There is an actual innovation here: Magsafe. A bunch of vendors spent a decade or two shipping charger cables that weren't noticeably innovative, one still doe

There is an actual innovation here: Magsafe. A bunch of vendors spent a decade or two shipping charger cables that weren't noticeably innovative, one still does that. The one that still does is also the one that invented Magsafe and doesn't ship that for phones. One should be careful about drawing conclusions from a handful of examples, or even just one example. I feel safe in saying that even though Apple was legally permitted to use magsafe for phones, that didn't lead to the company doing it.