[Core News Broadcast] Apple's lawsuit against the State Intellectual Property Office opens in court

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1. Development and Reform Commission: my country's gasoline and diesel prices increased for the first time in 2014

According to Xinhua News Agency, the National Development and Reform Commission announced on the 26th that gasoline and diesel prices will increase by 205 yuan and 200 yuan per ton respectively from the 27th. The retail prices of No. 90 gasoline and No. 0 diesel (national average) will increase by 0.15 yuan and 0.17 yuan per liter respectively. This is the first increase in domestic gasoline and diesel prices this year. The National Development and Reform Commission stated that the adjustment range of refined oil prices this time is determined in accordance with the current refined oil price formation mechanism, based on the changes in the average price of crude oil in the international market in the 10 working days before February 26, and the cumulative amount of the increase that should have been made in the previous price adjustment cycle.

2. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: Issue policies to control spam text messages within this year

Zhang Feng, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told Xinhua News Agency on the 26th that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is formulating the "Regulations on the Management of Communication Short Message Services" to regulate SMS services, especially the sending of commercial SMS, clarify the punishment measures for illegal behaviors such as sending SMS against the will of users, and provide law enforcement basis for the management of spam SMS. This regulation is expected to be issued within this year. At the end of 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized a centralized rectification of SMS ports, strictly regulated the SMS business of new ports, cleaned up and rectified the existing ports, and shut down all ports that sent spam SMS. Since the rectification activities were launched, the average daily number of complaints about spam SMS has dropped by more than 50% compared with before the rectification, and the average daily number of complaints about port-related spam SMS has dropped by more than 80%.

3. The central bank lifts the interest rate cap on small foreign currency deposits in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone

According to Xinhua News Agency, the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China held a policy press conference on the 26th, announcing that the upper limit of the interest rate for small foreign currency deposits in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone will be lifted from March 1. After the upper limit is lifted, the pilot free trade zone will be the first in the country to achieve full marketization of foreign currency deposit interest rates and take the lead in market-based pricing of liability products. This pilot reform of interest rate marketization in the free trade zone is applicable to enterprises and individuals. At present, the balance of foreign currency deposits in the free trade zone is 4.8 billion US dollars, of which small foreign currency deposits are 1.2 billion US dollars.

4. Epistar and Philips reach a cross-licensing agreement on LED chip patents

Recently, Epistar, a leading Taiwanese LED chip company, announced that it had signed a patent cross-licensing agreement with Philips, an international giant, for LED chips. Under this agreement, both parties can use each other's patents related to the III-V LED chip technology, including blue light InGaN (indium gallium nitride) LED and quaternary AlGaInP (aluminum gallium indium phosphide) LED products.

5. Apple's lawsuit against the State Intellectual Property Office opens today

Apple has filed a lawsuit against the State Intellectual Property Office and Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co., Ltd. (Xiao-i Robot) over the Siri patent dispute. The State Intellectual Property Office was sued by Apple for not revoking the voice software patent of Xiao-i Robot. This morning, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court opened a hearing on the case. In 2012, Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co., Ltd. believed that Siri technology was suspected of infringing the patent rights of the company's intelligent voice system "Xiao-i Robot" and filed an infringement lawsuit against Apple. The case has not yet been concluded in Shanghai, and Apple has applied to the China Patent Office in Beijing to invalidate the "Xiao-i Robot" patent in order to eliminate the patent of Xiao-i Robot. On September 16, 2013, the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office made a decision to maintain the validity of the above-mentioned patent rights of Shanghai Zhizhen. Apple was dissatisfied with the decision of the Patent Reexamination Board and filed an administrative lawsuit with the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court against the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office as the defendant, requesting the revocation of the 21307 invalidation request review decision made by the defendant.

6. Gartner: Global server shipments grew 2.1% in 2013

Gartner, a US market research company, released a research report on Wednesday, saying that in the fourth quarter of 2013, global server shipments increased by 3.2% year-on-year, but revenue fell by 6.6% year-on-year. In 2013, server shipments increased by 2.1% and revenue fell by 4.5%. In the fourth quarter of 2013, the fastest growth in server shipments was in Asia Pacific (16.3%), Japan (7.5%) and North America (0.01%). Except for Asia Pacific, which increased by 0.6% year-on-year, server revenue in all other regions declined. In terms of revenue, HP ranked first in the world in terms of server revenue in the fourth quarter, with a total of US$3.8 billion, an increase of 6% over the fourth quarter of 2012, and a global share of 28.1%. It was followed by IBM (global share of 26.5%), Dell (15.2%), Cisco (4.7%) and Oracle (4.2%).

