MacRumors

Samsung today announced that it will spend roughly $4 billion to revamp some of its existing facilities in Austin, Texas in order to boost production of its system-on-a-chip platforms that power a number of mobile devices including Apple's iOS products.

The funds will be used to renovate its existing fabrication operations to accommodate full System LSI production.

The remodeled fabrication line will mainly produce state-of-the-art mobile SoCs on 300mm wafers at the 28nm process node.

Starting work this month, the project is scheduled to initiate mass production within the second half of 2013. About 2,500 construction workers and equipment vendors will be at the site to retrofit the facility and set up the equipment.

As noted by the Austin American-Statesman, Samsung will be converting older facilities currently used for memory chip production.

Although Samsung does not say exactly who it is making the new chips for, technology industry analysts say the Austin factory is a key maker of low-power system chips.

The two key customers of the Austin fab, analysts say, are almost certain to be Apple Inc., which depends on Samsung to make essential smartphone chips, and Samsung's own smartphone business.

Austin is already a hub for both Samsung's system-on-a-chip production and Apple, with Samsung having opened a new factory dedicated to production of Apple's A5 chips just last December and Apple currently pursing a major expansion of its existing presence in the city.

As noted by The Next Web, UK communications regulator Ofcom today announced that it has awarded permission to carrier Everything Everywhere to begin using its existing 1800 MHz spectrum to offer LTE and WiMAX services beginning on September 11.

In a statement on its website, Ofcom announced that it had approved Everything Everywhere’s request to rebrand its 1800MHz spectrum to deliver 4G services from September 11, 2012, highlighting that as a result it would be able to deliver “significant benefits to consumers, and that there is no material risk that those benefits will be outweighed by a distortion of competition.“

It will take some time for Everything Everywhere, which currently operates the Orange and T-Mobile brands in the UK, to roll out the service, but a number of of observers have already pointed out that the effective date comes just one day prior to Apple's all-but-confirmed media event to introduce the next-generation iPhone.

The current-generation iPad only supports LTE over 700 MHz and 2100 MHz frequencies, and Apple will need to support several other frequency bands if it wishes to support LTE service in major markets outside of the existing iPad compatibility in the U.S. and Canada. Just last week, Korean carriers reported that they were talking to Apple about supporting LTE service on their 800 MHz and 1800 MHz bands.

While Everything Everywhere is undoubtedly pleased by Ofcom's ruling giving it early permission to offer LTE service, The Verge notes that the carrier's competitors (Vodafone, Three and O2) are less enthusiastic as they look toward the UK's main auction of 800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands early next year, arguing that Everything Everywhere's advantage will distort the competitive landscape in the UK mobile market.

Digitimes reports that the long-rumored 7.85" iPad will begin volume production in September with a target of 4 million units per month.

Supply volume of Apple's 7.85-inch iPad is estimated to reach four million units per month starting in September in order to prepare for demand from year-end holidays, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

The goal is said to launch the new device before the 2012 holiday season.

The timing is consistent with previous rumors that Apple would be ramping production in September. iMore reported back in May that Apple was targetting an October launch for the smaller iPad with a target price in the $200-$250 range. iMore also lumped in the iPad Mini to be announced alongside the next iPhone on the rumored September 12th media event.

The September 12th date seems certain for an Apple media event as it has been verified by a number of publications. Apple has yet to officially announce an event, however.

While a number of part leaks have already revealed what to expect in the next iPhone, iPad mini parts have been quite scarce. This seemingly late ramp up in production may have been intentionally timed by Apple to correspond with their launch media event in order to prevent as many leaks for this new device.

Digital advocacy organization Public Knowledge has accused AT&T of violating FCC rules on net neutrality with its new policy regarding the use of FaceTime over Cellular. AT&T announced late last week that it will only allow users on its new Mobile Share data plans to use the new FaceTime over Cellular service in iOS 6.

A senior staff lawyer for Public Knowledge told the New York Times that it felt AT&T was violating FCC rules that service providers not "block applications that compete with the provider's voice or video telephony services." John Bergmayer, lawyer for the organization, noted that "there is no technical reason why one data plan should be able to access FaceTime and another not."

The same argument could be made for tethering the iPhone to a laptop -- however, it isn't clear what AT&T service Public Knowledge feels FaceTime is competing with. The rule in question is designed to prevent ISP's from blocking things like VoIP apps or Netflix that compete with their own products.

An AT&T spokesperson issued the following statement about the allegations:

FaceTime is available to all of our customers today over Wi-Fi, and we’re now expanding its availability even further as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans.

The FCC had no comment about the matter, and iPhone owners will not be affected by the policy until FaceTime over Cellular is enabled in iOS 6 later this year.

Following up on last week's photos of iPad mini and next-generation iPhone parts including Apple's new, smaller dock connector and the bottom-mounted headphone jack, parts and repair firm iResQ has taken the iPhone part and placed it in a rear shell obtained from a separate source.

