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I hope he's right that this gets reversed. Apple makes a lot of best-in-class products (and I know some people that think everything they make is best-in-class

I hope he's right that this gets reversed. Apple makes a lot of best-in-class products (and I know some people that think everything they make is best-in-class). Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy? Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats? Or is it just a case of "if it costs us $100m to pursue 10 lawsuits with a 5% chance of any one of them getting us a $1b reward, it's a positive business move" sort of thing?

Steko 14y ago
"Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy?" Doesn't really follow. "Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats?" Absolutely. "it's a positive business move" sort of thing?" I think they would rather sign deals guaranteeing more product differentiation than get money directly from lawsuits so not really. ... Whether they are right or not I think Apple feels genuinely aggrieved by Android in general and Samsung's close copying in particular. Again whether they are right or not I think they are serious when they say they don't want to be both R&D and Design for the whole industry. The litigation has the following aims imho: (1) dilute the brands of copycats (2) scare copycats into differentiating their products more (3) force utility sapping differentiation via judgements
bane 14y ago
Looking at the iPhone 5, and when Apple started to go litigation crazy I think a couple factors have combined to force them to go this way. 1. The iPhone 5 is an incremental update to the iPhone 4 template. It doesn't mean it's a bad product, it actually looks like it's a very very nice device. But it isn't the leapfrog over the competition that people have come to expect and Apple has built its smartphone business around. I think Apple tends to produce their iDevices at pretty much the absolute state of the art. I think previous smartphones and recent competitors did not because it let them yield better profits given an inefficient supply chain. Now the competition has caught up and is also operating at the state of the art. Now they just produce a very very nice device with specs more or less in-line with the competition. The differentiation is harder to demonstrate. At some point during the development cycle for the iPhone 5 they had to have compared it to the competition in the marketplace and come to the conclusion that it simply isn't going to cut it the way previous phones have. They'll still sell it as an upgrade to most current users, but the rate of new user growth is slowing down and the rate of defectors to the competition is increasing. They must have decided the 5 simply isn't going to do enough on its own as a product to change that. 2. In the past year the competition has started to outsell them. Despite having the iPhone available across the major carriers, and having arguably a nicer device at a similar price, it just seems to be an increasingly hard sell. The iPhone 5 may not be enough of a difference from the 4S (in line with consumer expectations) to sway consumers back over into Appleland. Long new product development pipelines have prevented them from pushing out a product that really stands out in a meaningful way in the market anymore. So Apple is hedging, they've calculated that the new iPhone 5 won't swing the pendulum back in their favor, and the only choice is to try and frustrate the ability of the competion in bringing even newer products to market. Apple isn't hoping to make money via the awards, but in swinging the pendulum a few percent back in their favor. It could mean tens of billions on top of the award.
- Steko 14y ago
  1. How does the iphone 5's feature set make them file litigation in early 2010? 2. Android started to outsell Apple in 2010 not "in the past year"
  - bane 14y ago
    1. I'm just guessing, but my feeling is that the 5 was well into its design and testing cycle well before 2012. I don't know how long Apple's cycle is but I've hard that just getting network approval from some carriers can take as long as 12 months. It wouldn't surprise me if they had working near complete prototypes as far back as 2010. 2. I think it's specific manufacturers, not the aggregate community of makers. It makes it easier in some ways to target the largest builders instead of every random builder of cheap handsets one at a time.
    - Steko 14y ago
      I'm sure they work on many prototypes years in advance but if they wanted more features for the iphone 5 release occam's razor says they would just add more features. People act like Apple's engineers can't figure out how to solder an NFC chip or use removable batteries or expandable storage or micro USB or support Flash or make a much larger phone. No, they decided to not include these things on purpose.
    - deleted 14y ago
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  - deleted 14y ago
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  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    This is the first time a single phone (the SGS III) has outsold the iPhone in the U.S.
    - Steko 14y ago
      minor nit: it wouldn't shock me if SGS 3 did win one or more months and I have no doubt devices will start to do that with regularity but that data point was questionable and looked to be based on carrier store data only. more minor nit: blackberry frequently outsold the iphone for several years. trivia/speculation: original droid launched 11/09 and finished 3rd to iphone 3gs's 2nd for the whole '09 holiday quarter (bb curve was #1) so it's not unlikely that the Droid was ahead of the iphone in one or both of Nov and Dec 09. I imagine there might be other months where single non-blackberry devices have beaten the iphone.
ForrestN 14y ago
For the dozenth time: this is not some radical choice Apple made. Apple is, as a public company, responsible to act in its own interest within the current economic system. The system is screwed up, but that doesn't mean that any single company has a responsibility to unilaterally disarm.
- magicalist 14y ago
  Yeah...that's silly. If that were the case, you'd see a lot more patent trolls and Captain-Planet-villain-style polluting, for just a start. Being a public company means there is pressure on you to be profitable (and pressure for other dumb things...see: minority shareholder demands when Steve Jobs was sick), yes, but the power shareholders and charters wield aren't that strong. People actually talk about this wrt Apple all the time when they talk about all the crap products Apple doesn't release and markets Apple doesn't enter to make sure they do right by what they do release and serve the markets they do enter. Even if you take a simplistic view of "businesses exist to maximize profit", there are a ton of secondary effects you need to worry about (dilution of brand, perception by the public, narrative for the media, the momentum your workforce feels, alienation of partners, etc, etc, etc). You're basically talking "maximize short term profits", which Apple has already shown they're willing to somewhat forgo in exchange for (massive) longterm gains.
- wissler 14y ago
  It is their moral responsibility not to initiate attacks. They can morally use patents only defensively.
- ajross 14y ago
  Aggressive product-killing patent suits are not the norm, nor are they part of "the system" or "the game" as it's traditionally been practiced. Tech patents have been used to drive revenue: invent stuff, file patents, find infringers, negotiate for a royalty, sue if you can't come to agreement and eventually settle for whatever royalty you end up with. Apple isn't the only bad actor in the mobile space right now. And other companies (c.f. Rambus) have been much worse in the past. But it's just not correct to argue that they were "forced" to act this way by their obligations to their shareholders. Don't make excuses.

