Oracle-Specific Event’

The results were a relief for many investors after Oracle Corp. reported weaker-than-anticipated earnings last month, fueling speculation that businesses were holding off on technology spending, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland.

«The results of these three companies suggest that was an Oracle-specific event,” Barnicle said.

The positive outlook also contrasted with the earnings of Google Inc., which also delivered its report yesterday. The Mountain View, California-based company missed analysts’ sales and profit estimates, dragged down by the European crisis and a push into mobile technology, which yields lower ad revenue. Google shares fell 8,4 percent to $585,99 today.

Sales at Microsoft’s business division, largely made up of Office products such as Word and Excel, rose 2,8 percent to $6,28 billion. Analysts had estimated $6,1 billion on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s Xbox video-game business also topped projections, generating $4,24 billion in revenue.

Microsoft Profit

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, posted net income of $6,62 billion, or 78 cents a share. That beat the 76-cent average estimate.

IBM, the biggest provider of computer services, reported fourth-quarter earnings of $4,71 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had predicted $4.62. The Armonk, New York-based company’s forecast for 2012 earnings also exceeded predictions.

Intel, which dominates the market for computer chips, expects sales of $12,8 billion, indicating that production is bouncing back after the Thai flooding. The disaster wiped out a quarter of the computer industry’s disk-drive production, delaying shipments of PCs. Research firms Gartner Inc. and IDC had lowered their PC sales forecasts as a result of the floods.

The supply disruptions hurt revenue at Santa Clara, California-based Intel last quarter. IBM’s sales also were lower than expected in the period.

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Redwood City, California- based Global Equities Research LLC, says technology companies still face long-term challenges. Higher gasoline costs, for one, will both hurt consumer spending and increase the price of raw materials, he said.

Corporate buyers are showing more resiliency than consumers, who are reeling from a still-shaky job market. Businesses are the driving force behind Microsoft, IBM and Intel’s results, said Michael Holland, chairman of New York- based Holland & Co., which oversees $4 billion in assets.

«The consumer continues to have unemployment problems and confidence problems, but businesses are doing everything they can to grind out profits,” Holland said.

-With assistance from Peter Burrows in San Francisco and Beth Jinks in New York. Editors: Nick Turner, Stephen West

Microsoft is preparing to give its cloud platform users the capability to run Linux on its Windows Azure cloud in 2012, according to a report.

The All About Microsoft blog reports that Microsoft is poised to enable customers to make virtual machines (VMs) persistent on Windows Azure and is slated to deliver a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its persistent VM capability in the spring of 2012.

The post goes on to say, «Customers who want to run Windows or Linux ‘durably’ (i.e., without losing state) in VMs on Microsoft’s Azure platform-as-a-service platform will be able to do so.”

In addition, according to the report: «The new persistent VM support also will allow customers to run SQL Server or SharePoint Server in VMs, as well. And it will enable customers to more easily move existing apps to the Azure platform.”

Back in June 2011, The Register reported that Microsoft was cozying up to Linux with support for Linux distributions on its Hyper-V virtualization stack.

«Supporting Linux on Hyper V also means that Microsoft can equip itself with the technical knowledge and driver-level support needed to run the open source OS on the company’s own Windows Azure cloud,” the report said.

The Register report also stated that Microsoft was in the early stages of delivering support for Linux on Windows Azure and had an early prototype in place, but the company would not be ready to deliver anything for close to a year.

Yet, according to both reports, Microsoft is seeing demand for the capability to run Linux on Azure, as the IT world at large is predominantly heterogeneous and enterprises with Microsoft technology also tend to have some Linux in their shops.

Microsoft is also understood to have held a gathering of game development companies at Disneyland, California after the E3 event this year to get an insight into what the developers want in the next Xbox and the challenges they had faced developing for the current platform. Some specific hardware components details has also been released giving an indication that the next Xbox could feature dual GPU chips, making a lot of sense for developers who would like fully programmable chips at their disclosure. This would not only improve the graphics of the console but also make the manufacturing process cheaper as two slower and narrower GPUs would be less expensive than a single expensive memory bus unit.

So there’s now a chance for console gamers to rejoice as they could have better graphics with the dual GPU chips as they get in PC rigs with Crossfire X and SLI setups.

Zennström is a Swedish entrepreneur best known for co-founding high-profile online ventures including Skype and music subscription service Kazaa.

