Motorola sued Apple in April last year over use of technology covered by U.S. Patent No. 6,359,898 in Germany. Apple for its part says because Motorola has licensed Qualcomm to make chips that allow devices to connect to UMTS and GRPS networks, and Apple is a third-party licensee of Qualcomm, Apple can legally use the MDM6610 chip from Qualcomm and other components from the chipmaker in its devices.

The latest is that the iPhone maker is now suing Motorola in the U.S., asking the District Court for the Southern District of California to step in a prevent the company from suing Apple for using technologies it says it is already licensed to use.

From the complaint:

Motorola’s German lawsuit is in direct breach of a Patent Licensing Agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm. As a Qualcomm customer, Apple is a third-party beneficiary of that contract. Moreover, under this same contract, Motorola’s rights under the ‘336 and the ‘898 patents are exhausted.

Apple also claims breach of contract and is asking for an injunction.

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Bloons 2 ($0.99 Universal) is the latest in a series of highly addictive games by Digital Goldfish featuring a dart-throwing monkey with a thing about popping balloons.  Originally implemented as a free browser-based Adobe Flash game by Ninja Kiwi, this iOS port is a much anticipated sequel of the original Bloons.

Gameplay for Bloons 2 is like a physics-based catapult game where you determine the direction and velocity to throw a dart toward groupings of ready-to-burst balloons. The objective is to pop a required number of balloons on each level before advancing to the next level. Where things start getting difficult is when obstacles are introduced. Then you realize that there are balloons within balloons that need to be struck multiple times in order to clear the level. And to make things almost impossible at times, the number of darts you have to throw on each level is limited, sometimes to just one dart.

An increasing numbers of balloons to pop, obstacles taking over the landscape and fewer darts, what is a monkey to do? Not to worry, there are other instruments of destruction available to throw.  Boomerangs, multi-throw darts, anti-gravity, remote control bees, fighter planes and laser vision, yes laser vision. And if you find that you are not the throwing ace you thought you were, there is a hint system that will point you in the right direction, as well as a skip-level feature that can get you past the most frustrating of levels. Continuously taking advantage of the hints and skips will cost you extra via in-app purchases.

The graphics are fresh and sharp across eight different worlds where the monkey in you will be challenged by 96 levels.  Busting through the early levels is rewarded by persistence and a straight power throwing strategy. But as you progress further in the game, learning how to lob a dart, planning out a sequence of throws, and even getting the timing just right, become skills you will need to master.

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Our friends at PaidContent this morning reported that Apple filed a complaint earlier this week in a federal court in San Jose citing two patents and asking for an injunction against the Korean electronics maker. The patents in question are  8,074,172 and 8,086,604. The first is related to spelling and autocorrect. The second is described as a “universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system.”

What Apple is asking for in this case is unclear — as in whether they’re targeting the Galaxy Tab or Galaxy phones or any other product — since most of the court documents haven’t been made publicly available.

But it’s clear that Apple is not through trying to use the courts to punish Samsung for, as Apple put it, “slavishly copying” its iPhone and iPad products.

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Patents blog FOSS Patents explains:

The judge explained that the court does not hold Apple to infringe claim 9 of EP1053613 on a ‘method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access [CDMA] signal’. In the court’s opinion, MMI failed to present conclusive evidence for its infringement contention.

Motorola had argued that the patent named above was “essential,” meaning that someone — in this case, Apple — would have to use technology covered by the patent if they’re using an industry-standard practice. The problem is, the judge didn’t see it that way and says Motorola didn’t present a convincing case that the patent was essential.

Just a week ago, Motorola claimed victory on two separate rulings related to its ongoing intellectual property battle with Apple. In the first, an injunction was granted against older iPhone and iPad models that infringed on a GPRS-related patent. And in the second, Motorola won an injunction against Apple devices that receive push email notifications from its iCloud system in Germany. Apple said it would appeal both.

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Sure, we’ve seen doctors, restaurant servers, clergy, commercial pilots and salesmen of all stripes incorporating Apple’s tablet into their daily workflow. But it turns out the iPad is a cool and useful way to store and use hundreds upon hundreds of conversions and formulas that mechanical engineers (or those studying to be one) need to use on a day-to-day basis too, when they’re designing brakes or fans or bridges or elevators.

