“It was the late Steve Jobs’ worst nightmare. A powerful Asian manufacturer, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, uses Google Inc’s Android software to create smartphones and tablets that closely resemble the iPhone and the iPad. Samsung starts gaining market share, hurting Apple Inc’s margins and stock price and threatening its reign as the king of cool in consumer electronics,” Poornima Gupta, Miyoung Kim and Dan Levine report for Reuters.
“Jobs, of course, had an answer to all this: a ‘thermo-nuclear’ legal war that would keep clones off the market. Yet nearly two years after Apple first filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung, and six months after it won a huge legal victory over its South Korean rival, Apple’s chances of blocking the sale of Samsung products are growing dimmer by the day,” Gupta, Kim and Levine report. “Indeed, a series of recent court rulings suggests that the smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate, with Apple unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged when rivals, notably Samsung, imitated its products.”
Gupta, Kim and Levine report, “That, in turn, may usher in a new phase in the complex relationship between the two dominant companies in the growing mobile computing business. Tim Cook, Jobs’ successor as Apple chief executive, was opposed to suing Samsung in the first place, according to people with knowledge of the matter, largely because of that company’s critical role as a supplier of components for the iPhone and the iPad. Apple bought some $8 billion worth of parts from Samsung last year, analysts estimate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some “stalemate.” Last we looked at the molasses-covered glacier some call a “legal system,” Samsung had been forced to pull numerous products off store shelves in select markets around the world, forced to design inferior workarounds due having been found to stealing Apple’s IP that further retarded their devices’ UIs vs. iOS, and is down some $1.05 billion in a major patent infringement case loss.
Related articles:
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Apple dominates mobile phone makers with 72% profit share worldwide in Q412 – February 6, 2013
comScore: Apple #1 smartphone maker in U.S. with 36.3% market share – February 6, 2013
Canalys: Apple continues reign as #1 PC maker; grabbed over 20% share of market for first time in Q412 – February 6, 2013
Apple’s iPad dominates tablets with 81% Web usage share; Amazon Kindle Fire distant 2nd with 7.7% – February 6, 2013
Stop talking about the market share . Apple is to talk about the profit share . Apple won’t care if low-end or high-end phones are more than iPhones . What Apple cares is maximized profit .
Apple share drop is because what market expects is different . Doesn’t mean Apple is bad .
You are 100% correct that ‘profit share’ is better than ‘market share’. However, ‘market share’ has a strong possibility of turning into ‘profit share’, and with a quickness.
Think of it from the ‘drug dealer’ scenario that we see/hear about over and over….
Goog/SameDung gives out free samples, then the evil ones release low cost product and/or BOGO, everyone gets hooked (OMG! it’s just as good but cheaper…. OMG!). Then, BAM! the prices go up and the competitor (Apple) is crushed!!! This is how an inferior product can beat a superior product (yes people are ignorant)
I am not saying this will happen but it is a real possibility.
Personally I want a Giggle/SameShit device as about as much as I want my fruits punched in by an angry Godzilla but the truth remains that Giggle/SamShitCopiers have an agenda that could work. That is what is scary.
Market share doesn’t equal profit share in PCs. Why should Apple do any worse in phones?
True, market share does not equal profit share in PCs (nor in SmartPhones/Tablets of today).
However, IMO the PC war is very, very old and is almost over and for all intents and purposes Apple lost that war until SJ pulled an iPod out of his pocket and started a new war (on his terms).
Today Apple is winning the SmartPhone/Tablet war but just like the PC war of a couple of decades ago, things can change very quickly..
As a fan of all things Apple (MBP, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Time Capsule, AppleTV et al) I am not dissin’ Apple I am just saying that in CE fortunes can change quickly (see Sony)
But, wait. I thought that Steve and Tim were bonded. That Steve left Tim with a roadmap (not iMap) to follow to ensure that Apple kept being the magical company it had always been. That Tim was soon to announce the next big thing that Steve had lined up for him. =Total Crap! Tim Cook is a ship adrift in a sea of competition that has surrounded him. His last gasp is to say that Apple has some “great products” in the pipeline. We know that’s a lie. Apple does have some tweaked gadgets coming out that, when announced, will be met with “so what” from the pop culture consumers and “see, we knew this was happening” from Wall Street. The sooner the Apple faithful, such as those found around these parts, come to grips with that reality and quit hoping for a miracle, the sooner we might see a business decision made to try some new leadership and see if it’s not too late. Otherwise, what you see now is what it is and will be.
