Siemens and Bosch most active German applicants for EU patents

Among all German companies, technology firms Siemens and Bosch filed the largest number of patents with the European Patent Office (EPO) last year, the agency reported Thursday.

Both companies sent in about 1,600 patent applications each in 2013, followed by Chemicals giants BASF and Bayer.

Most German applications sent to EPA came from the southern German state of Bavaria, which accounted for 27 percent of the 26,300 filings coming from Europe's biggest economy. Runner-up was the state of Baden-Württemberg.

EPO reforms

Overall, the German firms in question only had to concede the top spot of the list to South Korea's electronics company Samsung which filed a total of 2,618 applications last year.

The European Patent Office had last year taken some pivotal measures to make filing procedures easier, among them the launch of a free online machine translation service.

It also worked closely with the US Patent and Trademark Office on creating a new joint classification scheme for applications, incorporating best practices from both agencies

Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona

The four-day event will enable visitors to catch a glimpse of new mobile gadgets and devices that producers are already marketing as must-haves.

Germany's Deutsche Telekom for instance announced in Barcelona it would soon launch an app for smartphones that encrypted voice and text messages and would be available to all its users. The company said it expected huge consumer interest in the technology as privacy fears have sparked a greater awareness of people's need to shield against data spying.

Deutsche Telekom said the cloud-based app would encrypt any data exchange between two devices using a unique code. It added the service would first be available for Android smartphones, with a version for iOS devices to be launched later this year.

Everything needs to be smart

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona also saw South Korea's LG Electronics join the battle for dominance in the relatively new market of computerized wristwatches. The company's Park Jong-seok maintained early smartwatch models failed to demonstrate why consumers should buy them.

He said LG's strategy was not to release a half-baked product, but one that would convince consumers right away and would be paired with a smartphone like those already available from some competitors.

Sony on Monday demonstrated a SmartBand fitness accessory, working with a liefelog app on the phone to record your day. The company said you could see key moments of physical exercise on a timeline, including photos taken and messages sent and received. Sony said that as the day progressed on that timeline, you saw the number of steps made and calories burned to a given point.

The Barcelona fair is the biggest event for the mobile technology sector. But while there will be no lack of novelties, a major revolution in the industry is not in sight this time around.

Huawei announces the world’s fastest MiFi device

Huawei takes to the Mobile World Congress stage, announces the world’s fastest mobile hotspot.

The Huawei E5786 offers Cat 6 LTE with download speeds to 300Mbps and upload speeds of 100Mbps, granted you have a phone network to support it.

The hotspot will be powered by a 28nm HPM Cortex A9 chipset with support for 802.11a/b/g/n and 802.11ac WiFi.

The device will also allow for up to 10 devices to be connected to it simultaneously and will offer up 10 hours of battery life from one single charge.

It can also provide reverse charging allowing users to plug in their devices to charge from the device’s power.

Its compact, pebble-shaped design makes it ideal for smartphone users on-the-go as it can easily be pocketed and carried wherever.

The MiFi device will also come with an accompanying app that allows users to control it via their smartphones.

The Huawei E5786 will appear in the second half of 2014, but Huawei says it will depend on network roll-out to support the speeds it offers.

Facebook Messenger heads for Windows Phone

Facebook Messenger app will be delivered with a completely new user interface unique to Windows Phone.

Microsoft revealed at a press event ahead of Mobile World Congress that Facebook Messenger will be arriving on Windows Phone in the next few weeks.

Microsoft Vice President and Manager for Windows Phone, Joe Belfiore, was speaking at a press event in Barcelona ahead of Mobile World Congress when he confirmed its arrival. 

“We’ve been working with Facebook testing out their implementation for a while,” Belfiore said. ”It’s looking good and we will have it for our customers soon.”

The Facebook Messenger app will be delivered with a completely new user interface that’s unique to Windows Phone.

It will be separate from the main Facebook app and will work independently.

Last year, Windows Phone vendors shipped 33.4 million devices globally, giving the operating system a market share of 3.3 percent.

That's up from Windows Phone's share of 2.4 percent in 2012, and marks a near doubling of the growth rate for the overall smartphone market.

Although Windows Phone is looking to further expand its app market as still sits behind iPhone and Android phone sales.

“There’s a number of more great apps coming soon,” Belfiore added. “Stay tuned as you hear about more compelling demanded user apps coming for Windows Phone.”

There are now some 200,000+ apps on the Windows Phone store, according to Belfiore, with app downloads totalling 4 billion.

Samsung debuts top-end smartphone, with wearables on the side

(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics unveiled a new smart watch and fitness band along with the latest version of its flagship Galaxy smartphone on Monday, demonstrating how the battleground for innovation is shifting from the hand to the wrist.