The app’s overall design is very similar to something Apple might make, in that it uses literal interpretations of what you might use in the real world. Like Apple’s own Notes app or Calendar app, the app’s “scientific calculator” is actually made to look just like a yellow notepad you might use to jot down a quick formula or scribble a quick calculation.

You can pick from dozens of formula categories, from actuator and bearing on down to spring and vehicle drive. Clicking on each topic — which look like textured leather book spines — gives way to hundreds of pre-stored forumlas, with an explanation of what it does.

Once you’ve done a calculation, you can save it to your favorites, email it or print it out if you’re connected to a networked printer.

Mechanical Engineer ($5.99) was developed by Marc Schulman, co-founder of Multieducator, Inc., which builds education-oriented software. The company started out making software for history students that was distributed by CD-ROM back in the mid-90s. But since the iPhone arrived, they’ve (wisely) moved into making mobile apps for a wider variety of educational specialties, now counting 35 apps for both the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store.

Mechanical Engineer has been available for a year and has tallied about 20,000 downloads to date, according to Schulman. But it just recently received an upgrade that included a new series of formulas for hydraulic engineering, an upgraded graphic interface and the ability to print from the app.

I admit I would never need to use this in any capacity and there is a relatively small group of you readers that will find a need for this app, but it illustrates well how the iPad as a platform is changing the way that we work — toward touchscreen, always-on mobile devices — and inversely, how Apple has managed to work its way into highly scientific niches, decades after the very first time the Mac was deemed ” a toy.”

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What can SpeakToIt Assistant do?

I spent some time with SpeakToIt on both an old iPhone 3GS and my iPad 2 earlier today, and while it’s somewhat limited compared to Siri — more on that later — the $1.99 app can assist with certain tasks. Using the software, I was able to compose and send text messages and emails from my iPhone and my iPad; note that on the iPad, SpeakToIt appears as an iPhone app with support for pixel doubling.

SpeakToIt Assistant can also search the web for various information. I asked it to search Amazon for a product and the results were spot on. A small window with results opens in the top half of the display, but with one tap, these can be expanded to a full screen. Other searchable items include images, maps, news, stock information, the IMDB site and weather nearby or around the world.

Search results take place quickly; in some cases faster than Siri. That could be due to more people using Apple’s software and servers versus those using SpeakToIt. You can customize the look of the assistant and turn conversation mode on or off.

Multiple skills, but not hooks into iOS

Also in the list of skills are features to organize events or your agenda, tasks, translate words or phrases from English and a calculator for basic math or conversion of currency or measures. I rely on Siri’s “what’s my day look like?” function on a daily basis, and a “what’s on my calendar?” query worked just fine. I first had to give the OK for SpeakToIt to see my Google Calendar; the app isn’t hooked into the native iOS Calendar software.

And if you allow SpeakToIt to access your Twitter or Facebook accounts, you can send tweets or update your status by voice. You can also check in to FourSquare, although I didn’t try that function yet. Tweets and status updates worked out really well in my tests; better than the email dictations I tried.

Limitations and voice input

Here’s where the limitations come in. Although SpeakToIs Assistant is powered by Nuance, the same as Siri, I found message dictation to be marginal at best for some reason. With Siri, I can speak multiple sentences, along with punctuation, and the text is perfect nearly every time. With SpeakToIt, even when trying to add punctuation, my dictations became giant run-on sentences without punctuation.

And although the app has a coversation mode, so that you don’t have to hit the microphone button for every command, it’s not quite as conversational as Siri. If you want to talk about weather in several places, that’s fine. But the process of creating a message ends with the message dictation. You have to manually send it by tapping the Send button.

Siri also has better native app integration as well. I tried to create a reminder with SpeakToIt assistant, but it could only do so with Evernote. No such luck setting an alarm with the native Clock app, either. This is where Siri shines: It’s integrated at a lower level with iOS than any third-party option likely ever will be.

Worth a try if you temper expectations

Still, SpeakToIt assistant shows promise as a $1.99 app, as I’d expect it to keep maturing and improving. Folks that don’t want to pay for the app just yet can take a free chance on Valentine’s Day: the software will be free to the first 100,000 people who download it, and $0.99 after that for the remainder of the day.

