Hasta La Gadget!

Another bring your own device-focused investment to add to the pile: Miradore, a Finnish mobile device management startup, has announced it’s just closed a €1.2 million Series B funding round, with new backers including Finnish VC firm Inventure and Belgian ICT executive Willem Hendrickx. Hendrickx, currently SVP EMEA at Riverbed Technology, has served as an advisor to Miradore since June 2011 and will also now join the board, bringing “extensive expertise in building and developing direct and indirect global sales channels,” according to the startup. Sami Lampinen, managing director at Inventure, also joins the board.

The investment will be used primarily to strengthen Miradore’s global sales. The majority of its business is still in Finland, but it says partners and sales are “ramping up” in several international markets — including the U.S., UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Brazil, Singapore and Hong Kong. ”The funding round ensures we have the resources required for the next steps in our path to the global IT and mobile device management markets and the capability to serve both existing and new customers in an optimal way,” said Kristian Järnefelt, CEO of Miradore, in a statement.

As with other competitors in this space, Miradore’s technology aims to make it easier for organizations to manage the increasingly diverse portfolio of devices being pushed inside their walls by the BYOD trend that’s washing away the prescriptive IT department model of yesteryear. (A recent report by Forrester on mobile adoption in the enterprise found that 66 percent of employees now use two or more devices every day, including desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets.)

Miradore offers a single cloud-based dashboard for unified remote management of what it describes as “a wide variety” of computers, tablets and smartphones — a dashboard that it says can scale to cover tens of thousands of devices. Its platform supports Windows, Linux, OS X for Mac, Android, iOS for iPhone/iPad, Symbian and Windows Phone. Key customer segments include managed service providers (MSPs) — who provide IT services to multiple customers with diverse IT environments — and retail chains with a number of geographically dispersed outlets.

One such partner on the retail side is Fujitsu America, which uses Miradore’s technology in its point-of-sale management offering — branded “Fujitsu Retail Systems Management, powered by Miradore” — although that is not a BYOD-related deployment. The startup says it can also track network printers and routers and switches.

Järnefelt tells TechCrunch the startup has about 30 active MSP customers — in turn serving a total of around 200 end customers. “Our largest end customer reference is UPM, which is the third largest paper and pulp company in the world, with about 35,000 managed devices, and smallest end customer is a SMB company having just five devices. In total Miradore is used to manage about 200,000 devices,” he says.

Miradore is not short of big-name competitors. Järnefelt lists the likes of BMC, CA, Symantec, IBM, HP, LanDesk, Kaseya, N-Able, and Dell Kace as offering rival BYOD services, although he reckons Microsoft’s configuration management offerings are at least complementary to what it can offer. “We regard them more as a partner, because we can complement them by offering asset management, license management and some other features too that they do not have,” he notes.

“Miradore is on the verge of an international breakthrough,” added Inventure’s Lampinen in a statement. “The core team has worked extremely hard to open doors to international markets and has shown great progress in building partnerships and scaling the business. With the new capital, they are better positioned to benefit from the sales potential in growth markets such as Asia and Brazil.”

Bought yourself a shiny new Nexus 7 just before the priced dropped on October 29th and feel a bit slighted? ASUS and Google want to turn your frown upside down, each offering their own compensation. Folks in Europe who purchased any variant of the tablet from ASUS prior to October 30th are eligible to a redeem a 25-pound or 30-euro coupon for its online shop. Apparently, the deal has been in place since October 30th, and you’ll have until the 30th of this month to submit your proof of purchase (from sanctioned dealers, naturally) and apply. Sure, it may not be as nice as a Google Play credit for apps or cash in-pocket, but at least ASUS is showing it can share at least some love for early adopters. Europeans should move their cursors over to the ASUS source link below for all the details.

Tracking back to Google, Droid-Life notes that Google’s price protection policy might have you covered for some cash-back, as well. If you purchased the 16GB model from Google Play between the 14th and the 29th of October, you have until about the 13th of this month to get a refund for the price difference (15 days from the initial price drop). As always, check out the Google link below for more details.

Filed under: Tablets, ASUS, Google

ASUS, Google offer monetary compensation for Nexus 7 tablets bought before price drop originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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U.K.-based distance learning university, the Open University, is developing a series of apps to deliver undergraduate course materials to students’ smartphones and tablet devices, starting next year. The OUAnywhere app will allow undergraduates to access their main course materials through their handheld devices, along with the audio and visual content the OU produces to support studies.

The team developing the apps say they are being designed from the ground-up for touch interfaces, and will offer “high quality visual images rather than lists”.

The apps are being made available across “a plethora of platforms”, with native iOS and Android apps in the pipeline, plus HTML5 apps for other platforms. Supported devices will include

• Android devices
• iPads (iPad 1 and above)
• iPhones (iPhone 3GS and above)
• Kindle Fire
• Microsoft Surface

OUAnywhere is being created in response to increasing use of mobile devices by students — the OU notes that mobile usage of its virtual learning environment in one month is now comparable to usage for an entire quarter of the previous year. It’s also noticed students are spending much more time online via mobile and tablet devices, and clocking up more repeated visits. (Students using gadgets? It’s not exactly rocket science… )

Ultimately the university wants to be able to provide all course learning materials on one device to make it easier for students to squeeze study sessions into their day — an important factor for its many part-time students who combine studying for a degree with full- or part-time work.

