Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Round Up: iPadMini Rumor, Samsung Case and More

This was a busy week for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)  in terms of news about the company, rather than any actual event. It was also a week when shares in the company fell 3.5 percent to $629.7 percent at the close of the week.

The stock has come off its highs of $705.07 reached when its iPhone 5 went on sale last month.

Here's a quick round-up of the buzz around the company during the week:

According to a post on tech blog AllThingsD, the much hyped iPad Mini from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will be unveiled on October 23, before Microsoft announces its latest offerings – the Windows 8 operating system and the new Surface tablet, three days later. Apple has not yet confirmed the info, although all sorts of theories about the iPad Mini have been doing the rounds before the launch of iPhone 5.

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On Thursday, data from research firm Gartner showed that shipment of personal computer by Apple rose to an all-time high in the third quarter of 2012. Apple shipped more than 2 million units to get a market share of 13.6 percent, and acing it at third behind HP and Dell, both of which run Microsoft's Windows software.

The same day it suffered a setback as a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld an appeal by Samsung to the lift the ban on the saes of its Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the United States.

The ban had been imposed as a pre-trial measure in June by a San Jose federal court, where the two companies are battling it out over patent infringements and copyright violations. The court jury awarded more than a billion dollars in damages to Apple and ruled that the Korean handset maker had copied the designs of Apple's iPhones and iPads.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt in an interview to AllThingsD said that Apple should have stuck to Google Maps instead of replacing it with its own mapping software.

"Apple should have kept our Maps," he said, adding that Google Maps were better.

Apple has decided to go it alone in navigation and location services with the launch of its new operating software iOS 6 and dumped its erstwhile partner Google Maps.

Apple's war with Samsung is not merely in the courtrooms but extends to human resources as well. During the week, it poached veteran chip designer Jim Mergard from Samsung.

Mergard had spent 16 years with AMD, before he was lured by Samsung and now Apple has got him.

It will be interesting to see what Apple does with Mergard.