The two parts fit together extremely well, with screw holes and components lining up perfectly. While the fit is not conclusive evidence of the legitimacy of these parts, it does provide additional confidence that they are intended to be used together. The photos also provide a better idea of what the next iPhone will look like when viewed from the bottom, with the significantly smaller dock connector making room for the headphone jack and a larger speaker grille along the bottom edge of the device.

A number of parts claimed to be for the next-generation iPhone have already leaked, giving a good idea of what the device with its taller 4-inch display will look like. One of the key parts observers have been waiting for is the device's logic board, and while photos of one did leak earlier this month, most of the details were obscured by shielding on the part.

Apple is expected to introduce the next-generation iPhone on September 12, with the "iPad mini" potentially seeing an introduction on the same date, although some sources have speculated that Apple will wait to introduce the smaller iPad at a later date.

With Apple opening a pair of new Canadian retail stores this past weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Coquitlam, British Columbia, The Loop shares some fresh data on the company's retail chain performance.

Following the two grand openings this weekend, Apple now has 375 stores worldwide, and Apple notes that those stores have seen nearly 300 million visitors so far this year, or roughly 3500 visitors per store per day. Those numbers obviously vary significantly from store-to-store and day-to-day, but the company clearly continues to attract both new and existing customers to test drive Apple's products, make purchases, and seek support.

While meeting with Apple, I was able to get a few details about how the retail operation is going overall.

According to Apple, the company has seen almost 300 million worldwide visitors so far in 2012. To give you some type of comparison, by July 2011, the population of the United States was estimated to be 311 million people.

On the support side, Apple now reports that the company's retail store Genius Bars are now serving 50,000 users per day, or about 130 per store per day.

Apple has been working hard to meet surging demand for its retail stores, opening new stores on a regular basis and expanding or replacing some of its smaller outdated locations. The company has also been looking for ways to increase Genius Bar availability at its existing stores, increasing multitasking demands on its staff several years ago and even mocking up redesigned Genius Bars that could serve more customers at a time.

Update: The Loop has clarified that the store visitor numbers refer to fiscal 2012 rather than calendar 2012, meaning that the company is seeing closer to 2500 visitors per day at its stores on average.

Late last week, jailbreak hacker pod2g disclosed an issue with the way Apple's iOS handles optional headers in SMS messages, a vulnerability that could allow users to be targeted by SMS spoofing that makes messages appear to originate from people other than the actual senders. While SMS spoofing is certainly not new and can be performed through various services, this specific issue in the handling of reply-to addresses could be addressed fairly easily by Apple.

Engadget reported over the weekend that it had obtained a statement from Apple on the issue, with Apple simply touting its iMessage service as a more secure alternative to SMS.

Apple takes security very seriously. When using iMessage instead of SMS, addresses are verified which protects against these kinds of spoofing attacks. One of the limitations of SMS is that it allows messages to be sent with spoofed addresses to any phone, so we urge customers to be extremely careful if they're directed to an unknown website or address over SMS.

iMessage is of course an Apple-specific messaging service, and is thus only compatible with iOS devices running iOS 5 or later and Macs running OS X Mountain Lion. Consequently, it is generally not possible for users to entirely replace their SMS usage with iMessage. Apple has also not committed to making any changes in how it handles reply-to addresses for SMS, so it is unknown whether they will be directly addressing the issue.

Milestones for Apple's stock are falling rapidly in recent days, with another strong performance today pushing Apple past Microsoft for the title of most valuable publicly-trade stock ever, a distinction Microsoft has held since December 1999.

Microsoft's market capitalization peaked on December 30, 1999, reaching an intraday high of $119.94 per share. With Microsoft having documented 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares as of October 31, 1999 in its quarterly earnings report, the company would have had a market capitalization of $618.89 billion on December 30.

Apple's most recent quarterly filing listed 937,406,000 outstanding shares as of July 13, 2012, and with the company's stock price hitting $660.73 today, its market capitalization reached $619.37 billion.

While Apple now holds the all-time market capitalization record in terms of raw numbers, accounting for inflation would still allow Microsoft to retain the title by a fairly wide margin. In inflation-adjusted terms, Microsoft's $618.89 market capitalization in December 1999 would be equivalent to roughly $842.5 billion in today's dollars.

Apple's market capitalization title is also subject to several other caveats, perhaps most notably being PetroChina's trillion dollar market cap it achieved when it launched for trading on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2007. That figure comes with its own qualifications, however, as PetroChina is a government-dominated firm that saw only 2% of its shares being made available on the Shanghai exchange. Trading in PetroChina shares on the Hong Kong exchange and American depositary receipts on the New York Stock Exchange never supported the trillion dollar valuation the company received on the Shanghai exchange.

Update: Apple's stock closed at $665.15 today, giving the company a market capitalization of $623.5 billion.

With Apple and Samsung having concluded their presentations for the jury in the high-profile U.S. court case over patent and design issues, Bloomberg reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Kwon Oh Hyun will talk one last time in an effort to settle or at least narrow their differences before jury deliberations begin as soon as tomorrow.

The companies’ lawyers will report to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in federal court in San Jose, California, on the outcome of today’s telephone discussion between Apple’s Tim Cook and Samsung’s Kwon Oh Hyun, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. [...]