In 2006, Zennström founded Atomico, a venture capital firm based in London, which invests in innovative companies with game-changing technology or disruptive business models.

Wrapp has raised $5,5 million in a Series A funding round led by Atomico, with Zennström joining Wrapp’s board of directors. Nordic VC firm Creandum also participated in the round.

Wrapp was founded by Hjalmar Winbladh, the co-founder of mobile internet company Sendit and mobile VoIP company Rebtel. The company has offices in Stockholm and Silicon Valley.

Winbladh created Wrapp with Andreas Ehn, the founding chief technology officer of digital music service Spotify.

Joining them is Carl Fritjofsson, former strategy adviser to Groupon, Aage Reerslev, founder of mobile browser Squace, and Fabian Mansson, former chief executive of H&M and Eddie Bauer.

Inspired by Facebook, Wrapp allows users to give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, while allowing friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends.

Offering iPhone, Android and web apps, users sign in via their Facebook account. By tapping the app’s Celebration tab, they can browse friends or events, and select people to send gift cards to.

All available gift card offers for that particular friend are then automatically listed.

The user selects the retailer and the gift card offer they want, writes a greeting, selects a delivery date, enters payment details and sends the gift.

The recipient is then notified via Facebook and the Wrapp application.

For now, Wrapp only operates with retailers in Sweden. However, it says it will use the new funding to expand to the United States and the United Kingdom.

«Sweden validated our belief that people want to make giving gifts of real value among friends an everyday event, and don’t want to limit it to just birthdays, holidays or other big occasions,” Winbladh said in a statement.

«Everyone likes to be recognised and celebrated. Attractive brands are providing the free gift cards. All you have to do is choose one and send it to a friend. No strings attached.”

Meanwhile, US-based shopping discovery app Zoomingo has secured $1,3 million in funding from VC firms Naya Ventures and Benaroya Capital, and several prominent angel investors.

The app pulls in sales data from major retailers using a combination of manual and automated means, as well as crowdsourcing via its «Deal Scouts», which are positioned in major US cities.

Zoomingo was founded by Krishnan Seshadrinathan and Shirish Nadkarni, who also co-founded Livemocha, the world’s largest language learning website with more than 10 million users.

Shirish also founded mobile email pioneer TeamOn, which was acquired by RIM in 2002.

Zoomingo says it will use the additional capital to enhance its current mobile application, build a retailer platform and expand its outreach to customers and retailer partners.

Windows is one of the most valuable businesses of Microsoft, and accounts for around 25% of Microsoft’s $28 Trefis price estimate, which stands nearly 3% above its current market price.

Microsoft Has a Good Chance to Capture the Tablet Market with Windows 8

Apple currently rules the consumer tablet market with the iPad, and is starting to gain traction in enterprises as well. Google’s Android platform has largely been unimpressive, although that might change with the launch of the next version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich.

Microsoft now has the backing of two of the biggest computer manufacturers — Dell and HP. It will also presumably be backed by HTC, Samsung and other device manufacturers which make Windows Phone devices. It is the only alternative to Android for them, which isn’t doing very well in terms of sales.

It stands a good chance of beating Android and dethroning iOS as the top tablet platform in a few years time, though this view has many naysayers. However, there is still almost a year before it gets to market, which might turn out to be a bit late.

Windows 7 sold nearly 450 million copies until now, and we expect Windows 8 to break that record. We expect Apple to sell around 55 million iPad units in 2012, with a market share of around 60—70% by then. If Microsoft is able to grab a significant share of the tablet market, it could mean a huge boost to its Windows revenues, which have been on a marginal decline lately, due to slowing Windows 7 sales.

After years of ridiculing the idea of cloud computing, Oracle is officially «all in» as of last week’s Oracle Open World show. At the confab, CEO Larry Ellison took the wraps off Oracle’s public cloud platform and strategy.

Oracle’s public cloud is going to be a combination of platform as a service (PaaS) and applications/software as a service (SaaS), with the «glue» being Java Enterprise Edition. The five components comprising Oracle’s public cloud are Sun servers; Fusion Middleware, Oracle database; Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c; and Oracle’s Fusion Applications.A few pieces of the Oracle cloud (like CRM) are there now; most pieces seem to be coming «in the near future» (as is pricing, apparently).