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Over the weekend, blogger John Cozen posted a recent e-mail exchange with AT&T about why his smartphone data connection was slowed down after he breached 2.1 GB in his last billing cycle. His argument was his usage couldn’t be subject to throttling since his data use must be well under the top 5 percent cut-off AT&T stipulates in its terms. AT&T’s response was very interesting:

“To give you a baseline – the average data use across the country by the top 5% of AT&T smartphone customers was 2GB per month, effective August 2011. The amount of data usage of our top 5% of heaviest users varies from month-to-month and by market, based on the usage of others and the ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband services. To rank among the top 5%, you must use an extraordinary amount of data in a single billing period.”

When AT&T introduced throttling in October, its highest-tier data plan was 2 GB for $25, compared to the $30 charge for unlimited plans that Cozen and millions of older AT&T customers still hold on to. That seems reasonable enough. If the 2 GB is what the top 5 percent of smartphone users consume and is at the level AT&T considers abusive, then 2 GB is a good place to set its cap, charging customers more if they exceed it.

But AT&T just overhauled its plan pricing. It’s newest mid-tier plan charges customers $30 for 3 GB. Why is AT&T inviting new customers to consume a full gigabyte more of data while telling older customers – who pay the exact same monthly fee – that 2 GB of data is excessive? My bet is that the former is really a false invitation.

When AT&T first announced these new plans, I wrote there was good and bad in them for consumers. The bad is that new subscribers will have to pay $5 more a month than their predecessors for any of AT&T’s plans. The good is that AT&T is actually lowering the per-MB charges on data, which is ultimately necessary if average mobile broadband consumption continues to grow. Now I’m not so sure.

If 2 GBs is the average use for AT&T’s 5 percent hungriest users, that means 95 percent of AT&T’s customers are well under 2 GB each month. So the vast majority of A&T customers don’t get any real benefit out of the new 3 GB plans. To them it just amounts to a $5 a month price increase.

To be fair, AT&T can’t just price for what its customers are consuming today. It has to price for where they’re going, otherwise it would just be adjusting its rates every few months. It’s not unreasonable to assume that its customers average monthly data consumption will grow beyond 2 GB in the next few years, especially as mobile video services take off. AT&T is also a business that wants to make money off of mobile data, though this may be a rather sneaky way of doing it. Ma Bell’s data rates still far undercut those of its main competitor Verizon Wireless, however.

But AT&T also claims to be facing a capacity crunch. Since its planned acquisition of T-Mobile has failed, the carrier has used every podium it can find to proclaim that its networks are reaching critical mass in an effort to justify its spectrum acquisition aims. On its fourth quarter financial call, AT&T Randall Stephenson even blamed the government’s failure to let it have T-Mobile as the reason why its forced to raise data prices.

If AT&T is so network constrained, if 2 GB of monthly usage is too much for its networks, and if it doesn’t have the spectrum to meet future demands, then why is it opening up the data spigot, actually encouraging its customers to consume more for an extra $5 a month?

iPhone image courtesy of Flickr user mark sebastian

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Credit: CNET

Updated. The scheduled delivery of petitions asking Apple for better treatment of workers in factories that produce iPhones and iPads happened on schedule in New York City Thursday morning. Observers say there were far more press in attendance than actual protestors, but that the mission — to hand deliver the signatures of more than 250,000 people — was accomplished.

CNET’s Roger Cheng was at the petition hand off at Apple’s store in New York’s Grand Central Terminal and took photos.

Cheng also reports that Apple “was ready” for the representatives of Change.org and SumOfUs.org, the groups who organized the event. In all, there were  a”little more than a dozen supporters” who showed up, some holding up signs depicting an “ethical iPhone.” The Change.org representative who delivered the signatures to an Apple employee told him that the employees of the store “were very polite.”

Update: The same type of staged petition delivery is scheduled for Apple stores locations in San Francisco, Washington D.C., London and Bangalore.

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The document of the things they found is available here.