You’re so full of shit, your eyes are brown.
“Tim Cook, Jobs’ successor as Apple chief executive, was opposed to suing Samsung in the first place, according to people with knowledge of the matter…”
Must be you’re accociated with ‘them that know’ huh?
Maybe wanna try a job as CEO, smarty pants?
No, our buddy Pee Pee’s eyes are yellow.
Kind of like his belly.
associated
cook opposed to sue samsung means what????
– careful folks we will have a supply problem.
– lets not fight I think Samsung isn’t copying us.
– he was didn’t agree with jobs on this one from start.
– cook has invested interest in samsung.
– cook is a traitor and should step down.
what changed his mind – scott convinced him
Are you sure “- he was didn’t agree with jobs on this one from start”?
While you’re at the fantasy that makes your head drift, call Einhorn and get him interested.
The thing that makes me doubt your otherwise fine analysis is that Steve Jobs hasn’t been dead long enough to expose Tim Cook’s deficiencies, if any their be. Working designs are out in the wild sometimes a year before they get leaked or discovered by prying media types. And prototypes stay in the lab even longer and come out as surprises when not expected- ‘course when that happens critics will yawn like always, like cool kids in the gym making a living off of not being impressed. But as to that actual consumers have shown no awareness of it as they go out and buy the damn things no matter what anybody says, because they are good. Another thing, if the products are good but so are competitors products, The Apple brand sells more in that circumstance or at least makes more profits, or at least stays in business. I say, do not execute Tim Cook until the R & D product cycle refreshes in 2015 or so, if Apple’s offerings are crap by then I will hand you the ammunition.
They were, and Jobs was opposing the lawsuit the same manner. He has tried to settle things with Samsung personally, and waited for like half of the year for matters to resolve.
So this Reuters article is just another tabloid piece.
Once again unsubstantiated, mindless crap oozing from y’all’s fingers reacting to same-condition-set mind….fuck the hell off
What is to scared If Nobody earns more than Apple ?
Miyoung Kim and Reuters: lol. Check out her former articles on Apple and Samsung out of Korea (she penned the immortal phrase concerning Samsung “qickly building on its supremacy with sleek designs”). Perhaps you will come to share my opinion that she is likely a shill for Samsung and that nothing she writes should be given the slightest attention.
Note that the article fails to mention Jobs’ settlement offer for $250 million in 2010, which Samsung refused. Nor does it mention how the iPhone was excluded from the South Korean market for over 2 years by a government non-tariff barrier (the requirement for a special chip, the WIPI chip), “coincidentally” favoring Samsung.
Thank you sir for injecting facts and reasoning into what would otherwise be, and still could degenerate into another tedious shouting match
Finally, an informed commentary; thanks.
Lol…just what I was thinking. Reuters foreign desk is a renowned snark misinformation source. It beggars belief that they have any credibility at all. It’s about as reliable a source as The Onion.
“…and is down some $1.05 billion in a major patent infringement case loss.”
doesn’t mean anything unless it has been paid, which it hasn’t.
SOMEBODY in APPLE has to grow some big balls to sue the hell out of Samsung whatever it takes!
Suing them has not really worked- as Apple is learning, courts and jurors are deficient in tech knowledge and patent law to the point that it is more trouble than it is worth given the outcomes so far.
But patents were always a protective rear guard type action for Apple, they excel in the labs and want to protect their scientists and their results so they apply for a lot of patents and use some of their stockpiled cash to pay lawyers to do battle with the Asians, and remember not every company has bothered to do that with the Koreans, some of them just paid off the bastards. Apple is different, their profit engine depends on innovation and it takes place on a long time line. They will win in the long run because of all this.
