Who’s really ahead in innovation? Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

In an effort to prevent rivals from stealing its ideas, Apple patents everything it invents — from the iPhone and the iPad, to app icons and even “magic” tactile gloves. But compared to its biggest competitors, Apple’s patent portfolio from 2015 looks surprisingly bare.

Microsoft, Sony, Google, and LG have all outrank Apple in the patent department this year, while arch rival Samsung has absolutely crushed it.

Google made a surprise announcement at the end of January that confirmed it was selling Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, but the search giant seemingly forgot to tell us that it made a big investment in the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer the following day.

Reuters reports that Google will pay Lenovo $750 million for a 5.94 percent stake in the company.

One of the big problems with focusing on a broad metric like mobile platform market share is that it ignores some of the more important (and complex) questions about how these platforms are actually used.

For example, which customers are most valuable in terms of spending money?

Google has countersued British Telecom, a multinational telecommunications company based in the United Kingdom, with a new patent infringement lawsuit filed in the U.S. and the U.K. BT first took legal action against Google back in 2011, but Google has called its complaint “meritless,” and accuses the company of “arming patent trolls.”

Towards the end of each year, IBM Research publishes a list of five things it predicts our gadgets will be capable of within the next five years. While some of its predictions seem a little too outlandish and farfetched, others — such as its 2006 prediction for realtime speech translation — become a reality.

IBM’s 2012 list is all about the five senses. It predicts that by 2018, our gadgets will help us touch, see, hear, taste, and even smell. Your smartphone, IBM believes, will use new technologies to simulate the physical sensation of touching something, while your tablet will be able to taste your food.