The good folks at Sonos just stopped by our office to give us a preview of their brand new Controller application for the Apple iPad, and boy is it sexy. If you’re a Sonos fan (you know we are) and you have an iPad, this will be a no-brainer when it’s released within the next two months in the App Store for free. For starters, just by taking advantage of the extra screen real estate, the software guys at Sonos have masterfully developed a three column view that just looks incredibly slick and functions even better. We’re talking a completely new spin on the Sonos remote control experience, and we can easily see these things taking over living rooms, kitchen tables, and practically anywhere else music is listened to.

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Motorola means business when it comes to its upcoming breakup and it is throwing cash and moving debt around around like crazy. The split will form a new Motorola Mobility which will encompass the struggling mobile phone division along with the profitable home hardware division that manufactures set-top boxes and DSL/Cable modems. The remainder of Motorola, which is responsible for two-way public safety radios, handheld scanners, and telecommunications network gear, will be rolled into the new Motorola Solutions. The Mobility company will get a much needed shot in the arm with an infusion of cash that will total $3 to $4 billion and the removal of pension liabilities and other encumbering debt. The Solutions company will shoulder the burden of this split by assuming these pension and other liabilities and will receive any remaining cash reserves. With that much cash in hand and momentum with its DROID series of smartphones, Motorola Mobility has an opportunity to make some waves in the mobile marketplace. For competition sake, let’s hope they do.

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Toshiba and Fujitsu confirmed on Thursday that the two Japanese companies will be merging their mobile phone business units. As part of the merger, Toshiba will spin off its mobile division into a new company with Fujitsu acquiring a majority stake in this newly formed venture. The resulting company will become Japan’s second largest mobile phone maker with an estimated 18.7% market share. Details are expected to be finalized in July with the merged company beginning operations in October of this year.

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HTC’s patent-related legal action against Apple took a huge step forward today, as the ITC announced it will formally investigate the claims made by HTC. At the heart of the matter are five patents which HTC alleges Apple is using without permission. The patents include personalized software phone dialers, a phone dialer with memory access, and power-management technology. HTC, which filed the complaint in response to Apple’s very own patent lawsuit against HTC, is asking that the ITC block the U.S. importation of iPhones iPads and iPods.

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It looks like RIM and Motorola have decided to bury the legal hatchet. A PRNewswire release indicates that the two companies have reached a legal settlement which will cross-license patents dealing with: 2G, 3G, 4G, 802.11 and wireless email. The deal will end “all outstanding worldwide litigation between the two companies.” The press release is short, sweet, and queued up for you after the break.

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) and Research In Motion Limited (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) have entered into a Settlement and License Agreement which ends all outstanding worldwide litigation between the two companies. Under the Agreement, Motorola and RIM will benefit from a long-term, intellectual property cross-licensing arrangement involving the parties receiving cross-licenses of various patent rights, including patent rights relating to certain industry standards and certain technologies, such as 2G, 3G, 4G, 802.11 and wireless email. In addition, the parties will transfer certain patents to each other.

The financial terms of the Agreement include an up-front payment and ongoing royalties to Motorola. Further terms and conditions of the Agreement are confidential.

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And here comes the FBI. Speaking to Wall Street Journal, an FBI spokesperson confirmed that the FBI has opened an investigation into the security breach which saw the confidential information of some 114,067 iPad 3G owners being retrieved. Despite the claims of Gawker, the site which broke the story, AT&T contends that the issue had been discovered and fixed the day before the story broke. Although security experts claim there it’s unlikely that further harm will come from the leak, there is still the off chance that the email addresses — some of which belong to high level members of the government and military — could fall into the wrong hands of an even worse group of people and become open game for hackers.

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It comes as no surprise — since Steve Jobs hinted at it during D8 — that Apple has once again revised the controversial section 3.3.9 of its iOS developer agreement. Section 3.3.9 deals specifically with what App Store applications can and cannot do when it comes to the collection of user and device data. The new modifications seem to be more lenient towards independent ad agencies; allowing them to collect user data after obtaining explicit permission from Apple to do so. However, what they’re not so lenient towards is allowing non-independent ad agencies, such as Google’s AdMob, to collect user and device data. The language of the agreement seems to create a legal loophole, that, if exercised, would allow Apple to cut AdMob out of serving ads to its iOS devices:

3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:

- The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application. For example, without Apple’s prior written consent, You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

- The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.

At last week’s D8 conference, Jobs singled out ad agency Flurry for its role in outing prototype iPads through the collection of device data embedded in iPad applications. Apple insists that its data collection policies are about protecting the privacy of its users and not thwarting competition.

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We’ve just confirmed the iPhone 4 is launching June 24th on AT&T. Available in both black and white, the 16GB iPhone 4 will cost $199 while the 32GB model will go for $299. Both prices reflect 2-year contract prices with AT&T. The iPhone 3GS will replace the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately the storage capacity will drop to 8GB, but then again so will the price. It will go for $99 on contract.

Forrester Research, “an independent technology and market research company,” surveyed 115 American and European companies, in an effort to create metrics of the office software landscape in enterprise. The results of the May 11th report are in, and the winner, by a landslide, is Microsoft Office 2007. Of the companies surveyed, 81% are currently using MS Office 2007 with with a lowly 4% using the free, online alternative Google Apps. Also of note: 78% of those running Microsoft Office 2007 indicated they utilize SharePoint for collaboration, with 33% responding in the “affirmative” when asked if they had plans to upgrade to Office 2010. Forrester’s conclusions:

The alternatives to Microsoft Office today do not meet the needs of the enterprises Forrester surveyed. Common end user barriers to adoption of alternatives include lack of required functionality, third-party integration requirements, user acceptance, lack of seamless interoperability with Office, and legacy content support needs. These gaps will be bridged in the coming years as Google, OpenOffice.org, and others mature.

Alright corporate drones, what are you using in your office? Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, Google Apps, other?

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