Well, that didn’t take long at all: in response to Huawei’s lawsuit yesterday over concerns that Motorola could tell its dirty secrets to Nokia Siemens Networks in the wake of their $1.2 billion unit sale, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has issued a temporary ruling banning Motorola from disclosing any Huawei proprietary information to NSN. Technically, we suppose that doesn’t prevent the sale — which the two companies had hoped to close in early 2011 — from going through unabated, but in reality it probably does since there’s no clean way for the transfer to happen without including information that Huawei had previously shared with Moto. We’re sure this will take a little time to work itself out, but for the interim, looks like Huawei’s gotten its wish.
Huawei has announced that it has filed a suit against Motorola in US district court to prevent Motorola from infringing on Huawei IP. The suit seeks to prevent Motorola from transferring Huawei IP to Nokia Siemens Networks.
The suit comes as Nokia Siemens Networks seek to purchase the Motorola wireless network business for $1.2 billion. Huawei and Motorola have worked together in the radio access network and core network businesses since 2000.
Huawei fears that the IP it owns will be transferred to Nokia Siemens Networks. Huawei says that so far Motorola has offered no assurances that that its information will not be transferred to Nokia with the sale.
After tying off a $1.2 billion deal last July, Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks — the new owner of Moto’s telecom infrastructure business — have had a little roadblock thrown in their way courtesy of China’s Huawei. Turns out Moto and Huawei had a partnership in place that involved the former reselling the latter’s equipment, which necessitated some rather cozy information sharing — and now Huawei’s concerned that Motorola might be turning over some or all of that intellectual property to NSN as a part of the sale. You’d think this is the sort of thing that would’ve been squared away prior to inking a ten-figure deal, but Huawei says that it “had not been given assurance that Motorola would not transfer proprietary information” over to NSN, one of Huawei’s fiercest rivals in the infrastructure biz… so you can kinda understand their concern. More on this as it develops.
Huawei was right on cue here at CES today, announcing the US version of its IDEOS X5 mid-range Android smartphone. This device uses the same formula as the original IDEOS (also known as the Comet for T-Mobile) and aims to provide a decent product at a competitive price. Although we already knew the specs, this was our chance to play with the IDEOS X5 and gather more information. The phone looks elegant and feels solidly built, with a 3.8-inch WVGA capacitive display behind glass in front and 1500mAh battery behind soft-touch plastics in back, all wrapped in an 11.4mm-thin body. Take a look at the gallery below, and hit the break for additional details and our hands-on video.
Of the manifold riches sure to unloaded by the fine folks at Huawei at this year’s CES, be on the lookout for the IDEOS X5. The Android 2.2 smartphone that we first saw yesterday features a 3.8-inch multitouch screen, SWYPE input, a 5 megapixel camera with 720p video, FM radio, and Flash 10.1 — all in a svelte 11.4mm thick package. Available in Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand beginning this month, with a U.S. carrier to be announced. Keep an eye on this space for news from the launch later today!
Tomorrow at CES, Huawei will be introducing its new mid-range Android smartphone in the US — the IDEOS X5. This device runs Froyo, and features an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7230 CPU, a 3.8-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording, and a VGA front-facing camera. It also provides 4GB of internal storage, and includes the usual array of HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios, all powered by a 1500mAh battery. It also looks like Huawei, which has already announced the IDEOS X5 in Australia, will be releasing the phone in Hong Kong sometime between January 13th and 19th. Hit the gallery bellow for some pictures, and stay tuned for the launch tomorrow. We’ll be there.
Did a Thai company we’ve never heard of just make the best-looking portrait QWERTY Android phone to date? We might not jump the gun that quickly — but it’s definitely up there. Spriiing Design (yes, three i’s) is launching its Smile model in Bangkok on January 18th and the rest of Thailand thereafter, featuring a 3 megapixel camera, 512MB of ROM, 256MB of RAM, microSD expansion to 16GB, and a 2.6-inch QVGA display along with 3G support on the 900 and 2100MHz bands paired to a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 core atop Android 2.1. In other words… yeah, this pretty low end fare. More interestingly, though, the handset was apparently designed in Sweden and manufactured by Huawei — in fact, it’s got “In connection with Ideos” silkscreened on the back, and Ideos is the brand that Huawei’s been pushing this year for its Android-powered gear. Small world, ain’t it? Follow the break for Spriiing’s video teaser.
Update: Turns out this puppy is on sale in Australia, too, through Boost Mobile (yep, there’s a Boost Mobile there). Thanks, Matt!
Considering the cheap plastics and giant white logos, our first thought when we saw this unflattering shot in the FCC’s filing system was that we were looking at some sort of connected navigation unit for delivery trucks — but alas, as far as we can tell, the so-called HIC is a “tablet” from Huawei that doubles as a phone for Vodafone. Besides a triband 3G radio, this hot mess gets you a 7-inch WVGA display, a front-facing camera for video calls, and an integrated kickstand around back for setting it on a countertop. The style of the power adapter leads us to believe that the HIC might be intended for permanent use in your home, which would explain why it bears so little resemblance with something we’d want to carry around — but still, couldn’t they have made it a little prettier? No word on when (or to which of Vodafone’s markets) it’ll be coming.
A Vodafone-branded Huawei tablet has been spotted crossing the FCC, offering a 7-inch WVGA touchscreen and a 2-megapixel camera. The Huawei EC W820 appears to run a proprietary OS, rather than the more common Android, supporting voice and video calls, SMS, media playback, internet browsing and various widgets.
There’s wireless support for dualband 850/1900 GSM/WCDMA, along with WiFi and Bluetooth according to the user manual. Internal memory is 256MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM; there’s an SD card slot for up to 16GB cards, along with a USB 2.0 port that can support up to 16GB external thumb-drives.
Stereo speakers, a kick-stand and a trackball round out the main specs, and there’s a 3.5mm headphone socket and user-replaceable battery. Going by the screenshots in the user guide, it’s headed to Vodafone Spain first. No word on when the device might arrive on Vodafone, nor under what name, but it looks like a more modern version of the little-loved O2 Joggler.
Well, that didn’t take long at all: in response to Huawei’s lawsuit yesterday over concerns that Motorola could tell its dirty secrets to Nokia Siemens Networks in the wake of their $1.2 billion unit sale, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has issued a temporary ruling banning Motorola from disclosing any Huawei proprietary information to NSN. Technically, we suppose that doesn’t prevent the sale — which the two companies had hoped to close in early 2011 — from going through unabated, but in reality it probably does since there’s no clean way for the transfer to happen without including information that Huawei had previously shared with Moto. We’re sure this will take a little time to work itself out, but for the interim, looks like Huawei’s gotten its wish.
