The news on Monday that thermostat giant Honeywell slapped startup Nest with a lawsuit for patent infringement throws an unexpected wrinkle in the landscape of the smart thermostat this year. These connected energy devices — often overlooked but finally getting some attention in 2012 — have been poised to be a gateway into the connected home, working with mobile phones, utility meters, and heating and cooling systems. Honeywell’s lawsuit, which you can read more about here, claims that “many features of the Nest Thermostat infringe Honeywell patents.”

How might this new lawsuit impact the growth of the overall smart thermostat market? We want you, GigaOM readers, to weigh in below, and we’ll release all the details of the survey in a research note.

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Surveys conducted and sponsored by research firm BTIG suggest that movie viewers might actually spend more money on films, if they were available online or on cable video-on-demand services at the same time as they are available in theaters. The post from BTIG’s Richard Greenfield (free registration required to view) details three different surveys conducted over the last few weeks, which asked respondents to forecast their theatrical and home entertainment spending if windows were to collapse.

All of the surveys leveraged Survey Monkey to poll respondents, but the most complete of the three polled the Survey Monkey Audience (SMA) network, racking up 1,124 responses. About 70 percent of respondents from the SMA survey said their spending on entertainment wouldn’t change if priced in the – range. But while the majority of users predict no change, the number who say they would spend more outnumber those who predict they would spend less by three to one.

According to Greenfield, that group appeared to be price-sensitive and more likely representative of today’s average consumer that respondents from the other surveys. Those who expected to spend more would be doing so because they saw cost savings from concessions and parking outweighing the difference in price and convenience of watching at home. In addition, some respondents suggested that they were unhappy with the current moviegoing experience.

In aggregate, the survey shows that Hollywood studios would likely make more revenue with the collapse of movie windows. More importantly, those sales would come with better margins since they wouldn’t be sharing with exhibitors. The fear seems to be that putting pressure on the theatrical window could cause some exhibitors to go out of business, which would in turn destroy that distribution channel.

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Not only is Apple shipping the most smartphones, it’s also shipping the best smartphones — if you believe the stats in J.D. Power and Associates’ latest US customer satisfaction survey. It gave the iPhone a score of 838, versus HTC’s handsets in second place with 801 and an industry average of 788. Sammy got a disappointing 777, but we guess it might have fared better if the Galaxy S II had been quicker to cross the Atlantic. Hapless RIM got shunted into fifth place, having come second in 2010. You’ll find plenty more factoids in the PR after the break, including evidence that people just love 4G. Well, we could have told you that.

Continue reading Apple tops J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey, grim reading for RIM and Nokia

Apple tops J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey, grim reading for RIM and Nokia originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

In harnessing the capabilities of an app-based platform, smartphones gave us far more power than any cellular devices we??ve ever seen. But they’re privy to more information about our personal lives than even our closest friends are.

And just like any powerful, omnipotent being, our smartphones hold the keys to our own undoing.

Wired Top Stories

A survey shows that the portable- and console-gaming industry has little to fear from the tablet revolution. E-readers, netbooks and laptops, on the other hand, should watch out.

Wired Top Stories

Survey says: Apple iPad won’t be mass market in the UK
A new survey by Simpson Carpenter , billed as a leading full service research agency, suggests Apple’s iPad won’t be a mass market gadget in the UK when it launches at the end of May. Earlier this month, Apple announced it had sold its one millionth iPad just 28 days after the product’s US launch.

Read more on Macworld UK