… he doesn’t like fight?
I know people like that: who try their best to avoid conflict regardless how much sometimes it’s needed.
Cook got rid of Forstall due to personality conflicts. He couldn’t like Jobs act as referee as Ive etc apparently couldn’t get along with him. (the Map ‘fiasco’ was a front. Nowhere from sales, iPhone satisfaction polls, etc does it shows Maps as a big issue ). i.e Cook wanted PEACE. note that Forstall worked on OSX and iOS , products that generate 80% of Apple’s profits…
— Look at Apple Legals various fiasco’s:
Paying again 60 million from Proview for iPad name (60 million is HUGE, note Amazon only made 7 million in their mid 2012 quarter). As one Chinese legal expert laughed : Apple legal couldn’t tell that Taiwan and China are SEPARATE COUNTRIES (one is communist for example… ) and trademarks registered in one does not apply to the other…
,
Various other legal failures like the Public Apology in Print to samsung (and then apology screwup) in U.K etc.
Instead of doing a JOBS, i.e screaming and firing Legal left and right, Cook awarded the SVP of legal sewell 50,000 shares worth 60 million at the time … Sewell has so much free time he recently joined the Board of Country club Vail… (Forstall used to spend all his weekeds working at Apple).
(the one legal victory in the U.S was due in large part to the jury foreman (a patented inventor) swaying the jury and up to now apple has not received a cent or a ban of any samsung product from U.S.. )
— appeasing foxconn workers: salaray after salary increase resulting in more and more stoppages and strikes (hey if you get more money everytime you complain , why not… ? )
(I’ve worked in asia for years and workers there are TOUGH, not the hapless babes Mike Daisy and NYT paint them to be)
— ZERO advertising (like Mac PC guy) against Windows 8 Vista who a lot of pc users hate . (doesn’t want a war with msft?)
I can give more examples of Cook love of PEACE and the POSSIBLY detrimental effect to Apple but the above should suffice…
I LIKE COOK as i think he’s still smarter than the other TECH CEOS (like Ballmer) but sometimes I wish the ‘Fighting Steve’ was around…
After reading your screed I think if you say at the end that you LIKE COOK in all caps– after trashing him over the points you listed which are not cut and dried at all, only arguable… I am glad you don’t like me or my kin.
In business, Steve Jobs was not a peacenik and maybe Tim Cook is, but Steve Jobs is dead and Tim Cook is trying to make his way without the protection of a magic distortion field, maybe you would prefer someone more ruthless than him, someone like Eric Schmidt. I do believe he would prefer being Apple CEO to being the US Secretary of Commerce. Would that meet with your approval?
you say ” I am glad you don’t like me or my kin.” i. e implying I’m TOO HARSH.
YET
you don’t debate a single point i’ve made (i.e with factual reasoned arguments like I made)
BUT INSTEAD
you go into PERSONAL ATTACKS implying I like people schmidt and sacarsms like “being Apple CEO to being the US Secretary of Commerce. Would that meet with your approval?”
you’re somewhat of BIG FUKING HYPOCRITE huh?
lol.
Excuse me. I did not debate your points because I believe they coul be valid, I said arguable, same thing. You were very emphatic about them however in making your thesis as Cook as a peace lover.
What is wrong with me saying give the man more time to judge him because of the pipeline hypothesis. That is where we differ, you seem to want to ditch him now and I say the jury is still out.
As far as Eric Schmidt the man. He is vilified here at MDN but forget that, he has experience on the Apple BOD as well as Novell and Sun and does not fear a congressional investigation. He will fight and might be a candidate you could go along with, with your views.
Sorry if I hit a sore spot but until Apple’s profits start to sink I don’t see an ouster as being realistic in any way. Pardon my lack of finesse and good day to you.
… I forgot to add
you imply that I’m not sincere sying I like Cook (I mentioned he’s better than Ballmer) because I criticize some aspects of his work…
so people can’t find some faults in people they like, you can only like people you believe are FLAWLESS?
man, you are dumbo…
(man, you must have diffculty finding a girlfriend or boyfriend.. “MY DEAR you must be FLAWLESS”) rotfl.