Currently it delivers some course materials online, but also sends out materials via post — such as print textbooks, audio CDs and DVDs.  The apps will be able to streamline all these different course resources into a single interface.

The OU notes that its scalable XML workflow can automatically render a single input file to multiple formats (print, web and ebook) — giving it the ability to repurpose existing study materials for new delivery mechanisms such as mobile. However in future iterations of OUAnywhere it says it will look to create “new learning products” specifically designed for mobile and tablet devices — rather than converting legacy learning materials.

The university also plans to develop interactive e-books with embedded audio, video and HTML5 learning activities (using the EPUB 3 specification) for future iterations of the apps.

The first wave of OUAnywhere apps are due for release in Q1 2013.

Apple has pulled down a legal statement on its U.K. website, posted after it lost an appeal in a U.K. court against a ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe the design of the iPad. It had been ordered to acknowledge the ruling in a public post. However yesterday, at another hearing at the U.K. Court of Appeal, Apple was criticized for adding “incorrect” and “untrue” information to the statement — and ordered to remove it within 24 hours, and replace it with a compliant notice within 48 hours. The original statement had the tone of a non-apology (see full statement below).

“I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this,” Bloomberg quoted Judge Robin Jacob saying yesterday. “That is a plain breach of the order.”

The statement was still on Apple’s U.K. website earlier today but has now been removed –

The court rejected Apple’s request yesterday for 14 days in which to post a new, compliant statement. The BBC quotes Lord Justice Longmore telling Apple’s lawyer, Michael Beloff: “We are just amazed that you cannot put the right notice up at the same time as you take the other one down.”

Another judge, Sir Robin Jacob, is reported to have added: “I would like to see the head of Apple [Tim Cook] make an affidavit about why that is such a technical difficulty for the Apple company.”

The court gave Apple 48 hours to repost a compliant notice. (Update: Apple has published a compliant version of the court notice in U.K. newspaper, The Guardian this morning — as spotted by TNW.)

The original web statement, with the offending paragraphs highlighted in bold, follows below

On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic(UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do notinfringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the Highcourt is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.

In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:

“The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back. There is a crisp edge around the rim and a combination of curves, both at the corners and the sides. The design looks like an object the informed user would want to pick up and hold. It is an understated, smooth and simple product. It is a cool design.”

“The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following. From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.”

That Judgment has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 18 October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal’s judgment is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html. There is no injunction in respect of the registered design in force anywhere in Europe.

However, in a case tried in Germany regarding the same patent, the court found that Samsung engaged in unfair competition by copying the iPad design. A U.S. jury also found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple’s design and utility patents, awarding over one billion U.S. dollars in damages to Apple Inc. So while the U.K. court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple’s far more popular iPad. 

A UK Court of Appeal has ordered Apple to remove a statement on its website following a court ruling in which Apple lost an appeal against a ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe the design of the iPad.

The court had ordered Apple to post an acknowledgment of the ruling on its website. Apple complied with this order by posting what amounted to a non-apology to Samsung. However it’s now in hot water for posting “incorrect” and “untrue” information, according to the Court of Appeal in London. Appeal Court judges today criticized Apple’s public statement, in which it inserted four paragraphs including details of ‘similar German lawsuits’ which the court says are not true.

“I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this,” Bloomberg quotes Judge Robin Jacob saying. “That is a plain breach of the order.”

According to Bloomberg, the UK Court of Appeal has ordered Apple to remove the statement within 24 hours and post a new notice acknowledging inaccurate comments. Apple’s request for 14 days to make the change was rejected.

Bloomberg quotes Michael Beloff, a lawyer for Apple, telling the court that the comments posted by Apple were in line with the original order. The notice “is not designed to punish, it is not designed to make us grovel,” he is quoted as saying. “The only purpose is to dispel commercial uncertainty.”

The offending four paragraphs in Apple’s statement are highlighted in bold below

On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic(UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do notinfringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the Highcourt is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.

In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:

“The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back. There is a crisp edge around the rim and a combination of curves, both at the corners and the sides. The design looks like an object the informed user would want to pick up and hold. It is an understated, smooth and simple product. It is a cool design.”

“The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following. From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.”

That Judgment has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 18 October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal’s judgment is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html. There is no injunction in respect of the registered design in force anywhere in Europe.

However, in a case tried in Germany regarding the same patent, the court found that Samsung engaged in unfair competition by copying the iPad design. A U.S. jury also found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple’s design and utility patents, awarding over one billion U.S. dollars in damages to Apple Inc. So while the U.K. court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple’s far more popular iPad.