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Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry issued a research note to investors indicating that Apple is planning to launch three HDTV models by March 2012. The report is relayed by AppleInsider:

He said his “converged view” of data from various developers is “probably” 75 percent accurate, and that it will “probably” be launched in March of 2012, with developer sessions at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Apple’s televisions would reportedly come in 3 different models and 3 different price points.

Bose VideoWave

Chowdhry compares the concept to the Bose VideoWave which tries to simplify HDTVs by reducing clutter, though Apple’s implementation is expected to be improved. Apple’s HDTV will reportedly carry 16 speakers giving a “complete surround sound experience” and be one-third as thick as the VideoWave’s 6 inches.

We should caution that Chowdhry also claimed last year that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer would speak at Apple’s 2010 WWDC conference. A claim that was quickly refuted by Microsoft and never came to pass.

Still, we have been hearing some increased chatter about an Apple television. The rumors were revived early this year with some additional claims from Smarthouse pinpointing an Apple and LG partnership. Meanwhile, we’ve heard some unverified whispers of the same.

Apple television rumors have a long history with the earliest claims as far back as 2006. Apple does have their Apple TV set top box but has always downplayed its significance. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has also been vocal about the challenges of infiltrating the television marketplace suggesting there are too many industry hurdles and too much fragmentation to overcome.

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Xinhuanet reports that Foxconn will be replacing some of its workers with 1 million robots in the next three years to cut rising labor costs and improve efficiency.

The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou

The company currently has 10,000 robots and employs 1.2 million people. It’s not clear how many jobs will be replaced by the robots.

Foxconn is Apple’s primary partner in assembling the popular iPod, iPad, and iPhone lines and has been criticized for poor working conditions that may have contributed to a series of suicides at the plant.

In April, Engadget had previously pointed to this concept model FRIDA by ABB as the likely models for Foxconn, though the new report doesn’t specify.

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Apple has started refunding users who were charged multiple times for their Lion purchases. We reported last week on a user whose checking account was drained of nearly $4,000 when he was charged 122 times for Lion. The email above was sent to a user who was charged 8 times.

John Christman, the user who was charged 122 times was eventually made whole:

Apple kept me on a very need-to-know basis all along, but once I confirmed the money was in my PayPal account, he then asked for a list of fees to review. Once he saw the fees (very minimal), he offered to pay them and give me a bit extra to pay any additional fees I incur.

Other users who were double charged may see similar emails soon.

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Apple seems to have extended iTunes song previews to 90 seconds internationally. Apple first rolled out 90 second previews in the U.S. back in December, 2010. International song previews had been stuck at 30 seconds.

According to a number of reports, the new preview lengths are available in at least Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and parts of Europe. As with the U.S. launch, not all songs will have 90 second previews.

In the U.S., Apple had made the change unilaterally in an email to labels telling them that they would automatically extend previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds in the iTunes Store in the U.S. It’s unclear what was the reason for the delay for international markets.

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MICGadget reports that the early iPhone 5 cases are “now everywhere” in China. The site has posted another gallery of these case designs, which show a mute switch on the opposite side of the device.

The design is also said to be slightly larger than the existing iPhone 4 and has a slight tapering from top to bottom in thickness. This particular design was originally reported by ThisIsMyNext back in April. At the time, we had expressed doubts about it due to our own tipster about the validity of the design. But now, with the influx of these case designs, we have to reconsider.

It’s clear that some Chinese case manufacturers are confident enough in these designs that they are starting to mass produce these cases. As we’ve said before, there is a massive financial incentive for companies to have case designs for new Apple products ready on launch day. In fact, three people were sentenced to prison in China for leaking details of the iPad 2 case design prior to its launch.

As frequent as these case leaks are, it’s notable that they have been remarkably accurate in the past. The iPad 2 cases, of course, were quite accurate. iPhone 3G cases were real, as were 6th Generation iPod Nanos, and 5th Generation iPod Nanos. Not all case leaks turn into actual products, however. The iPhone Nano never came to be, and the iPod Touch with Camera cases were legitimate but the product was canceled/delayed.

Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 5 in September of this year.

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iPhones make up close to two-thirds of mobile devices using Gogo’s inflight Wi-Fi service, according to All Things Digital. iPod touch devices cover another 20%, while Android makes up just 12% of devices using Gogo.

