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Foxconn Raises Pay of Factory Workers

February 17th, 2012

Staff members work on the production line at the Foxconn complex in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Photo: Kin Cheung/AP

Ever since Wired reported high suicide rates at Chinese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn in 2011, the company — and Apple — have been under public pressure to improve pay and working conditions at the factory. On Friday, Foxconn announced pay increases of 16 to 25 percent for its factory workers, with the exact amount tied to the workers’ performance in technical certification testing. And at the end of the month, the increases will leave workers with paychecks in the pay range of $286 to $349.

Following public protests and petitions of worldwide consumers, Apple engaged an auditing company, the Fair Labor Association, to look into working conditions at the factory. Though the FLA’s final report has not yet been published, Apple has consistently stated that Foxconn has some of the best working conditions in the industry, a claim repeated by the FLA in a preliminary comment.

Although 25 percent represents a significant pay increase for an earning level that’s already substantially above the local minimum wage, it does not address one of the primary criticisms leveled at Foxconn — that workers often spend up to 12 hours a day, six days a week on the assembly line. Foxconn also employs workers to build products for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

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ITC closes the book on HTC’s first complaint against Apple, still working on its sequels

February 17th, 2012
HTC vs. Apple

Remember that first shot across Apple’s bow that HTC fired way back May of 2010? No? We don’t blame you. Since that initial exchange of complaints against each other the patent war has spun almost completely out of control. Well, in October an ITC judge handed down an initial ruling, rejecting the Taiwanese manufacturer’s claim that Cupertino and crew had infringed upon its patents. Now, almost four months later, a final judgment has been issued, consistent with the initial decision — Apple is not in violation of the patents in question (which primarily concern the dialer and power management features) and the investigation has officially been closed. Don’t get your hopes up too much though, this is just the first complaint in a long series of suits the two have filed against each other and HTC can always appeal in a federal circuit court. In other words, there’s plenty more where this came from.

ITC closes the book on HTC’s first complaint against Apple, still working on its sequels originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Survey: A Quarter Of All Doctors In Europe Use iPads Professionally

February 16th, 2012

ipad_x

First, a word of caution: the Manhattan Research survey that yielded this data was performed online, so that’s going to skew the results straight away. But even taking that into account, it’s powerful data.

According to the survey, just over a quarter of all doctors in the EU — primary care and specialist — use an iPad for professional purposes. That’s a big number for a device primarily aimed at content consumption and not hardened against a hospital environment.

And it seems that the doctors in fact do use it primarily for content consumption: a quarter of their “work online time” is spent on it (55% is still on a desktop), looking up articles, showing online resources to patients, and so on. Right now the market for iPad-oriented productivity software for healthcare appears to be more or less wide open; doctors are using the device (40% planned to buy one in the next six months as well), but more as a portable web browser than a care accessory.

There are some medical apps and services coming to the iPad, but the medical establishment isn’t very quick to move. Many hospitals still use systems from the 90s or before because of the effort and money that would be involved with upgrading. And standards for privacy, emissions, documentation, and so on have to be consistent as well, something that doesn’t happen overnight.

For the moment, the iPad is simply a useful portable screen on which a doctor can pull up relevant info for a patient, browse recent journal articles without going back to their office, or do some light email. It will take a long time for development to catch up with the needs of the community, but this foot in the door by Apple could become extremely valuable a little ways down the line.

[via TUAW]

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Apple Yanks The iPad Off Of Amazon’s Chinese Shelves, But Why?

February 16th, 2012

Screen shot 2012-02-15 at 8.39.34 AM

If for some reason you were to mosey on over to Amazon’s Chinese website and perform a search for the iPad, you know what you’d find? No iPad.

Now, you might think to yourself, “Wow, Proview pulled it off,” but that’s not the case at all. In fact, an Amazon spokesperson said that the Apple was the one who requested that the iPad be taken off the site. Proview hasn’t even requested an online sales ban.

Yep, this is tricky, so let’s parse through it together.

The trademark battle between Chinese tech company Proview and Apple has been heating up in recent months, with the Shenzen-based company asking for import and export bans of the iPad in China. Apple contends that it purchased the Chinese trademark rights to the iPad several years ago in ten different countries, but Proview and its lawyers have deemed that those trademark rights don’t extend into China.

“Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,” said an Apple spokeswoman.

If Proview were to win, it could be a serious issue for Apple. China remains a huge manufacturing hub for Apple, and if Cupertino can’t get its iPads out of China it could deal a heavy blow to the company’s worldwide sales numbers. In fact, it could deal a significant blow to Apple’s Chinese sales numbers, which came in around $13 billion last year. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Proview Technology Chairman Yang Long-san told Reuters that “customs have told us that it will be difficult to implement a ban because many Chinese consumers love Apple products. The sheer size of the market is very big.”

According to Reuters, Apple lost to Proview in late 2011 after a court ruled that Proview had rights to the iPad trademark. True to Apple fashion, Cupertino appealed the decision and the next hearing, which will yield a final decision from the courts, is set to begin on February 29.

So that’s what’s going on between Apple and Proview, which brings us back to Amazon China.

M.I.C. Gadgets reports that Apple has made no comment regarding the removal of the iPad on Amazon’s website, and Proview’s lawyers admit they didn’t see it coming either. As I said, Proview never filed for the administrative ban of online sales in Beijing, where Amazon China is based.

Other retailers within various regions of China have been asked by officials to pull the tablet as the dispute heats up, but this is the first instance in which we’ve seen Apple yank its products off of virtual shelves.

But this is undoubtedly tied to the Proview case in some way. See, Apple has limited options when it comes to dealing with this mess. It could try its hand with this appeal, but the decision on February 29 will be as final as an answer on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” — there’s no turning back. The other option is to settle with Proview, but as it stands now that would be a rather large payout.

MicGadget speculates that this may be a part of Apple’s strategy. If Apple can demonstrate that its iPad branding is only valuable because its tied to the Apple iPad, the company might be able to bring down a proposed settlement figure. Or Apple’s twenty steps ahead of all of us and we have absolutely no idea how this one move fits into the grand scheme of things.

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