Ina Fried

AT&T has been pretty quiet about its plans for “toll-free” data service since announcing its plans at CES in January. With sponsored data, companies foot the bill for certain kinds of data use, meaning it is free for consumers.

AT&T said at the time that it was testing the service with a handful of partners, but has gone radio silent since then. That could change if, as some suspect, Amazon chooses to subsidize some of their customers’ data usage on the smartphone it is introducing.

Amazon could offer its sponsored data as part of its Amazon Prime service, which recently got a $20-per-year price hike in order to cover some of the rising costs with the service. Amazon added a Prime music service that offers subscribers unlimited streaming (though the service lacks most recent releases and has a smaller catalog than other music services).

In the last nine months, some 28 million US customers opted to pay one of the major carriers full price for a smartphone rather than sign up for a two-year contract to get a discounted model, according to a new study.

Of those customers, an estimated eight million switched carriers to get one of the new-style plans, with the lion’s share of the switchers (5.1 million) of those going to T-Mobile, according to research being released later by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Typically, such purchase options come with lower-cost monthly service, the option to upgrade sooner or both. T-Mobile has shifted entirely to such plans, while AT&T offers no-subsidy options with its Next and Mobile Share Value programs and Verizon has its Edge program. Even where customers have a choice to get a subsidized phone, the financing programs appear to be gaining steam.

[Commentary] Once again, T-Mobile is boasting about how its wireless growth outpaced the rest of the industry combined.

And rarely does a week go by without CEO John Legere touting all of the many ways that his un-carrier is shaking things up. But the question now is whether those market share gains -- and all that bluster -- will actually make it harder for T-Mobile and Sprint to complete a merger that many say the companies need to become a long-term competitor to Verizon and AT&T.

“The answer is 100 percent yes,” said wireless industry analyst Chetan Sharma. “It would have been easier to push through a deal if T-Mobile was weaker than it is today. In an ironic twist of fate, the recent success of T-Mobile has worked against them.”

T-Mobile is trying to walk a fine line as it touts the gains it is making as an independent company while still arguing that further consolidation would benefit consumers.

T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter and marketing chief Mike Sievert said that a potential combination with Sprint or another entity would allow the company to take its “un-carrier” approach to more consumers.

“We believe this is a scale industry,” Sievert said. “It would allow a disruptive player to become even more disruptive.”

Carter said it would be kind of like putting the un-carrier “on steroids.” Regulators in Washington, though, seem opposed to a Sprint-T-Mobile deal, although Sprint and SoftBank have been making the rounds in DC trying to put forward their case for why it could be a good thing.

The jury weighing the Apple-Samsung patent case heard more than 50 hours of testimony, but still has some questions they wish had been answered.

In a series of notes to the court, the deliberating jurors asked for more details on how Apple and Samsung chose the patents they sued over in this case, as well as what Steve Jobs said when Apple first decided to pursue its patent case against Samsung and whether Google was mentioned. They also asked what Samsung’s reaction was when it learned Apple believed it was infringing.

The jury is still out on the latest Apple-Samsung patent trial, but Samsung has already won the larger battle.

When the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Samsung’s US smartphone market share was about 10 percent. By mid-2010 it had dropped to about half that level. By 2013, Samsung had more than rebounded, nabbing nearly a third of the US market in some quarters.

For all Apple’s legal victories, including a roughly $1 billion verdict in the last patent trial, Samsung has continued to grow its share of the smartphone market, both in the US and globally.

Apple has twisted Samsung’s words to make it appear that it was looking to copy the iPhone, but that wasn’t the case, lawyers for the Korean electronics giant argued in closing statements in the companies’ patent infringement case.

The iPhone, Samsung argues, doesn’t even employ at least three of the specific patents for which infringement is claimed in the case.

“You can’t copy if it’s not there,” said Samsung attorney Bill Price, one of four lawyers that will tag-team the company’s closing argument. In the case, Apple has accused a number of Samsung phones and tablets of infringing five patents and argued it is due more than $2 billion in damages.

The pursuit of that large amount is what prompts Apple to talk about copying and stealing, Price said. He also made the case that all Samsung did is what most other phone makers did -- start using Google’s Android to compete with the iPhone. “The Android platform is the world’s alternative to iOS,” Price said.

The latest Apple-Samsung patent megatrial is nearing its end, with the final witness testimony scheduled to take place.

The two sides have just a few minutes remaining in the 25 hours granted to each to present its case. The jury will get to start early, with the lawyers and Judge Koh sticking around to hash out a bunch of details including final jury instructions and the form that the jurors will use to decide the case.

Judge Lucy Koh released a proposed jury form, but both sides objected to it, saying it could lead to confusion. Each side submitted proposals of their own in early April.

Apple is seeking more than $2 billion in damages, while Samsung says that figure is a “gross exaggeration” and is looking for only a few million dollars on its counterclaim.

Ahead of testimony, the lawyers in the case and Judge Lucy Koh are discussing the impact of a new ruling from the Federal Circuit in a related case involving Apple and Motorola. In particular, that case deals with one of the patents in this case -- the ’647 patent related to “quick links”.

A Google lawyer testified that the company, pursuant to its contractual obligations, agreed to take over defense of some of the claims in Apple’s current patent lawsuit as well as to indemnify Samsung should it lose on those claims.

Apple played deposition testimony from Google lawyer James Maccoun, who verified emails in which Google agreed to provide partial or full indemnity with regard to four patents as well as to take over defense of those claims.

Of the four patents Google over which offered to cover at least some costs, two were dropped from the case before the trial began. The two patents that remain in the case, the ’414 and ’959 patents, cover background synchronization and universal search, respectively.

Although Google was seen as a shadow figure in the case -- most of the patents in this trial have to do with functions of Android or Google’s apps -- this was the first evidence shown to the jury that Google is playing a central role in the defense.

Microsoft said that it expects its deal to acquire Nokia’s phone unit to close soon -- with a couple minor changes. Under the revised deal, Microsoft will no longer acquire Nokia’s Korean manufacturing plant.

Instead, it will take on 21 people working in China that had been part of Nokia’s chief technology office, the rest of which is sticking with Nokia. Microsoft will also manage Nokia.com and Nokia’s social media presence for up to a year following the deal’s close.