BlackBerries account for 6 percent while Windows Mobile and other mobiles aren’t used enough to count.

AllThingsD notes the iPad isn’t included in the mobile numbers. Mobile devices pay slightly lower charges than larger devices like tablets and laptops do. Though, the iPad is popular too, clocking in with more than a third of larger devices. Windows as a whole counted as 41% and Macs just under 20%.

Mockup created by bikr

If new images of purported iPhone 5 cases obtained by 9 to 5 Mac are to be believed, it appears that the next-generation iPhone will offer a somewhat longer and wider form factor than the iPhone 4. The cases also reiterate other apparent changes such as the mute switch being moved to the opposite edge of the device and the form factor including a very slight “teardrop” design and rounded edges.

The most important change certainly appears to be the size, although it is difficult to say for certain just how much bigger the iPhone 5 would be than the iPhone 4 based on these cases, given that only exterior case dimensions and not interior dimensions are known.

Our new images are clear and there are appears to be a slight – not major – tear drop in the design. The case goes thick to thin from top to bottom. In addition, the sources who provided us with these two new cases have shared some dimensions. According to them, the case is 5 inches tall and 2.8 inches wide. These are tight cases so the iPhone 5 dimensions should only be a few millimeters smaller than those numbers. For comparison, the iPhone 4 is 4.5 inches tall and 2.31 inches wide.

A larger form factor naturally points toward Apple using a larger screen in the new iPhone, a claim that has been made by a number of sources. It is unclear, however, how Apple would deal with potential issues related to screen resolution, either keeping the same pixel density and increasing pixel count by a small amount or decreasing the density and maintaining the same 960×640 resolution.

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AT&T announced today that they will be throttling high end users with unlimited data plans.

Starting October 1, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle. Before you are affected, we will provide multiple notices, including a grace period.

Early AT&T iPhone customers were offered an unlimited data plan for their devices. Even after AT&T stopped offering an unlimited plan, they allowed existing customers to retain their unlimited plan through device upgrades.

This change will affect any of those users who still have an unlimited plan and are considered to be in the “top 5 percent of heaviest data users”. For those users, download speeds will be reduced until the next billing month. By definition, this should affect 5% of users each month.

AT&T claims that users can still “send or receive thousands of emails, surf thousands of Web pages and watch hours of streaming video every month and not be in the top 5 percent of data users.”

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Google today announced that it is rolling out several enhancements to the google.com search experience on the iPad and other tablets, simplifying page layouts and increasing the size of objects on the page to make for more prominent touch targets.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.

For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.

Google has deployed enhancements and new features for the iPad on a frequent basis since the device’s introduction, but of course is now also putting a priority on tablets running its own Android operating system. The new search features will be making their way to both platforms across 36 languages in the coming days.

Nortel today announced that it has officially completed the $4.5 billion sale of over 6,000 patents to a consortium of companies led by Apple. The proposed sale had previously passed muster with both bankruptcy courts and Canadian regulatory authorities, and antitrust concerns regarding the bidding process appear to have also been satisfied.

Nortel Networks Corporation announced that it,its subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited (NNL), and certain of its other subsidiaries, including Nortel Networks Inc. and Nortel Networks UK Limited (in administration), have completed the sale of all of Nortel’s remaining patents and patent applications to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony, for a cash purchase price of US$4.5 billion.

As previously announced, the sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents. The extensive patent portfolio touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.

Apple last week revealed that it had contribution $2.6 billion to the total purchase price and it has been claimed that Apple’s stake entitles it to outright ownership of the LTE-related patents as well as others that could be used to hinder Android.

Update: The Wall Street Journal reports that even though Nortel has announced the completion of the patent sale, U.S. antitrust regulators are continuing their investigation of the Apple-led consortium.

The Justice Department is interviewing consortium members on whether they have plans to file patent infringement suits against handset makers using Google’s Android software, those people said. They are also talking to others that could be adversely affected.

The deal closed on Friday but Justice could still impose conditions on the parties. In April, the department forced a consortium of companies including Microsoft, Apple and Oracle Corp. to promise not to use a portfolio of patents it had acquired to unfairly hurt rivals. Microsoft was forced to give up the patents it was buying and license them instead.

The U.S. Department of Justice is said to be looking to determine whether an implicit or explicit agreement exists among the consortium members to use the patents to hinder Google’s Android platform.