Steko 14y ago

"Do they think they need to do this kind of litigation to keep making products people will buy?" Doesn't really follow. "Are they trying to discredit Samsung as copycats?" Absolutely. "it's a positive business move" sort of thing?" I think they would rather sign deals guaranteeing more product differentiation than get money directly from lawsuits so not really. ... Whether they are right or not I think Apple feels genuinely aggrieved by Android in general and Samsung's close copying in particular. Again whether they are right or not I think they are serious when they say they don't want to be both R&D and Design for the whole industry. The litigation has the following aims imho: (1) dilute the brands of copycats (2) scare copycats into differentiating their products more (3) force utility sapping differentiation via judgements

bane 14y ago

Looking at the iPhone 5, and when Apple started to go litigation crazy I think a couple factors have combined to force them to go this way. 1. The iPhone 5 is an incremental update to the iPhone 4 template. It doesn't mean it's a bad product, it actually looks like it's a very very nice device. But it isn't the leapfrog over the competition that people have come to expect and Apple has built its smartphone business around. I think Apple tends to produce their iDevices at pretty much the absolute state of the art. I think previous smartphones and recent competitors did not because it let them yield better profits given an inefficient supply chain. Now the competition has caught up and is also operating at the state of the art. Now they just produce a very very nice device with specs more or less in-line with the competition. The differentiation is harder to demonstrate. At some point during the development cycle for the iPhone 5 they had to have compared it to the competition in the marketplace and come to the conclusion that it simply isn't going to cut it the way previous phones have. They'll still sell it as an upgrade to most current users, but the rate of new user growth is slowing down and the rate of defectors to the competition is increasing. They must have decided the 5 simply isn't going to do enough on its own as a product to change that. 2. In the past year the competition has started to outsell them. Despite having the iPhone available across the major carriers, and having arguably a nicer device at a similar price, it just seems to be an increasingly hard sell. The iPhone 5 may not be enough of a difference from the 4S (in line with consumer expectations) to sway consumers back over into Appleland. Long new product development pipelines have prevented them from pushing out a product that really stands out in a meaningful way in the market anymore. So Apple is hedging, they've calculated that the new iPhone 5 won't swing the pendulum back in their favor, and the only choice is to try and frustrate the ability of the competion in bringing even newer products to market. Apple isn't hoping to make money via the awards, but in swinging the pendulum a few percent back in their favor. It could mean tens of billions on top of the award.

