Patent ID: 7490045

Claim:
In an electronic device having a plurality of application programs, a method of monitoring usage comprising the steps of: a) gathering usage statistics of said application programs, said usage statistics comprising: measurements denoting a duration of usage when said electronic device is powered by batteries; measurements denoting a duration of usage when said electronic device is powered by an external source of power; measurements denoting a duration of usage when an auto-shutoff of said electronic device occurs, said measurements for denoting a duration of usage adjusted by a predetermined scale factor; and measurements denoting a duration of usage of said application programs when an interrupt occurs; b) storing said usage statistics; and c) automatically transmitting said stored usage statistics to a server on a regular basis, whereby said server tabulates said usage statistics; wherein said gathering step further comprises measuring duration of application usage, and when an auto-shutoff occurs, includes a predetermined fraction of the time from a last user interaction to said auto-shutoff in said measured duration.