The FBI talked to many of his acquaintances and “covered inquiries in the United States as to [Jobs'] character, loyalty and general standing.” None of the findings are particularly eye-opening if you’ve read his biography, but it is yet more insight into a fascinating man who at one point put off the investigators for “three weeks” rather than talking to them.

It’s actually kind of amusing to read things in stiff, official bureaucrat-ese like:

“Two individuals, who were acquainted with Mr. Jobs while they were employed at ACI, offered favorable comments concerning Mr. Jobs. They stated that he is strongwilled, stubborn, hardworking and driven, which they believe is why he is so successful. They further stated, however, that Mr. Jobs possesses integrity as long as he gets his way: however, they did not elaborate on this.”

Most of the names of the people interviewed about Jobs are redacted, but if you know his personal history well enough, it’s easy to figure out who they talked to.

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Users who normally keep the app running while driving to stay abreast of traffic conditions will now be able to wave their hand in front of the phone and activate the voice recognition system. They can tell Waze to navigate home or to work, which are the two pre-set destinations that the system accepts right now for voice input. That’s a nice upgrade that puts Waze on better footing compared to Siri and Google’s free navigation system on Android.

But what’s more interesting is being able to report traffic or accidents while driving. Before, Waze allowed people to report this data but for safety reasons, it would turn off the keyboard while the car was moving. Now, users can input the data while they’re moving by just waving their hand in front of their phone and saying, “report traffic” or “report accident.” Waze will respond by asking for the severity of the situation and users can answer with “heavy,” “moderate,” “standstill” or “done” for traffic reports. It’s a smart way to add more information to the system while keeping people safe. That in turn should add more color to Waze’s traffic reports and help explain to drivers what’s at the heart of some of the traffic slowdowns their encountering.

The latest update also includes the ability to tell others about your destination, estimated time of arrival or that you’re running late. The Android update with the same features is expected in the coming months.

Adding voice control is a nice and logical step for Waze, which is now up to 12 million users, adding 1.5 million users a month. I really like the use of the proximity sensor, which gives Waze users a simple way to start voice actions. Google’s Search app also reportedly leverages the proximity sensor on the iPhone, allowing people to enter in a search by lifting the phone to their ear. But I can’t seem to make it work these days on my iPhone 4.

Waze’s use of the proximity sensor is a more elegant solution that works well within the Waze use case and should encourage a lot more active use of Waze. And it’s a nice alternative to waiting for Siri to open up to third-party developers.

“Siri is an amazing product and hopefully we’ll be able to use it eventually though Apple hasn’t given any insight on that. We couldn’t wait for it,” said Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski, Waze’s director of communications.

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AllThingsD is reporting that Apple will hold one of its signature press events to announce the iPad 2′s successor in the first week of March. According to ATD writer John Paczkowksi, “The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.” He has no information about how long after the event it will be possible to go buy the iPad 3 (the presumed name).

Apple has been pretty regular about its iPad cycle, and it was the first week of March last year when Apple first showed off the iPad 2. So it’s not far-fetched in any way that the company would have its successor ready the same time this year.

As for what will be inside it? Paczkowksi says he’s hearing the same basic thing as has been whispered in the Apple rumor mill over the last few months: faster chips, better graphics and about the same form factor. The one curious thing he says? The next iPad will have ”a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.”

So for those thinking a Retina Display was a given, this will make for at least some element of surprise once the iPad event arrives.

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Credit: Priceonomics

Priceonomics, which keeps track of the resale value of items like cars, bikes and gadgets, published a report Wednesday that shows how the value of iPhones, Android devices and BlackBerrys hold up over time. Short answer: iPhones, even years-old models, retain their value the longest, which means iPhone owners can recoup the most money when they go to resell their phones.

Here’s the method they  used:

We measure depreciation by comparing a phone’s current used price to its new price (without a contract) the day it was released. We examined all iPhone models and the 70 most popular Androids and 30 most popular BlackBerry models. We split phones into five different cohorts (newly released, 1, 2, 3, and 4 year-old phones). We then calculated which phones had the best resale by cohort, as well as which platforms in aggregate tended to retain their value the most.

The highest quality phones should have the best resale values over time and crappier phones should depreciate the fastest. The evidence is clear – the winner is the iPhone.

