We’ve all heard the Apple/Proview story innumerable times already. Proview had a product called the IPAD, Apple set up a shell company to buy the trademark from them. Once the iPad became the roaring success it is the now near bankrupt Proview states that, well, yes, it did sell the trademark but not the one for China internally. And they’d like some more money please.

That might sound a little harsh as a precis but it’s not a million miles from the detailed truth. So, how’s the various court cases going?

Apple has won one of them: the one in California, the one that Apple was always entirely likely to so win:

A California judge tossed out a lawsuit in which the Chinese firm Proview Electronics Co Ltd accused Apple Inc of tricking them into selling the “iPad” name for less than it might have.

Proview, which is also suing Apple in China over alleged illegal use of the iPad name, filed a lawsuit in California superior court in February, saying the U.S. consumer electronics company deceived it by purchasing the rights to the name through a special-purpose vehicle.

Proview’s essential case here, “we didn’t know what was going on” was never likely to interest an American judge. Corporations are assumed to know what they’re doing. That’s not quite the reason the judge gave for tossing the complaint, true, but it would be difficult to believe any other outcome.

However, there’s also still the case in China. And this doesn’t seem to be going Apple’s way to quite the same extent:

Ma Xiaodong, an attorney for Proview Technology, told China Business Journal that his client “has been trying to negotiate with Apple for a long time” and now the focus has turned to the amount of compensation.

Xie Xianghui, another of Proview’s attorneys, confirmed that the two sides are negotiating a settlement figure with the Guangdong High People’s Court acting as moderator.

“We can feel an obvious change in Apple’s attitude,” Xie said. “Before, although they agreed to negotiate, they never actually took any action. But now they are sitting there and talking with us about key problems.

“The process is very tough, but both sides have a positive attitude,” he added.

Why would that be, why would Apple be negotiating?

Fu Shuangjian, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said at a press conference on April 24 that Proview Technology is still the owner of the iPad trademark.

“According to Chinese law, both parties involved in a trademark transfer should apply with us together (to make the transfer legal),” he explained.

Although Fu’s remarks have no legal power, industry insiders believe the statement helped force Apple to back to the negotiating table.

More weight was added by Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, who said the agency regards the Shenzhen company as the rightful trademark owner.

I don’t think I’m going to shock anyone by suggesting that there’s a little more political influence over the courts in China than there is in the US. That we have State officials stating that Proview definitely still owns the internal to China trademark gives an indication (no more, but no less) as to how the courts might rule. Thus perhaps best for Apple to reach an agreement with Proview and make some form of cash settlement.

Which would make a number of state owned banks very happy as that IPAD trademark is now considered the only remaining valuable asset of Proview itself. And Proview owes $400 million to those banks.

We seem to be getting down to the end game here. The crux of which is, how many pennies on the dollar of those loans are the banks going to get back out of an Apple deal with Proview?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Over the past several years, Apple has arguably gotten the better end of its iPhone partnership with the carriers — but right now, it’s the telecoms that have investors more excited.

Since April 9, Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) and ATT (T, Fortune 500) are the second- and third-best performers among the 30 Dow Jones industrial average stocks, rising 8.2% and 7.8% respectively. In a tumultuous month for the stock market, the only Dow company to outpace the two telecom giants is Travelers (TRV, Fortune 500).

During that same one-month period, Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) stock, which is not in the Dow, has tumbled by nearly 11%.

That drop is particularly head-scratching given the strength of Apple’s recent earnings report. The tech behemoth reported much better-than-expected sales and profits, particularly from the iPhone, which made its debut in China.

The telecoms had some surprises of their own last quarter. A sharp sequential decline in iPhone sales in the United States provided Verizon and ATT’s wireless service profit margins with a much-needed shot in the arm. Both companies pay heavy up-front subsidies to bring the cost of iPhones down to $200 for their customers.

Verizon’s margin rose to 46%, rebounding from 42% in the previous quarter, and ATT’s wireless margin rose to 42%, up from 38% in the fourth quarter.

Apple’s iPhone outlook for the current quarter was slightly disappointing, as the company said it would likely sell fewer smartphones between April and June than it did in the first quarter.