Steko 14y ago
1. How does the iphone 5's feature set make them file litigation in early 2010? 2. Android started to outsell Apple in 2010 not "in the past year"
- bane 14y ago
  1. I'm just guessing, but my feeling is that the 5 was well into its design and testing cycle well before 2012. I don't know how long Apple's cycle is but I've hard that just getting network approval from some carriers can take as long as 12 months. It wouldn't surprise me if they had working near complete prototypes as far back as 2010. 2. I think it's specific manufacturers, not the aggregate community of makers. It makes it easier in some ways to target the largest builders instead of every random builder of cheap handsets one at a time.
  - Steko 14y ago
    I'm sure they work on many prototypes years in advance but if they wanted more features for the iphone 5 release occam's razor says they would just add more features. People act like Apple's engineers can't figure out how to solder an NFC chip or use removable batteries or expandable storage or micro USB or support Flash or make a much larger phone. No, they decided to not include these things on purpose.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  This is the first time a single phone (the SGS III) has outsold the iPhone in the U.S.
  - Steko 14y ago
    minor nit: it wouldn't shock me if SGS 3 did win one or more months and I have no doubt devices will start to do that with regularity but that data point was questionable and looked to be based on carrier store data only. more minor nit: blackberry frequently outsold the iphone for several years. trivia/speculation: original droid launched 11/09 and finished 3rd to iphone 3gs's 2nd for the whole '09 holiday quarter (bb curve was #1) so it's not unlikely that the Droid was ahead of the iphone in one or both of Nov and Dec 09. I imagine there might be other months where single non-blackberry devices have beaten the iphone.

ForrestN 14y ago

For the dozenth time: this is not some radical choice Apple made. Apple is, as a public company, responsible to act in its own interest within the current economic system. The system is screwed up, but that doesn't mean that any single company has a responsibility to unilaterally disarm.

magicalist 14y ago
Yeah...that's silly. If that were the case, you'd see a lot more patent trolls and Captain-Planet-villain-style polluting, for just a start. Being a public company means there is pressure on you to be profitable (and pressure for other dumb things...see: minority shareholder demands when Steve Jobs was sick), yes, but the power shareholders and charters wield aren't that strong. People actually talk about this wrt Apple all the time when they talk about all the crap products Apple doesn't release and markets Apple doesn't enter to make sure they do right by what they do release and serve the markets they do enter. Even if you take a simplistic view of "businesses exist to maximize profit", there are a ton of secondary effects you need to worry about (dilution of brand, perception by the public, narrative for the media, the momentum your workforce feels, alienation of partners, etc, etc, etc). You're basically talking "maximize short term profits", which Apple has already shown they're willing to somewhat forgo in exchange for (massive) longterm gains.
wissler 14y ago
It is their moral responsibility not to initiate attacks. They can morally use patents only defensively.
ajross 14y ago
Aggressive product-killing patent suits are not the norm, nor are they part of "the system" or "the game" as it's traditionally been practiced. Tech patents have been used to drive revenue: invent stuff, file patents, find infringers, negotiate for a royalty, sue if you can't come to agreement and eventually settle for whatever royalty you end up with. Apple isn't the only bad actor in the mobile space right now. And other companies (c.f. Rambus) have been much worse in the past. But it's just not correct to argue that they were "forced" to act this way by their obligations to their shareholders. Don't make excuses.