“Apple Inc’s increasingly effective patent war against rivals like Samsung Electronics may mask its real target: arch-foe Google Inc.,” Poornima Gupta reports for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, ya think?
“The maker of the iPad and iPhone has sued three of the largest manufacturers of Google’s Android-based devices — Samsung, Motorola and HTC — for multiple patent infringements across multiple countries, pointing out ‘slavish copying’ of design and ‘look and feel,'” Gupta reports. “And the courts are beginning to listen: recent success in blocking sales of Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe and Apple’s challenges to the Korean giant in Australia reflect an aggressive effort to defend its top position in the red-hot mobile market from the runaway success of Android.”
Advertisement: Limited Time: Students, Parents and Faculty save up to $200 on a new Mac.
Gupta reports, “Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co, said Apple is starting to flex its patent muscle with some early success but its real battle is with the Android software. ‘Apple doesn’t really care too much about the actual OEMs.’ …Any injunction won by Apple, if enforced, could mean that Android may be forced to take out the offending feature from its software design. ‘That would make it less attractive and people would go elsewhere,’ Laurie said. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said rivals are responding to Android’s success with lawsuits ‘as they cannot respond through innovations.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Schmidt left off the rest of his sentence: …because we appropriate them as quickly as possible, patents be damned.
Gupta reports, “A less visible benefit of Apple waging and winning patent battles against the likes of Samsung, HTC and Motorola would be that Android may effectively no longer be free because of potential licensing costs that need to be paid to Apple… ‘All this will end up making Android less ‘free’, Jean-Louis Gassee, venture capitalist and a former Apple executive, said. ‘But by how much? Five dollars a handset, no problem. Fifteen dollars — then it is trouble.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Nail the pink cowboy-hatted little mole to the wall!
If five dollars per handset would get you WinPhone 7, then you may ask yourself if benefits of Android’s “open source” (and all the unpredictability of it) outweigh the disadvantage of Microsoft AppLack* (*trademarked by MDN).
After all, most handset makers have an over a decade-long relationship with Microsoft, which is cozy, comfortable and predictable. Not to mention they have a very, very eager OS developer, who will modify it any which way the makers (and carriers) would want. The sole advantage of Android today (app market) may not necessarily be that attractive anymore.
I feel $40 per Android licensed to use Apple intellectual property is a fair price to settle for future Androids.
Every fanandroid insists Apple is overpriced. Therefore if that is true why should Apple settle for IP as cheap as Microsoft does which gets a mere $15 per Android?
Now that should come after a lump sum payment plus penalities for all the past Androids already produced and sold that infringed on Apple’s IP.
When i win in court I demand immediate payment and failing to get that I use the local sherif and his men to shut people down and seize their assets. They should have settled my claim before it went to court.
Few people understand a sherif is an officer of the court and must enforces its orders.
Apple should demand no less by hiring and sending legal representatives all over to shut those down selling infringing products.
BTW the reason Windows Mobile Seven doesn’t sell well is that it carries the mental baggage of a name associated with Microsoft Windows and its years of pain on often crappy PC hardware. Android is rapidly becoming like Windows in the mind of Joe Public as the murmur is you roll the dice when you pick an Android vendor you may get nice or you may get stuck with crap for two years. Anyone other than a religious developer will tell you that Android is far more pain than it is worth to develop a quality program for due to fragmentation.
That is why a polished program that looks and feels like an Apple iOS app is rare on any Android.
“Android is rapidly becoming like Windows in the mind of Joe Public ”
This is true. People ask for a computer, they get handed a Windows PC. People ask for a smartphone, they get handed an Android device. These platforms, for the most part, aren’t sought after, but are a default, propagated by the fact that there’s just so many models flooding the market.
People ask for an iPad, they get iOS. The iPad, like with the iPod, is its own category and market.
In other headline news today:
Water is wet.
The sky is blue.
Gee Reuters, thanks for reporting the obvious.
Just wait until the Oracle lawsuit is settled. Things are about to get REALLY interesting!
I agree. THAT will be the end of Android. Oracle will not be happy with $5 – $10 per handset. That’s not how they roll…
Larry is Steve’s neighbor!
“…recent success in blocking sales of Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe and Apple’s challenges to the Korean giant in Australia reflect an aggressive effort to defend its top position in the red-hot mobile market from the runaway success of Android.”
Bullshit, it doesn’t “reflect an aggressive effort to defend its top position” it reflects Apple’s effort to stop people from stealing from them. I don’t think Apple would be trying to sue people if these other companies were just innovating their own shit and it happened to be better. Google (and by extension the OEMs) are stealing Apples IP so Apple is defending their IP. This has an added benefit of helping Apple retain a leading position but I don’t think it’s their main goal and I don’t see any evidence to prove that it is.
In the case of Samsung they’re not only using Android which in it’s self infringes Apple’s patents, Samsung’s hardware designs are also blatant rip-offs of Apple.
There’s always an anti-Apple slant with these types of reports. The fact is Apple doesn’t care to beat their competitors in market share, which is what everyone looks at. They are more than happy that their 5% share grabs 60% of the profits. What they don’t like is companies ripping off what they worked so hard to develop and produce.
Before this, I didn’t realize that Apple really is going after Google.
Learn something new everyday.
Poornima Gupta is now my favorite journalist.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said rivals are responding to Android’s success with lawsuits ‘as they cannot respond through innovations.’”
What a completely despicable character this rat is! He’s spied on and slavishly copied every aspect of Apple’s innovation over the last 4 years.
For those of you who don’t know, Schmidt was on Apple’s board of directors during the development of the iPhone and a iOS, where he could steal the information and designs to take back to Google.
Fortunately, SJ somehow kept the iPad a secret from Schmidt.
i think the author of the article is ignoring the trade dress infringements that the manufacturers are still guilty of regardless of whether android is used or not. apple is not just going after google.
It’s ironic Apple that is in the position today to defend its work in multi-touch.
It will benefit their arch nemesis, Microsoft, in the long run.
Actually it only benefits Microsoft in the very short term. Microsoft they may sell more phones in the next few years if Android is knocked out of the picture but in the long run Microsoft will be left with innovation as their only selling point and that is their biggest weakness.