A trend is emerging: bad news for Apple’s iPhone sales is good news for carriers — in the short-term, anyway.

That made investors think about giving the telecoms a second chance, after fleeing from the stocks earlier in the year.

“Improved margins from ATT and Verizon, and more muted outlooks from tech and cable companies, has caused a substantial rotation into telecom,” said Kevin Smithen, analyst at Macquarie Research.

In January, both ATT and Verizon reported steep losses in the prior quarter because of pension plan payments. Also, ATT had to fork over billions to T-Mobile for its failed takeover bid, and wireless margins were squeezed by record iPhone sales.

Though the near-term outlook is now much better for Verizon and ATT, the narrative could soon change again.

Apple is widely expected to unveil a redesigned iPhone this summer, capable of supporting 4G-LTE network technology. If the demand for the new iPhone is anything like it was for the incrementally upgraded iPhone 4S, the telecoms better get ready for more margin cramping — or “iPain,” as some analysts call it.

“We expect iPain to reemerge with the next iPhone refresh cycle,” said Mike Mike McCormack, analyst at Nomura Securities. “We expect an LTE iPhone will drive significant new demand.”

McCormack said investors are “ignoring the impact” of more iPain down the road, particularly at Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) and Sprint (S, Fortune 500).

“When you see ATT doing well when they sell fewer iPhones, it raises questions about the subsidy issue,” said Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners. “Competition is coming in hard and fast using the one lever they have: price. And though it’s a good deal to subsidize a smartphone for $400 and lock a customer in for two years, it’s an even better deal to do it for $200.”

ATT and Verizon’s executives have both discussed the need for increased competition in the smartphone marketplace — code for “please bring us iPhone rivals!” — and Verizon representatives have been pushing customers hard on 4G Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android devices over the iPhone.

But discounting Apple is a dangerous game. Come the fall, investors who bet on the telcos over the iPhone may experience some iPain of their own. 

Computerworld - Apple’s online store scored the highest satisfaction rating of any computer-related company, and handily beat rival Microsoft, a consumer pollster said today.

Apple’s satisfaction score — how happy U.S. consumers were with the their shopping experience at the company’s online outlet — was 85, up five points from the year before, said Michigan-based ForeSee.

ForeSee measured customer satisfaction using a survey of almost 21,000 visitors to the top 100 online sales sites as ranked by annual revenue. The newest poll was the eighth in an annual line that stretches back to 2005.

Only one e-store — Amazon’s, with a record score of 89 — beat Apple’s, although QVC’s, the site associated with the popular television shopping channel, tied with the Cupertino, Calif. computer and consumer electronics maker.

Apple even closed the gap on Amazon, which ForeSee said “continues to set the standard for e-retailers,” getting within four points in this year’s survey compared to lagging behind by six points in 2011.

And the satisfaction surge by Apple’s online store put it even further ahead of all comers in its category, beating the e-marts of Dell, with 80; Hewlett Packard, with 79; and Sony, Microsoft, each with 78.

Last year, for example, Apple beat second-place computer makers Dell and HP by just one point, and Sony by five points. ForeSee did not measure customer satisfaction last year for Microsoft’s online store.

Apple also beat a number of online retailers that do not manufacture computers or other technology, but simply sell what’s made by others. Newegg, the nearest rival in that group, scored 82, while others, such as BestBuy (80), TigerDirect (79) and PC Connection (74), were further behind.

The average score for the 10 computer and electronics retailers ForeSee measured was 79, just a point above the average for all 100 stores.

According to Larry Freed, the CEO of ForeSee and the author of a detailed report on the satisfaction findings, scores of 80 or higher, although still considered “the threshold of excellence,” are becoming more common.

“Now that the average for the top 100 retailers is 78, a score of 80 is less impressive than it was five years ago, when the average was 74,” Freed acknowledged. “Still, if we were to include thousands of e-retailers from large to small, scores of 80 or higher would no doubt emerge as being notably high.”

ForeSee owns the technology developed by the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a noted annual customer satisfaction project, and uses the ACSI methodology to calculate its scores.

The complete report can be downloaded from ForeSee’s website, although users must provide name, company, phone number and email address to access the PDF document.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.

Read more about E-business in Computerworld’s E-business Topic Center.

