German Court blocked Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 blocked in Europe

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will have to be removed from sale across Europe following a judgment in a German court.

The tablet, which launched in Britain last week, must now be removed from shelves and Samsung must stop marketing it. According to some retailers, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 became the fastest-selling tablet since the iPad 2 when it launched in Britain.

The Regional Court of Dusseldorf has granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the sale and marketing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 across all of Europe except the Netherlands. It is possible to apply for a pan-European injunction in any country which, if upheld, covers all of the EU. The judge backed Apple’s claim that Samsung’s tablet had infringed on its intellectual property and copied elements of the iPad 2.

While Samsung can appeal against the judgment, the injunction will still stand in the meantime. Any appeal would be heard in around four weeks' time and would be heard by the same judge.

Intellectual property analyst Florian Muller said that Apple had a separate lawsuit underway in the Netherlands. He wrote in a blogpost: "The exception of the Netherlands is due to the aforementioned separate legal proceeding in that country. That exception relates only to Samsung's Korean parent company, not to the German subsidiary."

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the latest tablet computer from the Korean manufacturer. The original version of the Galaxy Tab was a 7-inch tablet but this year’s model adopts a similar screen size to the iPad and is marginally thinner than the iPad 2.
An Apple spokesman said: "It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."
A Samsung spokesman said the company could not comment on legal proceedings.
The is the second injunction that Apple has obtained against Samsung’s rival tablet. The Australian launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was delayed indefinitely last week after Apple filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Australia.
Apple sued Samsung in April this year for infringement of patents and trademarks; a few days later, Samsung issued a counter-claim.

Goggle tablets PC Android 3.2''

Smaller Google tablets coming soon

Google Android 3.2 has been revealed as the new version of Android Honeycomb that will run a range of new tablet sizes to rival the iPad

Huawei's new MediaPad is set to be the first to run Google Android 3.2

A new version of Google’s Android operating system, Honeycomb, will run on a range of new tablet sizes, it has been revealed.

Version 3.1 has been used on 10” tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1”, but now Honeycomb 3.2 will run smaller devices such as the newly announced Huawei MediaPad. The Chinese company claims that this will be the first Android 3.2 machine, and that it will launch by September. Honeycomb 3.2 will also allow existing devices such as HTC’s Flyer to be upgraded, if manufacturers are willing to invest in updating their software.

The Huawei MediaPad features a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and two cameras, at 1.3mp and 5mp respectively.

At last month’s Google I/O conference, the company announced that it would release Honeycomb 3.1, with a range of minor updates including resizeable widgets, but that a totally new release, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, will follow in the last quarter of 2011. This will include new features such as face recognition for video-conferencing, and will be the first version of Android that will run on a range of tablet sizes.

Meanwhile, version 3.2 of Honeycomb is set to offer improved hardware acceleration and updates to Google’s music and movies applications, as well as improvements to widgets and Movie Studio. Details have not yet been announced, however.

The new form factors may not produce the Android tablet boost that some analysts expect, however. A new Bernstein Research survey claims, “we find that consumers are not interested in form factors that deviate from the benchmark set by Apple. Few consumers, less than 15 percent prefer the 7″ screen size versus the 10″ screen of the iPad. Over 50 percent of respondents are firmly in favor of the 10″ screen, which leads us to conclude that the 7″ tablet models recently launched, like the BlackBerry PlayBook, are destined for failure. Consumer’s preference for the 10″ form factor explains the lukewarm response to Samsung’s 7″ Galaxy tablet and the rapid introduction of larger screen models in that series.” The survey also found that over 50 per cent of respondents explicitly wanted an Apple device.