Summary: Microsoft and Oracle are on opposite sides when it comes to the importance of multitenancy support to their respective public-cloud platforms.

After years of ridiculing the idea of cloud computing, Oracle is officially «all in» as of last week’s Oracle Open World show. At the confab, CEO Larry Ellison took the wraps off Oracle’s public cloud platform and strategy.

Oracle’s public cloud is going to be a combination of platform as a service (PaaS) and applications/software as a service (SaaS), with the «glue» being Java Enterprise Edition. The five components comprising Oracle’s public cloud are Sun servers; Fusion Middleware, Oracle database; Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c; and Oracle’s Fusion Applications.A few pieces of the Oracle cloud (like CRM) are there now; most pieces seem to be coming «in the near future» (as is pricing, apparently).

While Ellison aimed almost all of his barbs and rhetoric at Salesforce last week, Oracle has another big PaaS competitor out there: Microsoft. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s PaaS play, with its .Net «glue» and System Center management components. Office 365, SQL Azure, Windows Intune and other Microsoft-cloud enabled apps (like Dynamics CRM Online) are its SaaS play. So far, none of Microsoft’s cloud-enabled apps is running on Windows Azure; they’re running in Microsoft datacenters but not hosted on Microsoft’s own public-cloud platform.

The Java-.Net differentiator isn’t the only key one worth noting between Oracle’s and Microsoft’s public cloud platforms. Oracle officials claimed last week that a multitenant model isn’t the right one for Oracle’s cloud customers because of potential security issues — a rather vague claim that not just Oracle’s competitors have called into question.

Microsoft it taking the opposite stance. The Redmondians increasingly are channeling Office 365 users toward using the «Standard» (multitenant) SKUs and away from the «Dedicated» (single tenant) approach. Earlier this year, Office 365 officials told me that they believe in just a couple of years the vast majority of Office 365 users will be relying on the Standard/multitenant offerings, resulting in a phase-out of the Dedicated Microsoft cloud-apps.

I asked Microsoft for comment on how its public-cloud solutions compare to those announced by Oracle and was told no. (I guess the Softies are saving all their cloud-compete arrows for VMWare and Google Apps/Docs….)

Oracle wasn’t the only company launching more direct attacks on the Microsoft cloud platform last week. Google also unveiled a developer preview of Google Cloud SQL, a cloud database for the Google App Engine platform. The new offering is a MySQL database environment with JDBC support (for Java-based App Engine applications) and DB-API support (for Python-based App Engine applications). Google isn’t offering any guidance as to when it will make a final version of Google Cloud SQL available.

Microsoft officials also declined to comment on how Google Cloud SQL stacks up against SQL Azure.

Yahoo made that clear Wednesday with the introduction of a new way for friends in different locations to simultaneously browse through pictures. The company also unveiled its first official application for the millions of devices running on Google’s Android software.

It’s part of a broader effort by Yahoo to recapture some of the ground that it has lost in recent years to Facebook, which has emerged as an advertising and photo-sharing hub. Yahoo touted its free Android app as a sign of its determination to become a bigger force on mobile phones and tablets.

Yahoo’s product managers are making the push at a time of internal turmoil.

The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is trying to figure out whether it makes sense to sell part or all of its business after firing tough-talking Carol Bartz as CEO earlier this month. Employees were told the process could take several months in an e-mail last week from Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo. In the meantime, Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse is also filling in as interim CEO.

«Our mission is to speed innovation, to bring great new products to the market,” Steve Douty, Yahoo’s vice president of applications management told reporters Wednesday. «That is not going to change. We are moving ahead full steam just like we have before.”

Flickr’s newest sharing tool, called «Photo Session,” is designed to replicate the experience of leafing through an old-fashioned photo album, even if the people who are browsing are located thousands of miles apart. Any of Flickr’s nearly 170 million users can activate a session by obtaining a special link that can be sent to other invitees. A photo session can be done on iPhones, iPads and personal computers using the Safari, Firefox and Chrome browsers. The feature doesn’t currently work on Internet Explorer or Opera browsers.

Photo Session also doesn’t work on the new Android app, but Yahoo plans to address that shortcoming in future updates.

Until now, the millions of people with Android devices had to rely on apps designed by non-Yahoo programmers. Douty cited the Android app as just one of several that Yahoo will be releasing in the next few months to expand its reach beyond the 137 million mobile devices that currently use some of its services.

