About one quarter of the queries to the "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha now come from the Siri voice assistant found in Apple's iPhone 4S.
After tallying the numbers from top smartphone manufacturers' fourth quarter 2011 earnings, it was revealed on Monday that Apple has wrested the top spot from Samsung following the highly successful iPhone 4S launch.
Apple's iPhone lineup dominated smartphone sales during the holiday 2011 quarter, with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS taking the top three spots, respectively, in total U.S. sales.
Apple's A5 System on a Chip incorporates dedicated noise reduction circuitry by Audience, Inc., which optimizes the performance of Siri voice recognition on iPhone 4S.
Apple has removed all 3G/UMTS-capable iPad and iPhone models from its German online store in response to an injunction based on a wireless standard FRAND patent owned by Motorola Mobility.
New data shows that Apple accounted for 36 percent of worldwide mobile phone revenue and 74 percent of industry EBIT in the fourth quarter of 2011, with the iPhone taking more than a quarter of the entire smartphone market.
The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it has opened a formal investigation to decide whether Samsung's use of standard-essential FRAND patents as leverage in high profile cases, such as the company's worldwide battle with Apple, violates EU antitrust laws.
China's third-largest wireless carrier confirmed on Monday the imminent launch of the iPhone 4S on its network and suggested that it could begin selling the device as early as the end of February or the beginning of March.
International smartphone vendors, including Samsung, HTC, Nokia and LG, are rumored to be waiting until the second quarter to release new handset models in order to avoid direct competition with Apple's hot-selling iPhone 4S.
Faced with an influx of grey marketers and incidents of repeated violence over sales of the iPhone 4S in Hong Kong, Apple has turned to a safer, more secure system for divvying out new stock of the handset to customers each day.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley believes Apple will partner up with both China Telecom and China Mobile "over the next year" to make its iPhone available on all three Chinese carriers, a move that could bring incremental sales of as many as 40 million units next calendar year.
In an early morning ruling on Friday, the Mannheim Regional Court dismissed the second of five 3G/UMTS standards patent suits Samsung leveled against Apple.
Even as Apple appears to have retaken the top spot among smartphone makers during the fourth quarter of 2011, a new analysis claims the iPhone made up 8.3 percent of the worldwide mobile phone market during the same period.
Apple overtook Samsung in the fourth quarter of 2011 to grab the top spot among global smartphone makers, earning 23.9 percent of the market with sales of 37 million iPhones, according to one set of estimates.
Despite the customary price drop of Apple's last generation iPhone 4 and the free-on-contract iPhone 3GS, the company's newest handset dominated sales and has seen strong numbers not only from early adopters, but "conventional" smartphone users as well.
Apple's first carrier partner remains its strongest, as AT&T revealed on Thursday that it activated a record 7.6 million iPhones over the holiday 2011 quarter.
Motorola Mobility has filed a new U.S. lawsuit, presumably with approval from Google, against Apple, seeking an injunction against the newly released iPhone 4S as well as the iCloud service.
Apple's share of smartphones sold in the U.S. doubled in the fourth quarter of 2011, pushing iPhone sales just past the myriad of devices that run Google's Android platform.
Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined his thoughts on the company's iOS device performance during Q1 2012 and sees iPhone sales momentum closing the gap with rival handsets running Google's Android platform, while iPad and iPod touch are in a league of their own.
Verizon on Tuesday revealed its quarterly earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011, in which it sold 7.7 million smartphones, 4.2 million of which were iPhones.
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Katie Marsal
AppleInsider Staff
Daniel Eran Dilger
Mikey Campbell
Josh Ong
Sam Oliver
Slash Lane
Neil Hughes
