Motorola seeks 2.25% of Apple iPhone sales for use of patents

A legal brief written by Apple's attorneys in Germany, trying to get Motorola Mobility to show proof of a cross-licensing agreement between it and Qualcomm, contains some interesting information according to FOSS Patents. In the brief, Apple claims that Motorola is seeking a royalty fee of 2.25% of Apple iPhone sales in return for use of Motorola Mobility's standard-essential patents. The context of the offer, though, is about just one patent which is the one that forced Apple to remove certain products from its German online store.
Apple wants to show the court by using the Qualcomm-Motorola agreement that the latter's request is too high. Additionally, Apple's lawyers in Germany have started asking the court to grant Discovery motions to allow it to get information from other manufacturers proving the unFRANDness of Motorola Mobility's royalty demand. So far, motions were granted for Apple to contact LG, HTC, Nokia and Ericsson and seeks any information about deals or licensing agreements that each entered into relating to Intellectual Property from Motorola Mobility.
If Motorola Mobility were to get what it is asking for, that would work out to about $15 for each 16GB Apple iPhone 4S sold, $17 for each 32GB version and $21 for each 64GB variant, based on the unsubsidized price of the models. Considering that 93 million Apple iPhones were sold last year (although not all of those were the iPhone 4S) and it would be quite an impressive payday for Motorola Mobility. Which is why Apple's attorneys are working so hard to prove the unreasonableness of Motorola Mobility's demand.
source: FOSS Patents

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Look Out AT&T Customers, Your Upgrade Fee Doubles On Sunday

If you’re an AT&T customer coming off of a contract and looking to snap up a new phone, you should probably get on that right now. According to an AT&T memo obtained by BGR, AT&T will be raising their device upgrade fee from $18 to $36 as of February 12, which means you’ve got until Sunday to swap phones before your first post-upgrade bill gets even bigger.
The memo states that the fee hike is needed because “the overall costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased.”

In AT&T’s defense, it’s a fee that’s most people will only have to deal with once every two years or so, but the additional cost is unlikely to please customers. They’re also not the only big carrier that has had to hike up their fees — Sprint made the transition to a $36 upgrade fee this past September. But still, AT&T doubling their upgrade fee is a puzzling move when their biggest rival (Verizon) still doesn’t charge one at all.
Strangely, the part of the memo that BGR has released doesn’t mention anything about a cap like the one Sprint offers, so it’s possible that families and groups looking to upgrade en masse could really get stung here.
And here’s a question worth thinking about: what will the consumers have to say? Verizon Wireless got a very public earful when it was discovered that they planned to charge customers a $2 “convenience fee” whenever they used a credit card to make an online or over-the-phone bill payment. After one day, public pressure and scrutiny from the FCC forced Verizon to kill the plan in its tracks. Given enough exposure, AT&T customer may be inclined to lash out in a similar way.
Hopefully this move doesn’t inspire Verizon to try something similar. We’ve seen it happen before: Verizon killed their unlimited data plans one year after AT&T did, and AT&T began requiring data packages for messaging phones not long after Verizon implemented the idea.

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Designing for Mobile: 7 Guidelines for Startups to Follow

This is a guest post by Ryan Spoon (@ryanspoon), a principal at Polaris Ventures. Read more about Ryan on his blog at ryanspoon.com.
As an investor, I’ve seen hundreds of mobile application pitches. And as a consumer, I’ve downloaded hundreds more – some out of curiosity and others in the hope that I’ll find something so useful and exciting that I’ll make room for it on my iPhone’s home screen.
From both perspectives, I am rarely excited by download numbers. What gets my attention is engagement: how frequently an application is used and how engaged those users are. This ultimately is the barometer for an application’s utility and/or strength of community. And if either of those two factors are strong, growth will certainly come. Just ask Instagram, Evernote, LogMeIn and others.
Creating great mobile experiences requires dedication to building product specifically for mobile. It sounds obvious, but it’s so often overlooked. Mobile users have different needs, desires and environments; and as the application creator, you have different opportunities to create utility and engagement.  With that in mind – and with the help of my former eBay colleague and Dogpatch Labs resident, Rob Abbott (founder of EGG HAUS and Critiq), we’ve put together 7 design guidelines to consider when building for mobile.
Just like the presentations on leveraging Facebook (both on-Facebook.com and off-Facebook) and Twitter, success comes from building meaningful experiences that are honest to the native environments.

Companies: beRecruited, eBay, Widgetbox, InGameNow, Polaris Venture Partners, Dogpatch Labs, ReadyForZero, Movity, Fridge, ShoeDazzle, Offline Labs, Formspring, KISSmetrics Ryan is a Principal at Polaris Venture Partners and leads Dogpatch Labs California. Either as lead investor or board observer, he works closely with Automattic, Formspring, Frid.ge (acquired by Google), KISSmetrics, LOLapps, Movity (acquired by Trulia), Offline Labs, Recurly, and ShoeDazzle. Previously, Ryan founded beRecruited.com (acquired in 2007), spent 2003-2007 at eBay (internet marketing, social media & leading Kijiji.com) and launched InGameNow as part of sfEntrepreneurs, LLC. Most recently, Ryan ran marketing at Flite (formerly Widgetbox).
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