Each July since 2007, Apple has held its iTunes Festival in London, offering a month's worth of free concerts from some of the industry's top performers. Apple is now beginning to unveil this year's plans , and the most notable change for 2012 is a move to the month of September.

Last month saw six small U.S. carriers begin offering the iPhone for the first time, and it appears that another round of expansion to similar carriers is coming on May 18. Three new iPhone carriers, all operating CDMA networks, have rolled out their announcements so far today: - Bluegrass Cellular (Kentucky) - Golden State Cellular (California) - Nex-Tech Wireless (Kansas) As with other regional carriers, the new entrants will be offering the iPhone at $50 below the standard pricing available through Apple and the major carriers.

Asymco 's Horace Dediu has released his data on operating profits among the eight top mobile phone vendors for the first quarter of 2012, finding that Apple and Samsung together now hold 99% of the profits with Apple representing the lion's share at 73%. Apple's share was down slightly from 75% in the previous quarter , but Samsung boosted its share from 16% to 26% to shut out nearly all other vendors

Taiwan's Central News Agency reports on comments from DisplaySearch analyst David Hsieh, who believes that Apple is planning to use new "in-cell" display technology from Japanese manufacturers in the next-generation iPhone. The move would benefit suppliers such as Sony, Sharp, and Toshiba, which currently lead the industry in the technology. Compared with on-cell technology, touch panels that use in-cell technology can be made thinner because the touch sensors are actually placed inside the color filters rather than on top of them, he explained

Marking yet another milestone in its rollout of 4G LTE connectivity, Verizon today announced that with another major expansion coming later this week, the carrier's LTE network will now cover two-thirds of the United States population. This week's expansion, officially going live on Thursday, will see coverage in 27 new markets and expansion of coverage in 44 existing markets.

While Apple has received much publicity for its partnership with the Fair Labor Association to audit working conditions at several of its manufacturing partners' facilities in China, Financial Times reports that the company has now also partnered with the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) for an environmental audit of a supplier's facilities. Apple has agreed to a jointly monitored audit of pollution controls at a supplier's factory in China, in what activists see as a breakthrough in their efforts to persuade the world's most valuable company to address environmental concerns.

Last year, patent holding firm Lodsys took on app developers using Apple's In App Purchase system for iOS, suing a number of large and small developers over their implementation of the feature in their apps. Apple stepped forward to assist its developers by claiming that its existing licensing arrangement with Lodsys protected developers, but Lodsys has persisted in its efforts to require licensing by the developers as well. In mid-June, Apple filed a motion to intervene in Lodsys' lawsuits against the developers, seeking to officially represent itself as both a defendant in the case and a plaintiff asserting counterclaims against Lodsys

VR-Zone reports that Intel has begun shipping its second-generation Thunderbolt controller chip, known as "Cactus Ridge". As previously discussed , Cactus Ridge will arrive in both four-channel (DSL3510) and two-channel (DSL3310) versions, offering Apple a pair of options for including the new chips in its forthcoming products

Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the first quarter of 2012, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. While Apple experienced only small year-over-year unit growth of over 3.8% and was beaten among top 5 vendors by HP's 6.6% growth, the company did once again outperform the overall industry and its 3.5% decline. Gartner's Preliminary U.S

Apple's stock has continued its remarkable run in 2012, moving up another 1% today to briefly hit a market capitalization of $600 billion. The milestone comes just under six weeks after hitting $500 billion , and Apple's stock is now up nearly 60% since the beginning of the year. If some analysts are to be believed, the $600 billion mark is just a brief stop on the company's way to a trillion dollar market capitalization .