Android is shipping more phones than Apple iOS, and Samsung Tops Apple from a Hardware perspective

A report from NPD last week paints what looks like a clear indication that developers should choose Android.   The operating system breakdown looks like this:

Additionally, IDC Published their research last week on worldwide hardware shipments that would seem to confirm that Android is the choice as well, with Samsung establishing a new one quarter record for Smartphone shipments, primarily on Android.

Apple is the logical choice for mobile development today

A significant number of the teams in my NUvention Web class choose development on mobile.   As I told a team I am coaching this year; while many start out with a non-Apple platform, almost everyone converges on at least having iPhone by the end of the class.  Why is this?  There are so many things wrong with developing on iPhone:  I’m on record saying that Objective C is terrible (mixing SmallTalk and C was not a mixture of peanut butter and chocolate; more like lemonade and milk).   Java and C# are much nicer languages.  The locked down nature of the iPhone platform makes it hard to get your app out to be tested by users.  Tools like TestFlight have to fill the gap to help you deploy to beta users (TestFlight is terrific by the way—a developer friend of mind who has written apps since the days of the Mini computer raves about the kind of instrumentation you get).   While the UI is great and performance is prioritized with the Apple OS, these can also complicate app building.    Memory management is also a pain on the iPhone compared with it’s garbage collected counterparts on Android and Windows Phone.     Despite this, the iPhone provides three key advantages over any other mobile phone platform to develop for:

• Consistency.   Apple provides a good set of style guidelines for app development; but more importantly, developers and their users know what to expect in user experience, screen size, and hardware capabilities.   While Apple has multiple models in market today, the 4GS, 4, and 3GS at ATT for example, it’s much easier to build an application that targets all of them than for example the Android phones on ATT.   I stopped counting the different screen resolutions of these phones when I got to 5 different ones (1280×720 , 960×540 , 800×488, 800×600, and 320×480 for the HTC Status) plus keyboard or not keyboard; Samsung note also has an optional stylus.   The screen variation in particular is a nightmare for working with phones as a developer.   Lower level hardware differences also make things maddening on android.  I heard a story about a game developer who gave up in working with an OEM because the one Android OEM had three different programmatic ways of interacting with the sensors on the devices in its product line.   Apple, as the benevolent dictator of the iOS ecosystem, insures that this all works the same.  As a volume buyer of components, it can also insure consistency with its software platform, something the software only operating systems like Android (and also Windows Phone) have a much more difficult time doing.
• Scale of Market.  As the success of Instagram shows, the iPhone market is big enough to bootstrap an application to millions of users.  
• User Trust in App Store.   While there are more reports of issues with Apple Platforms on Security, and while there has been a set of recent controversy on the iPhone apps and use of personal information, malicious software has historically been more of a risk on Android than iPhone.  This makes apple users more comfortable with downloading and installing applications.  In fact a recent report by newzoo discussed that for mobile games iOS represents 82% of the revenue in the game market.

Indeed, this is born out by developers I have talked to who have apps on both platforms.   Sweetperk, a team from the NUvention class last year that develops commerce solutions for neighborhood business associations, reports that while the percent varies from neighborhood to neighborhood;  Apple represents about 75% of their users. 

HTML 5 is a great way for app developers to start, and gaining momentum

I’m a strong advocate of the Lean Startup principle of Minimum Viable Product (MVP).   This means focusing on differentiating features over breadth of functionality (and by extension platform support).   Open source platforms like PhoneGap/Apache Cordova provide a great set of tools for putting together a platform independent mobile application.   These are a great way to start because most mobile applications will require some website they communicate with.  Phonegap let’s you start with the website and build out.   The HTML 5 approach has some drawbacks as its much more difficult to create a “tailored” experience to a particular device—taking advantage of things like the camera, location in realtime, and device data like contacts, are hard to do in web only form.   The HTML 5 local storage specification is also not implemented completely or consistently across enough devices to make occasionally connected or scenarios with lots of local data work well.  HTML 5 also takes some fine tuning to get the experience as smooth as native code to a device.  Games are also not really it’s strong suit; though I was speaking with a startup in game tech today that is using HTML 5 more than in the past.  There is also no app store—though breaking through on the app store to make it an effective distribution vehicle is nearly as difficult as breaking through with a new website on the web.  That said, the web may be more trusted than the Android store.  Indeed, in class this year we have 2 of our 8 mobile teams that are using a mobile web approach this year (2 others are focused on iOS—one iPhone one iPad, 1 is doing both android and iOS, and the final two are focusing on web only with primarily a desktop target).  No one is doing Android alone.   BlackBerry and Windows Phone just have audiences that are too small to justify the opportunity cost until an experience succeeds on the Web or iPhone.

