Every City Is A Shadow City As iPhone ARG Hits 13 Euro Countries After US

Grey Area, a Finnish smartphone games developer, has now launched its alternative reality game Shadow Cities across thirteen additional European countries, after its North American launch last month. The game can be downloaded for free in the local Apple iTunes App stores in Italy, France, Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark and Norway (iTunes link).

The startup recently raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital.

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Shazam CEO Talks Android vs. iPhone And How They’re Listening Their Way To Success

Yesterday Shazam, the company that lets users identify recorded music simply by holding their phones up toward a speaker, announced that it had raised a whopping $32 million. The company’s goal: to apply the powerful technology it’s developed over the last decade to television shows and commercials. So how will they do that?

I had a chance to sit down with Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher, who discussed in detail how this leap to television will work. And we also touched on quite a few other topics, including the fact that Shazam is now ten years old (it actually powered the song recognition features that were offered by mobile phone carriers before the rise of the iPhone and Android). You can watch the whole interview in the video above.

I also took the opportunity to ask if Fisher has seen any trends emerge on each mobile platform — after all, Shazam has a universal appeal (just about everyone likes music and wants to figure out what they’re listening to). Fisher shared some interesting data points, including the fact that “iTunes is the dominant platform in terms of user propensity to purchase…”. In other words, iPhone users are far more likely to purchase songs than users on Android and other platforms. That’s not a huge surprise, but it further supports the claims that iOS users are more accustomed to buying content on their phones.

For more, be sure to tune into the interview.

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Study says 40% of European smartphone buyers would get an iPhone

The Loop is reporting on a study released Wednesday by the Yankee Group that indicates that 40% of potential smartphone buyers in Europe said that they would go for an iPhone.

The study was a poll of 5,000 consumers and 2,250 IT decision-makers working at companies across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

The study indicated that Android devices came in a distant second at 19% and BlackBerry and Nokia followed at 17% and 15% respectively.

Declan Lonergan, the VP of Research at Yankee Group had this to say about the findings:

These findings highlight the continued strength of Apple in the European smartphone market and, in particular, its phenomenal brand appeal,” said Declan Lonergan, research VP at Yankee Group. “The data also highlights the enormous challenges faced by Nokia and RIM to retain mind share and market share in this increasingly dynamic and competitive marketplace.

The Loop points out some other interesting tidbits from the study including the fact that users are likely to have more than one device that they use as the situation calls for them and that employees say that they are 58% more productive during travel when they bring a tablet device along.

Let’s take an informal poll in the comments. If you’re a reader from the EU or the UK and you’re looking to buy a new smartphone, is the iPhone your first choice? Or would you go for Android, or perhaps one of the new Nokia N9′s?The Loop

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Judge denies Samsung access to unreleased iPad, iPhone

According to FOSS Patents, a judge in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California has ruled that Samsung cannot view Apple’s next-generation iPad and iPhone products. The whole debacle started when Apple began accusing Samsung of creating copycat products — as such, it asked the Korean firm to produce its next-generation devices inside a court room. The court took Apple’s side and Samsung was forced to show Apple the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, and DROID Charge. In an effort to prepare for further legal battles with Apple, Samsung wanted the same access to Apple’s next generation products. For now, that won’t happen. The reasoning behind the judge’s decision appears to be that Samsung had already showed off its products to members of the press and others. Apple, as usual, has kept its products close to the vest.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

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Apple’s iPhone ‘multitouch patent’ not as broad as it would seem

There has been a lot of talk today about a recently granted patent that seems to give Apple the ability to pursue infringement suits against any manufacturer producing a touchscreen phone.

The discussion over the implications of the patent reached a fever pitch after this PCMag article said that the patent’s application is so broad that Apple would be able to “bully other smart phone manufacturers out of the U.S. Market entirely.”

An opposing view has just been published by Nilay Patel over at This is My Next that seems to discount much of the claims about the patent’s reach. In the article, Patel says that if you carefully examine each of the claims in the patent, you get a true picture of the intent of the filing, and that the application may be much narrower than most outlets reporting on the issue may realize.

In order for a patent infringement claim to be filed, a device or software product must meet all of the requirements set out in the patent, Patel explains, and the list of elements set out in patent #7,966,578, granted on June 21, are actually very specific.

In addition to the device being touch screen, it must also display the exact behavior set out in the elements, which is to say it must display an overall frame in a web page that moves at a touch, as well as an ‘interior’ frame that you can pinch-to-zoom (or manipulate with ‘N” number of fingers) without affecting the screen at large. Think ‘Google Maps’ for instance.

Patel says that, by that definition, this patent is actually fairly narrow. “I don’t think the big brains at Google or Microsoft (or Motorola or Samsung or HTC or whoever) will have a hard time engineering around it — it’s really just one specific type of multitouch interaction,” writes Patel, “I certainly wouldn’t call it an “iPhone patent” or anything nearly so broad or sensational.”

He acknowledges that the patent does increase Apple’s arsenal when it comes to defending its innovations against its rivals in the smartphone industry, but reinforces that the patent may not be the nuclear weapon that changes the balance of the industry that many publications are painting it to be.

The points that Patel raises seem solid enough, although, unlike him, I’m not a former attorney. This does seem to change the story significantly when it comes to this patent and Apple’s ability to completely dominate the industry by enforcing it.This is My Next

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