After crunching the data they came up with a series of charts, like one that shows that after owning a smartphone for 18 months, iPhone owners can resell theirs for 53 percent of the original price, Android owners for 42 percent and BlackBerry owners for 41 percent of the original price.

That part won’t be news to people who make a habit of reselling their old iPhone before or right after buying a new one a new one. There are sites like Gazelle.com, eBay and NextWorth.com that regularly buy used iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android phones in order to resell them. The iPhone is always the easiest to resell and will go for a decently high price if you time it right.

But all is not lost for penny-pinching Android owners. One caveat to the data that Priceonomics found is that less expensive Android phones sold by prepaid operators do hold their value much better than their pricier Google-powered brethren, probably because those phones are highly subsidized by the operators. Specifically, the Motorola Triumph, HTC Wildfire and Samsung Exhibit 4G on average keep up to 86 percent of the original value.

Be sure to check out the original post for more interesting data.

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A few weeks ago when Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM, came to the board and suggested that we should try and acquire paidContent, my fellow board members — Jon Callaghan (True Ventures), Ammar Hanafi (Alloy Ventures) and Kevin Brown (Reed Elsevier Ventures) — didn’t hesitate for a minute. The ethos of paidContent and our company are in sync. GigaOM’s core belief is that as connectivity becomes ubiquitous, it changes everything from society to business to we the people. paidContent from the very beginning has been built on the idea that connectedness is and will change media. It makes perfect sense for us to team up. Since then, Paul and his team worked tirelessly to make it happen.

OK, now you know what. Let me tell you why.

Now, why are we doing this deal, clearly the biggest of our five-and-a-half-year history? Two simple but equally powerful reasons — the first and perhaps most important reason: people. I have been an admirer of paidContent’s editorial team from the very beginning of its journey. Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer were two of my favorite writers in the early days of professional blogging. And while Rafat (who is on our board of advisers) has moved on to new things, I am glad to have Staci join us. She has been instrumental in building ContentNext from the ground up, and in addition to writing, she has been building the company’s event business. I am thrilled to announce that she will remain the editor of paidContent.

Ernie Sander who spearheads the ContentNext editorial operations is the kind of veteran everyone on our team, including me, can learn from. And for that precise reason, Ernie is going to become the executive editor of our sprawling online editorial operations. Our managing editor, Nicole Solis, is being promoted to VP of Editorial Operations. And then there is the most awesome team of journalists — Robert Andrews, Tom Krazit, Daniel Frankel, Laura Hazard Owen, Jeff Roberts and Amanda Natividad. In addition there are a wonderful group of technology, business and sales people who are joining our company. I welcome them all to our growing family and can’t wait to break bread with them in weeks to come.

Location, location, location

These fine folks are actually going to help bolster our presence in New York and help increase our footprint in Europe, a region of key strategic focus for GigaOM. (We will be hosting Structure:Europe in Amsterdam, October 16-17.) With this deal, we are really pleased that one of the most forward-looking media outlets around, Guardian News & Media, will become a shareholder in our business.

As you all know, I am (and will always be) a displaced New Yorker; New York City is my spiritual home. By increasing our footprint in the capital of the world, I would get a chance to go back more often. But it’s not an emotional tug that is driving us to this decision. New York is fast becoming a major technology hub, as Ryan Kim outlined in his recent post. And we want to expand our coverage to Boston — thanks to Barb Darrow who joined us several months ago — and the Washington DC corridor as well. paidContent’s New York City offices are now GigaOM East.

Media is the new Wild West

We are quite strategic about our acquisitions — we acquire media entities only if we love the people and believe that we are at the starting phase of a trend. In 2008, we acquired jkOnTheRun as our tip of the hat to the growing demand for mobile devices and the changes it would bring into society. Later that year, we brought in The Apple Blog because we knew the best was yet to come for Apple. Both of those acquisitions have helped GigaOM cover the issues that matter most to our ultimate customers — you, the reader — in a smart, sensible fashion.

“The question that mass amateurization poses to traditional media is ‘What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there is nothing unique about publishing anymore because users can do it for themselves?’ We are now starting to see that question being answered.”— Clay Shirky

Shirky’s observation means that we are in a time of chaos where the very idea of media is being questioned. And as a Chinese proverb says, from chaos emerges opportunity. I believe the best is yet to come for media.