The world's biggest smartphone maker set a trend less than six months ago for wearable devices that link to mobile handsets with its Galaxy Gear watch, which has seen rivals like Sony and Huawei follow in its wake.

Samsung's Gear 2, which runs on the Tizen operating system rather than Google's Android software, can monitor the wearer's heart rate, a function used in increasingly popular health and fitness apps, or individual programmes.

The Samsung Gear Fit, also targeting the fitness sector, has a curved screen and features including a pedometer and heart rate monitor, Samsung said.

The Galaxy S5 itself, which will be available in April, includes a slightly bigger screen than its predecessor, at 5.1 inches against 5 inches, improved camera technology and better protection against water and dust, Samsung said.

It also has a fingerprint scanner on the home button, it said, which can unlock the device and provide security credentials in a swipe.

It will enter a market that has seen slowing demand at the top-end, where Samsung is already in fierce competition from Apple Inc and Chinese vendors.

WhatsApp to add voice calls after Facebook acquisition

BY LEILA ABBOUD AND ERIC AUCHARD

(Reuters) - WhatsApp will add free voice-call services for its 450 million customers later this year, laying down a new challenge to telecom network operators just days after Facebook Inc scooped it up for $19 billion.

The text-based messaging service aims to let users make calls by the second quarter, expanding its appeal to help it hit a billion users, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.

Buying WhatsApp has cemented Facebook's involvement in messaging, which for many people is their earliest experience with the mobile Internet. Adding voice services moves the social network into another core function on a smartphone.

On Monday, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg defended the price paid for a messaging service with negligible revenue. He argued that rival services such as South Korea's KakaoTalk and Naver's LINE are already "monetizing" at a rate of $2 to $3 in revenue per user per year, despite being in the early stages of growth.

Media reports put WhatsApp's revenue at about $20 million in 2013.

"I actually think that by itself it's worth more than 19 billion," Zuckerberg told the Mobile World Congress. "Even just independently, I think it's a good bet."

"By being a part of Facebook, it makes it so they can focus for the next five years or so purely on adding more people."

WhatsApp's move into voice calls is unlikely to sit well with telecoms carriers.

WhatsApp and its rivals, like KakaoTalk, China's WeChat, and Viber, have won over telecom operators' customers in recent years by offering a free option to text messaging. Telecom providers globally generated revenue of about $120 billion from text messaging last year, according to market researcher Ovum.

Adding free calls threatens another telecom revenue source, which has been declining anyway as carriers' tweak tariffs to focus on mobile data instead of calls.

WITH, NOT AGAINST

Since the advent a decade ago of Skype's voice over Internet service, which Microsoft Corp has acquired, and the rise of Internet service providers like Google Inc, telecom bosses have gotten used to facing challengers whose services piggyback on their networks. But carriers complain that the rivals are not subject to the same national regulations.

Mats Granryd, the CEO of Swedish mobile operator Tele2, said he was happy to partner with the likes of WhatsApp because of the additional data traffic they generate. But he shared the concerns of other network operators that they must operate under strict national regulations that Internet companies are not subject to.

"They (Internet firms) need to be regulated a little bit more and we need to be regulated a little bit less," said Jo Lunder, who heads Russian mobile network operator VimpelCom.

Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said he did not understand how such an important acquisition as the Facebook-WhatsApp deal could go unchallenged at a time when European network operators were facing intense regulatory scrutiny.

"These types of deal are a clear indication that the world is changing and the regulations don't fit anymore," Colao said on the sidelines of the conference.

Both Facebook and WhatsApp CEOs have cast themselves as partners to telecoms network operators.

On Monday, Koum also announced a partnership with E-Plus, the German subsidiary of Dutch group KPN, under which it will launch a WhatsApp-branded mobile service in Germany.

The European Parliament is set to vote on Monday night on a package of proposed telecoms market reforms which among other provisions would restrict the ability of carriers to charge internet companies like Facebook to give them an enhanced service in handling their network traffic.

Fashionable Creoir Ibis smartwatch unveiled at MWC

The Creoir Ibis smartwatch is perhaps one of the most stylish wearables unveiled at MWC.

Comparing to other smartwatch designs we’ve been growing used to lately, the Ibis has a more attractive appeal. As technology continues to advance, the masses should expect designs to be quite similar to this one in terms of being more fashion-friendly, and namely, less bulky.

Made from stainless steel and crystal, the smartwatch has a functioning analog on its face, which also holds a touch-enabled OLED display. The Ibis even runs a version of Android.

Additionally, the smartwatch has Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi along with USB.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear 2 was also revealed at MWC earlier sporting a new design of its predecessor just months after the Gear’s release.

As Google and Apple are reportedly working on their own smartwatch designs, they are expected to add their own touches to the designs. Since Google’s smartwatch will obviously be Android-powered like the Ibis, will it take the likes of the latter’s design?