As testimony in the trial drew to a close, Koh asked that the CEOs talk, and said she was “pathologically optimistic” they could settle claims over patents for smartphones and tablet computers.

Senior executives of the two companies met several times leading up to the trial and were unable to reach an agreement, but Samsung is now operating under new CEO Kwon, who was elevated to the position in early June as part of an executive reshuffling.

Apple estimates that it should be owed roughly $2.5 billion in damages based on sales of Samsung devices it claims infringed upon Apple's patents and trade dress, while Samsung claims that Apple owes approximately $400 million in licensing fees for 3G-related patents based on a royalty rate of 2.4% per unit sold. Apple has claimed that the licensing fees for the standards-essential patents should be significantly lower.

UBreakiFix has received these photos of the full front panel of the next generation iPhone from one of their distributors.

The parts don't appear to be particularly revealing. We've seen similar components before with the exception of a close look at the new iPhone's LCD screen.

The new screen is said to have increased to 4" in diagonal (up from 3.5") while preserving the same pixel density as the current iPhone design. This would provide apps with additional screen space to fill. UBreakiFix also provided a zoomed in photo of the top area with serial numbers and LCD connector.

The new iPhone is expected to be launched on September 12th.

Photos of parts for the next-generation iPhone and the rumored iPad mini continue to leak, with repair firm iResQ posting new photos of what are said to be the dock connector/headphone jack flex cable parts for both devices. Each of the parts is available in both black and white, indicating that Apple will be coordinating the dock with the bodies of the devices.

Like the photo that leaked earlier this week, the iPad mini parts curiously show the headphone jack at the bottom of the device. That placement is inconsistent with case leaks and other claims made thus far, which have indicated that the jack would be at the top of the device as on the full-size iPad.

These new iPad mini part photos also reveal a newer part number than seen on the previous part leak. These new photos appear to carry a part number of 821-1516, while the photo leaked early this week carried a part number of 821-1476. These iPad mini parts are the first interior components of the device to appear, and while they have not been confirmed to be for the device in question they are consistent with Apple parts and are too large to fit inside an iPhone.

A second photo also offers a close-up interior look at the dock connector port, showing where the eight gold pins on the claimed dock cable and accessories will make contact. The number of pins for the dock connector has been in dispute, with some suggesting that the metal surrounding the pins on the connector could act as a ninth pin.

Update: MacRumors has received more info from iResQ about the new dock connector port. The site tells us that "there is just one set of eight contacts inside of the port" with "none on the top side".

AT&T will not charge customers for using the FaceTime over Cellular feature in iOS 6, but will require users to be on one of its new Mobile Share data plans. Last month, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declined to talk about how the company would handle the new FaceTime feature, saying "it's too early to talk about pricing."

AT&T's new Mobile Share data plans will launch August 23rd, allowing users to share their monthly data allotment across multiple devices. The plans are structured with two basic components: a monthly cost for a data allotment and a per-device charge that varies from $10 to $45 depending on the type of device and the data plan selected. All of the plans include unlimited talk and text.

Here's the statement from AT&T:

AT&T will offer FaceTime over Cellular as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans, which were created to meet customers’ growing data needs at a great value. With Mobile Share, the more data you use, the more you save. FaceTime will continue to be available over Wi-Fi for all our customers.

While AT&T is clearly encouraging customers to switch to the new Mobile Share plans, users can keep their existing tiered single-phone or grandfathered unlimited data plans -- though without the FaceTime over Cellular feature.

In the U.S., Sprint has said it will not charge for FaceTime over Cellular. Verizon hasn't specified what it will require of customers to use the feature.

According to Polygon and veteran video game developer Brian Fargo, video game streaming company OnLive has fired its entire staff and the company will cease to exist as of later today:

According to e-mails forwarded to Polygon from supposedly former OnLive employees, the company will no longer exist as of today.

"I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist," reads an email forwarded to Polygon. "Unfortunately, my job and everyone else's was included. A new company will be formed and the management of the company will be in contact with you about the current initiatives in place, including the titles that will remain on the service."

However, according to Brian Jaquet, OnLive's Director of Corporate Communications, the story is untrue. The company's Twitter feed is still posting normally and, in response to an email from MacRumors, Jaquet wrote:

We don't respond to rumors, but of course not.

[…]

I have no comment on the news other than to say the OnLive service is not shutting down.

I'm sorry I cannot be more specific.

We've followed OnLive for a while, particularly after the company demonstrated an iOS version of its streaming video game software last December. That software was supposed to deliver "console-class gaming to tablets and phones", but is still awaiting approval from Apple to join the App Store.

Earlier this year, the company released a iOS app called OnLive Desktop that used its video game streaming technology to put a full-fledged Windows client on the iPad, including a Flash and PDF-enabled web browser.

Update: Kotaku reports that the company will be filing for bankruptcy and a new company will be created from the remains of OnLive and some employees will be brought over to that organization. Others have apparently been laid off.

Update 2: OnLive has issued the following statement to MacRumors clarifying the situation:

We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive's apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.'s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services.