Where is market share going?

One thing that has been true of the mobile device market for many years, is that no one has stayed on top, especially in the US,  for more than 5 years running.   Motorola pioneered the market, and then Nokia dominated in the US and Europe.  Then Motorola resurged with the Razr.  Then the blackberry rose, and for the last 4 years, it really has been all about Apple.   A big variable that could affect the speed of change is whether mobile operators continue to subsidize the handset as they have in the last few years.  A report in late April indicated that mobile operators may reduce their subsidy; and sent Apple stock reeling.   One theory for why Android does better outside the US is that there is less subsidy and the Android products are cheaper than their Apple counterpart; so if US subsidies drop; the share may also change to Android or a player like Windows Phone.  Indeed Sweetperk also said Android penetration is higher in lower income neighborhoods, consistent with price sensitivity being a factor for smartphone buyers.   If Google completes the acquisition of Motorola mobility, and focuses on getting a more consistent line of hardware in the market; that could help; but it’s unclear whether it’s in Google’s interest to constrain the wild and woolly ways device makers and operators customize their Android phones—the ad business needs volume.  All this means the safe choice for mobile development is still targeting Apple’s iPhone, likely with a native iOS application.  The consistency, scale, and user trust are not countered by other operating systems or manufacturers.  That said, if HTML 5 continues to improve, the need to choose a mobile OS may become a headache a startup doesn’t have to solve right away.

Apple is taking a bruising in Washington, and insiders say there’s a reason: It’s the one place in the world where the company hasn’t built its brand.

In the first three months of this year, Google and Microsoft spent a little more than $7 million on lobbying and related federal activities combined. Apple spent $500,000 — even less than it spent the year before.

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The company’s attitude toward D.C. — described by critics as “don’t bother us” — has left it without many inside-the-Beltway friends. And that means Apple is mostly on its own when the Justice Department goes after it on e-books, when members of Congress attack it over its overseas tax avoidance or when an alphabet soup of regulators examine its business practices.

“I never once had a meeting with anybody representing Apple,” said Jeff Miller, who served as a senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee for eight years. “There have been other tech companies who chose not to engage in Washington, and for the most part that strategy did not benefit them.”

Apple could have learned a lesson from Wal-Mart and Microsoft, corporate giants who established major Washington operations only after the government came gunning for them. And with a target now on its back, Google is on pace to pump $20 million into lobbying this year.

But Apple seems intent on carving its own path.

Unlike Facebook, Google and Microsoft, Apple has no political action committee. And while Google and Microsoft have aggressive news media operations in Washington, Apple doesn’t. That standoffish approach to D.C. may have worked fine in the Steve Jobs era, but the charismatic leader’s death last year left Apple without its reality distortion field.

The company declined to comment on any aspect of this story.

Apple’s defenders say it prefers to work more subtly behind the scenes and that it has moved the needle on some legislative issues.

“Yes, it is true that they don’t use the old Washington playbook,” said one source familiar with the company’s D.C. operations. “They don’t have a massive table of consultants and law firms. It is more low-key, but it is also respectful.”

Apple just hired Walt Kuhn, a former aide to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on the Judiciary Committee, adding a fourth member to its in-house lobbying shop. The company has built a small team of elite contract lobbyists on both sides of the aisle. And it has been briefing policymakers on its view of the e-books case, both in Washington and at the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.

“They want to do this in a measured, respectful way,” the source said. “It wouldn’t take much to hit the tripwire” to launch the narrative that “Apple has problems and is trying to buy the town.”

But several other sources told POLITICO that the company is recalcitrant — when it’s visible at all — and that its hostility may have brought extra attention.