Today’s mobile roundup includes Apple’s invitation for next week’s event, their ongoing feud with Proview, HP sacking more wedbOS employees, and Motorola challenging Apple’s Siri.

Apple

“We have something you really have to see. And touch.”

That’s what the Apple invite, sent to the press, contained with regards to the “special event” they will hold on Wednesday, March 7, 2012.   According to the said invite, the Apple event will be at York Place, North London.

It is believed that Apple will be launching the iPad 3 in the first week of March, and with the Apple invite containing the intriguing statement plus a close-up photo of a touchscreen device, it looks like the iPad 3 will be unveiled next week.

As for the Apple-Proview update, the Higher People’s Court of Guangzhou is hearing an appeal by Apple after a lower court ruled in favor of Shenzhen Proview Technology with regards to the iPad trademark use.

Apple’s lawyers appeared in court arguing the right of their company to use the iPad trademark.

“The value of iPad’s trademark rocketed after Apple launched the tablet computer in January 2010,” a lawyer for Apple told the court. “In the eyes of the consumer, iPad is associated with Apple. If the court decides that Proview wins the case, then this will confuse consumers and hurt their interests.”

If the higher court rules in favor of Proview, Apple can’t do much about it since a verdict of a higher court in China is usually final.  Though Apple can still file for a retrial as a move for a final appeal, the success rate of such application is extremely low.

“If Apple lost before the Guangdong court they will either have to reach a settlement with Proview Shenzhen regarding the rights in the iPad marks or change the name of their tablet to something not similar to iPad,” said Kenny Wong, a partner and head of the intellectual property practice at law firm Mayer Brown JSM in Hong Kong.

The verdict of the Chinese higher court is not expected to come out within months or weeks.

HP Sacks More webOS People

After Leo Apotheker, then CEO of Hewlett-Packard, announced the demise of webOS in August last year, it only took one month for HP to sack more than 500 webOS employees.  But since Meg Whitman’s appointment as HP’s CEO, the future of webOS seemed a bit brighter.

Earlier this month, HP announced Isis, the webOS browser and the shift in focus for webOS from being an exclusive HP product to an open-source OS.  But this transition isn’t full of good news, as with the change comes more obstacles.  They’re laying off more webOS employees.

“As WebOS continues the transition from making mobile devices to open-source software, it no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before,” said HP.

“This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well equipped to deliver an open-source WebOS and sustain HP’s commitment to the software over the long term.”

Challenge Accepted!

Fanbois are quite proud of their voice assistant Siri, leaving Fandroids to search every corner of the app world for something that can compete.

Motorola took this as a challenge and came up with something they believe is better than Siri.  On Motorola’s YouTube channel, the company posted three videos showing Siri being pitted against Motorola devices using Google’s Voice Actions.  The videos posted show that Voice Actions performs faster than Siri.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Motorola spokesperson Danielle McNally stated that the ads are emphasizing a few things like the speed, as Motorola smartphones can quickly render webpages and turn-by-turn directions, and that the iPhone 4S was also working on 4G so the network connection isn’t really a factor.