You inferred things I meant not to imply, see previous post, my fault for not understanding the finer points of sarcasm in English, I’m still working on that. This is an international community. I have observed that a sarcasm tag is required in order to prevent flame wars, but I am not aware of any Non-sarcasm tag that would shield the likes of me from those who would infer sarcasm where there is none.
Others can comment on your other assertions, but your ludicrous claim that TC has “appeased” Foxconn workers “resulting in more and more stoppages” merits mention as utterly untrue, just in case others might credit it. The only grumblings I’ve heard concerning Foxconn workers on Apple products ( so not the Nintsndo ones in Yantai or the Xbox ones in Wuhan) are that they want more hours than are legal. So, don’t expect to enlist this theme in your apparent crusade against Cook.
news: Oct 2012
(this was AFTER foxconn workers had received at least 3 pay raises)
I copy and paste:
“Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 workers at one of Foxconn’s factories in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province, reportedly went on strike earlier today over what a watchdog group says were onerous demands on quality in producing Apple’s iPhone 5.”
(Foxconn replied that “Foxconn said there were two isolated, small-scale disputes between production line workers and quality assurance personnel on Monday and Tuesday, but it added that they were quickly addressed”)
so there were disputes and worker activations except foxconn said not to call them ‘strikes’.
Jan 2013
“Hong Kong, 11 January 2013
On 10 January, a strike erupted at Foxconn in Fengcheng, Jiangxi Province to demand wage increase and dignity. On the following day, over 1000 workers took to the street and block the main road. The riot police quickly intervened and suppressed the workers. According to SACOM first hand information, alongside media source in China, there is a strong presence of the riot police and water cannon and physical violence are used to suppress the strikers. Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) condemn the crackdown on workers strike and demand Foxconn and Apple enter into dialogue with workers to address their grievances. The establishment of a democratic union at Foxconn should not be delayed!”
(so I’m wrong saying that after apple has given them at least 3 pay raises (Forbes 2011 ” Foxconn said this is the third pay increase since 2010, when the monthly salary was 900 yuan a month.) they are still agitating for more? )
With all due respect MDN but I think that I’ll believe that “[Samsung] is down some $1.05 billion in a major patent infringement case loss.” when I see the final ruling. Judge Koh is kinda tricky like that. Unless of course she has ruled that Samsung is required to fork out the cash.
Apple is unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged?!?!?
I thought judges were made up of people that had to go to college.
50% of college attendees finished in the bottom half of their class. Including some judges.
This must be Filler News Day over at Reuters. Nothing new here except more Apple Bear bullshit.
What’s going wrong are the legal systems. Suing criminal parasites ShameScam and other AndRrhoid infliction companies was an obvious and necessary idea. Since when does Apple ever roll over and play dead to anyone?
Judge Koh: YOU are a problem.
The problem which is almost always overlooked by all of these writers, by CEOs, etc. is that courts are LOATHE to impose any injunctions, sales bans, restrictions, etc. on a person/company unless it is the only way to prevent or right a wrong.
Apple’s problem in all of these lawsuits is that the patents are for very specific technical features, none of which thus far litigated has any real bearing on how a smartphone functions (Android phones can certainly get along without the swipe to unlock feature or the bounce feature). The reality of it is a judge is far, far more likely to see that money damages can be awarded, particularly if a patent violator simply proves what the value of the patent is. Sure, they have to change their OS/phone, but not for what’s already been sold.
Let’s be clear: What Samsung is doing is NOT criminal activity. It’s a patent violation, which is a civil dispute. All it boils down to is two opposing parties arguing about who took the other’s idea, and who then owes money for doing so.
Cook is right (IF, and a big if, this article is correct): Suing Samsung was really not the best method for Apple to go. It probably could have been much more effective working out of the public’s and court’s eye by moving orders from Samsung, buying up other suppliers so Samsung had to pay more for parts, cutting deals with Google to get exclusive rights to Google features (like Maps turn-by-turn) instead of throwing them out.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. That’s what Apple forgot.