Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Monday:
ITC Bats Down HTC: The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) against Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC on Friday, settling a patent infringement case originally filed in March 2010. The ITC determined HTC had violated two of Apple’s patents, but Apple contended it had violated as many as 20. The patents the ITC judge believed HTC had infringed on describe a “system and method causes a computer to detect and perform actions on structures identified in computer data” and a second that describes technology used for synching a smartphone with a computer or network. The decision might prove problematic for Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), whose Android operating system powers the majority of HTC’s smartphones. As FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller (via Mac Rumors) suggested, the decision could lead to a shutdown of HTC’s healthy Android business or the removal of features from Android phones.
Big in Retail: A USA TODAY report said the popularity of Apple’s devices has not only transformed the company into the fastest-growing PC maker in the U.S., but also the fastest growing major retailer. The company’s retail business made $4.6 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2011, a year-on-year increase of 80% and a figure that represents approximately one-fifth of all sales growth among publicly traded retailers, according to Durban Capital’s David Berman. Sales from its Apple Store retail chain specifically totaled $3.2 billion, a 90% increase over the same period in 2010.
iPad Supply Meets Demand: Apple finally started to meet consumer demand for its iPad tablet computer as of Saturday, according to a report at Fortune. Four months after the release of the second-generation iPad, shipping times for the device when ordered online directly from the company have been lowered to between one and three days. Previously, customers had to wait up to a week for iPad orders to be fulfilled.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