7. China Mobile and 19 other operators jointly launched 5G research and development

During the World Communications Conference (MWC), the Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN), composed of 19 operators including China Mobile, announced the launch of a global project for 5G and will set 5G goals. The NGMN board of directors, composed of chief technology officers of 19 leading international operators, has decided to focus NGMN's future work on defining the end-to-end requirements of 5G, and believes that the scope of 5G will go far beyond the wireless access layer. NGMN is launching a global project to define the overall needs of operators in order to better provide services to consumers. NGMN will incorporate the above work into its existing processes and work closely with all industry partners and other related projects.

8. China Unicom releases 2013 results: net profit of 10.4 billion yuan, up 47% year-on-year

China Unicom released its 2013 performance today. The report shows that China Unicom achieved operating income of 295.04 billion yuan in 2013, an increase of 18.5% year-on-year, and net profit of 10.41 billion yuan, an increase of 46.7% year-on-year. In 2013, China Unicom achieved mobile service revenue of 151.13 billion yuan, an increase of 19.9% ​​year-on-year. The net increase of mobile users was 41.67 million, and the total number exceeded 280 million; the net increase of 3G users was 46.144 million, reaching 122.6 million. China Unicom added 76,000 3G base stations, reaching 407,000. The 3G network launched HSPA+ 21Mbps service across the entire network, and upgraded to DC-HSPA+ 42Mbps in multi-carrier areas.

9. Tencent reportedly hired Barclays to advise on its investment in JD.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, people familiar with the matter revealed that Tencent has appointed Barclays as an advisor to help it launch a potential equity acquisition of JD.com. JD.com is currently planning an IPO (initial public offering) with a total amount of US$1.5 billion, which may land on the capital market before Alibaba Group. Alibaba has held talks with stock exchanges in Hong Kong and New York, but the company said it has not yet finalized the listing location and listing date. Although Alibaba's financing target is not yet clear, analysts expect the company's valuation to exceed US$100 billion.

10.360 executives met with GM at MWC to discuss possible entry into the Internet of Vehicles

During the 2014 Mobile World Congress, 360 executives held talks with GM's CIO and CTO of the Internet of Vehicles Division at the GM booth. Sources revealed that 360 is interested in entering the Internet of Vehicles sector.

11. Coolpad launches the first 4G mobile phone priced below 800 yuan

At the MWC 2014 Mobile Communications Conference, Coolpad demonstrated its 4G strategy, exhibited the LTE version of the Grand View 4 and a number of 1,000-yuan 4G products, and officially released the world's first 799-yuan 4G terminal, the Coolpad 8705. According to Coolpad's previous plan, it is expected to launch more than 30 LTE mobile phones in 2014, including products in different price ranges such as 799-yuan, 1,000-yuan, 1,699-yuan, 1,999-yuan, and above 2,000-yuan, to fully cover different user groups.

12. Huawei reaches settlement with US patent company: EU terminates investigation

EU antitrust regulators have ended their investigation into a patent dispute after Huawei reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. patent licensing company InterDigital. Huawei, the world's third-largest smartphone maker, complained to the European Commission two years ago about InterDigital, accusing it of demanding "exploitative" 3G mobile phone patent licensing fees. If the European Commission finds that InterDigital has violated the rules, it could be fined up to 10% of its annual revenue. InterDigital had revenue of $325.4 million last year. But the European Commission said the two sides had reached a settlement on the dispute in December last year, agreeing to withdraw lawsuits and antitrust complaints against each other.

13.ARM and TSMC jointly complete 16nm FinFET process testing, with more than 20 customers this year

TSMC and ARM disclosed that the two companies had conducted a rather complex test chip at the end of last year, and it was built based on TSMC's 16nm FinFET process. The chip includes dual-core Cortex-A57 and quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU cores - based on a similar big.LITTLE asymmetric solution - mainly for consumer-grade SoCs. This development will also help ARM and TSMC open up a new path for SoC design. ARM's announcement stated that TSMC's 16nm FinFET process has exciting benefits: "At the same total energy consumption, chip designs can be >40% faster, or save >55% of total energy consumption compared to the 28nm process."

14.Strategy Analytics: Qualcomm grabs two-thirds of mobile communication baseband chip revenue

Strategy Analytics' Handset Components Technology (HCT) service released a new research report, "Baseband Chip Market Share Tracking in Q3 2013: Qualcomm Grabs Two-Thirds of Revenue Share", which pointed out that in 2013, global cellular baseband chip processors grew 8.3% year-on-year, reaching a market size of US$18.9 billion. The report also pointed out that in 2013, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Spreadtrum and Broadcom took the top five positions in cellular baseband chip market revenue share. Qualcomm led the market with a revenue share of 64%, followed by MediaTek and Intel with 12% and 8% respectively. According to Strategy Analytics' estimates, the proportion of revenue from baseband integrated application chip processors in the total baseband chip revenue share increased from 48% in the previous year to more than 60% in 2013. In order to increase revenue share, most baseband manufacturers have changed their product portfolio to include integrated products.

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