Only 82K ASUS Transformer Primes Delivered; TSMC 28 nm Woes

From DailyTech: ASUSTek Computer Inc. (TPE:2357) gained the enviable position of having its Tegra 3-powered Transformer Prime -- a powerful keyboard dock enabled Android tablet design --become the official flagship tablet of Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich mobile operating system. Reviews of the tablet were generally positive, however, the hybrid notebook-cum-tablet has been plagued with problems ever since.

Despite strong preorders, early purchasers were met with a host of frustrations, including GPS and Wi-Fi issues. The GPS was reportedly so flaky that it bordered on uselessness. Enthusiasts were also outraged that the tablet featured a locked bootloader. ASUS, for its part, did its best to address these issues. In January -- roughly a month after launch -- it delivered an over the air update (Firmware V9.4.2.7) to fix the Wi-Fi and GPS issues, along with other minor performance tweaks. And in February it caved and released a bootloader unlock tool [available here].

Now the company continues to try to mend broken fences. News just hit yesterday that a judge sided with ASUS, throwing out a lawsuit bought by Hasbro, Inc. (HAS), owners of the Transformers (think 80s cartoon, Michael Bay) franchise.

Hasbro had alleged "trademark confusion", pointing to the fact that in the Transformers film franchise, robots disguised themselves in the shape of consumer electronics, including a ThinkPad from Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG:0992).

But U.S. District Court of the Central District of California, federal judge Judge Philip Gutierrez struck down Hasbro's request of a preliminary injunction in a 25-page-ruling. While acknowledging the strength of Hasbro's "Transformer" and "Transformer Prime" trademarks, he chastised Hasbro, saying that "transformer" was an accurate description of the Asus notebook-cum-tablet hybrid and that ASUS made no attempt to sell its product based on associations to the fictional robot franchise (although news media did do this -- yep, that includes us).

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