In doing so, Yahoo hopes to revive its revenue growth after several years of erosion that have contrasted with steady growth at Google and Facebook. Yahoo’s financial funk has depressed its stock price and ushered out three CEOs in less than five years — Bartz, Yang and Terry Se

We understand that Apple has barred Microsoft and Amazon from discussing what would otherwise be a high-profile deal, especially for Microsoft’s fledgling Azure cloud service.

But Reg sources close to Microsoft this week confirmed rumours circulating in June that Apple’s iCloud is running on Azure and Amazon. Customers’ data is being striped between the pair. iCloud was released as a beta in August and is expected by the end of this year.

Apple and Amazon did not respond to our requests to comment, while Microsoft told us: «At this time, we don’t have any comment around whether Apple is a Windows Azure customer.”

According to our sources, Microsoft insiders see the iCloud deal as a validation of Azure. So far, Microsoft has pushed Azure using the marketing 101 playbook. Redmond has flagged up the start-ups and websites it has attracted in an attempt to prove to other devs that Azure is «cool». It is also promoting those corporate customers who’ve floated onboard to prove its cloud is being taken seriously by business users.

iCloud puts Azure into a different league, given the brand love for Apple and the Apple management’s fanatical attitude to perfection. It is a «huge consumer brand, a great opportunity to get Azure under a very visible workload,” our sources told us.

Apple is understood to have elected to outsource the plumbing of iCloud because its core competence lies in «building great consumer experiences». It didn’t make sense for Apple to become a cloud provider.

By selecting two suppliers, both very different in their services and their level of maturity, Apple is reducing its risk of becoming hostage to a single supplier.

Microsoft and Amazon will now need to ensure they keep up with the other on reliability, new features, security, and price.
More to learn

Apple has had a recent unpleasant experience in providing online services: in a famous memo, Steve Jobs admitted his company had «more to learn about internet services» following the outages and failures of his precursor to iCloud for email, contacts, calendar, photos and other files — MobileMe.

Also, there’s the cost and delay involved in building the infrastructure that iCloud requires as well as assembling and building the core services. Buildings, power, servers, storage, the recruitment of personnel and having the facility certified would cost a minimum of $100m. A more realistic cost for full-scale roll-out could be closer to $1bn.

Microsoft has already built several mega data centres to run Azure, in addition to its search engine Bing, in anticipation of big customers. The company has at least 24 data centres running Azure worldwide.

To give you an idea of the scale, the first phase of one of these in Chicago is 700,000 square feet; it uses a modular design based on containers. Chicago has a capacity of 112 containers, with each holding 224,000 servers — Microsoft uses Dell.

That said, Apple could be biding its time in using Microsoft and Amazon.

Apple is building a $500m data centre in North Carolina. If reports of the hardware going in there are correct, the centre’s data capacity should run into tens of petabytes and be more than suited to running iCloud — for now, at least.
Striping

iCloud is believed to be running on the full Azure service — the Windows Azure compute and controller part and SQL Azure storage which hosts tables, queues and flat files. It’s not clear how many of Microsoft’s Dell servers are hosting iCloud.

The iCloud data is being striped between the Amazon and Microsoft clouds. That means Apple or Microsoft or Amazon or all three have to implement through the software a way of identifying which user’s information is stored in what locations and then to route requests to the correct server.

If the data is duplicated, then software would handle load-balancing or randomly send user’s requests to one cloud or the other, or change access policies depending on things like network speed and server availability.

The striping process segments logically sequential data such as single files so segments can be written to different physical devices. The process can help speed up access to data because you don’t rely on read/write access speeds of a single disk in a machine.

The challenge in running two clouds under an overall service, if there is one, will be in smoothly managing a unified system where the controllers could well be running on different operating systems or be written in different languages.

This is a very real possibility; while AWS and Azure emulate virtual servers, most AWS users run on Linux while all Azure users have to run on Windows. Even if a cross-platform language like Java is used to bridge the gap, then tuning the software for both will mean additional cost and complexity.

One way to avoid managing different code bases and ensuring the best levels of performance could be for iCloud to also run on Windows on AWS. This would be a potentially even bigger victory for Microsoft as it would mean iCloud isn’t just running on Azure from Microsoft but is also running on Windows while on Amazon. ^®