Over the past few years we have started to see the transformation of media by new technologies, new methods of distribution and newer ways to consume information. Mathew Ingram has been writing about these disruptions on a regular basis, and now we are going to double down on what we think is a great new chapter in the media industry.

I have always believed that we’ve got to stop thinking of media as what it was and focus on more of what it could be. In the world of plenty, the only currency is attention and attention is what defines “media.” Zynga is fighting Hollywood for attention (and winning). Instagram is taking moments away from other media. They have attention. There are old companies that are dying and new ones that are being invented. We’re eager to expand our coverage of social and digital media editorially, in our research and at our events. paidContent is the best chronicler of the media industry, and by blending their coverage with ours, we hope to watch this fast-changing industry ever more closely.

Please join me in welcoming the ContentNext team!

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To set up, Nowbox asks users to specify categories of entertainment that are of interest to them, then to link their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once that’s done, they’ll be shown a TV guide-like navigation pane that will look familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a cable channel guide. All of which is the point — Nowbox demystifies the online video experience by serving up channels in the same way most viewers are already used to seeing them.

It has a few other perks as well: for one thing, users are served up a continuous stream of videos, making online video viewing more akin to the type of non-stop stream they’re used to seeing when watching regular TV. Users can swipe back and forth through videos on a particular channel, and since Nowbox pre-caches those videos, they play pretty much instantaneously. Users can star videos as favorites, save them for later or share with friends and followers on social networks.

With more than half a million video views under its belt in less than two months since launch, Nowbox is expanding the app’s feature set to make it even easier to discover new content. For one thing, Nowbox has added a channel of video recommendations based on the categories of content that users signed up for. It’s also added an indicator to highlight new videos as they appear in a user’s channel lineup.

Nowbox is just one of many apps focused on improving discovery of streaming video on the iPad. Other competitors include apps like Showyou, Squrl and the Boxee iPad app. The hope is that Nowbox’s unique channel guide approach, as well as its new features, will extend the play time that users spend with the app. Those users are already showing pretty strong engagement, however: Nowbox founder Thomas Pun told me that users spend 18 minutes with the app per session on average.

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The groups say they will deliver the petitions in person in Washington, D.C., New York City, San Fransisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore and will carry signs and leaflets.

The SumOfUs petition has more than 56,000 electronic signatures so far. According to the grassroots group, more than 35,000 of those signatures belong to people who say they are current Apple customers — 20,000 of them are said to be iPhone owners. The number includes Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, SumOfUs’ executive director, who says she love her iPhone but doesn’t “love having to support sweatshops.”

In the press release she adds:

“Apple’s attention to detail is famous, and the only way they could fail to be aware of dozens of worker deaths, of child labor, of exposure to neurotoxins is through willful ignorance. That’s why our members are asking Apple to clean up its supply chains in time to make the iPhone 5 its first ethically produced product.”

Apple has said it cares about workers and says it’s doing all it can to improve conditions at factories like Foxconn’s. CEO Tim Cook wrote in an internal email to employees earlier this month, “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us.”

But even if that is true, it doesn’t change the fact that some iPhone owners and other concerned citizens aren’t satisfied with the current status of those factories, how workers are treated and paid, and will do what they can to continue to make this an issue for Apple.

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That’s because of the 1.8 million iPhones the carrier sold, 40 percent of them went to new customers that came to the carrier for the iPhone. We knew the iPhone was fairly popular on Sprint’s network — the carrier sold out of its stock of the iPhone 4S the first day it was available back in October.

Although 1.8 million iPhones may pale in comparison to its competitors, it was Sprint’s first quarter selling the iPhone, after all. AT&T sold 7.6 million iPhones during the quarter, but the carrier had a nearly four-year head start on Sprint. Verizon, meanwhile, sold 4.2 million iPhones last quarter.

While new customers may be coming in the door, it’s still costing Spring some extra dough. The carrier said Wednesday that the costs of subsidies it paid during the quarter went up from $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion in the last year, which was ”primarily due to the launch of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, which on average carry a higher subsidy rate per handset as compared to other handsets.”

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