Hasta La Gadget!

BlackBerry and Nokia rule the roost this week, just like the good ‘ol days (depending who you ask). That’s not to say it’s all about the old guard though, with Vine blossoming and Ubuntu taking a stab at the whole mobile OS thing too. All of the above is on the menu for this week’s Eurocast, all you have to do is grab your takeaway from the delivery options below.

Hosts: Dan Cooper, Mat Smith, Steve Dent, Sharif Sakr

Producer: James Trew

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If you’re anxious for all this talk about graphene to materialize into products that can be tucked away in your shoulder bag, you’re certainly not alone. A consortium dubbed the Graphene Flagship, which includes heavyweights such as Nokia and the University of Cambridge, has been selected by the European Union to participate in a program that’ll endow it with 1 billion euros over 10 years to make that happen. The hope is that pairing up researchers and businesses will hasten the development of material and component manufacturing processes for the carbon-based substance, and make it possible for graphene to find its way into products such as flexible electronics, batteries and faster processors. During the first 30 months of the program, 126 academic and industrial research groups spread throughout 17 European countries will be coordinated by Chalmers University of Technology and have their collective pockets filled with an initial 54 million euro budget to kick things off. It’s a long haul, but here’s hoping Espoo’s Morph concept inches a little closer to reality.

[Image credit: Nokia]

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Via: Nokia Conversations

Source: Graphene Flagship (PDF)

While we’re up and podcasting, the rest of Europe is (or at least in the large part, should be) in bed. That’s doesn’t deter the crew from convening on stage, and giving its take on CES so far. Everything runs smoothly until our US counterparts — jealous of course — want a slice of the action…

Hosts: Dan Cooper, Steve Dent, Mat Smith, James Trew, Jamie Rigg

Guests: (Official) Joseph Volpe, Ben Gilbert. (Unofficial) Terrence O’Brien, Brian Heater, Michael Gorman

Producer: James Trew

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Continue reading Engadget Eurocast 011 – 1.11.13 CES special

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The European Commission has delivered a “statement of objections” to Samsung’s leadership, in which it claims that Samsung was abusing its standard-essential patents in preventing Apple from making use of the same. Providing written notice is the next step in the EC’s investigation of Samsung, which began due to the Korean company’s many injunction requests and lawsuits filed in EU member states against Apple, and which isn’t going away despite Samsung having dropped all of its injunction requests in EU countries.

From here, the next step is for Samsung to formally reply to the charge from the EC, and ask for a hearing in front of regulators to defend its position. Once the Commission makes its judgement on the violations, following any defence mounted by Samsung, the gadget maker could face a fine up as much as 10 percent of its annual sales. The patents in question are related to 3G UMTS wireless communication, which Samsung had agreed to license with fair terms to its competitors in Europe.

“Intellectual property rights are an important cornerstone of the single market. However, such rights should not be misused when they are essential to implement industry standards, which bring huge benefits to businesses and consumers alike,” Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in statement released to Reuters on the subject.

This all began with the EU opening its investigation back in January. At the time, it explained that the reason for the investigation was due to Samsung’s pursuit of “injunctive relief in various Member States’ courts against competing mobile device makers based on alleged infringements of certain of its patent rights which it has declared essential to implement European mobile telephony standards.” Samsung tried to defray any potential fallout of this by dropping its requests for said “injunctive relief” earlier this week. That hasn’t stopped the formal charges, but it may help Samsung plead its case when it responds to this written request, helping it to eliminate or lessen any potential fine that might result.

While Russia and some African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries want to tax foreign content providers and track web-based traffic, the EU has formed a bloc with the US to kibosh any such changes. The showdown will happen at the ITU in Dubai next month, during a meeting of the 193 member countries. All 27 EU states are stolidly opposed to the changes (though many of its network providers aren’t), some of which were leaked from a draft Russian document proposing more control over traffic entering its networks. Other nations like Cameroon said that Google and other content providers should pay to have their traffic routed to the nation, which it said would help pay for network expansion there. But the European Commission believes “there is no justification for such proposals,” that the internet functions fine as is and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The EC added what others were likely thinking, namely “some countries treat this as a euphemism for controlling freedom of expression.”

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Source: Reuters