Kindle Fire teardown determines BoM cost skew; Amazon unconcerned

A teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli reveals that Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablet most likely costs just a bit more to make than what it actually sells for, confirming "what everyone has suspected for a while — that Amazon expects to lose a little money up front on the $199 Fire, in hope of selling in volume," writes WSJ All ThingsD blogger Arik Hesseldahl. The digital retailer hopes to make more money on sales of the digital media and physical goods consumers may order from Amazon on the device, adds the blog. Amazon’s sales model with the Kindle Fire store is now generally understood to be essentially opposite to rival Apple’s precursor version of same.

China counterfeit electronics found in U.S. military aircraft; Senate committee warns of 'ticking time bomb'

As reported by The Washington Post and Bloomberg, dozens of suspected counterfeit electronics parts were revealed to have been installed on U.S. defense equipment from Raytheon, L-3 Communications, and Boeing -- including in aircraft deployed to Afghanistan. The Senate Armed Services Committee said it discovered counterfeit parts, usually originating from China, in at least seven aircraft, including the Lockheed Martin Corp. C-130J transport plane, Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and L-3 27J Spartan transport, as well as in helicopter night vision systems and aircraft video display units.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the committee's chairman, said that none of the counterfeit findings were connected to instances of lives lost or dramatic failures causing an aircraft crash. Nonetheless, Levin stressed that the committee staff has “identified lots of places where, unless that correction was made, there was real fear that those kind of disastrous consequences could take place.” Company executives, a Defense Department official, government investigators and a representative from the semiconductor industry all testified before the committee about the "ticking time bomb" of suspect counterfeit electronics eventually ending up in weapons systems.

Google lawyer says patent disputes thwart mobile device innovation

Google's Android operating system has enabled companies such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung to come forth with devices that can compete with Apple's iPhone. And as noted at Digital Spy, Google's patent counsel Tim Porter warned in a recent San Francisco Chronicle interview that the subsequent rash of legal wrangles over patents serves only to threaten innovation across the mobile device industry, because "the concern is that the more people get distracted with litigation, the less they'll be inventing."

According to Porter, "You can look at the development of the software industry and see a point when [software wasn't being patented] and it was a period of intense innovation. You didn't see Microsoft's first software patent until 1988. By that time it had come out with Word, not to mention DOS. So there's just no question you can look back and see that innovation happens without patents. It's also true that since there weren't patents, there wasn't software patent litigation."