When you think of smartphone wars you think of the battle between the likes of RIM, Microsoft, Google, and Apple in the ad space. Apple has decided to take the fight one step further. They have filed suit against HTC for Android and WinMobile devices. The Windows mobile devices seem to be unimportant part of the suit for Apple. The majority of the suit is patent claims are against HTC for Android devices. Engadget has a very good breakdown of the patent claims on HTC Android devices and Ars Technica has a good write up on this fight.
The is going to be a very interesting fight. Apple is right to sue because they have to protect their patents, but this feels like a vindictive move. I’ve read the Engadget breakdown of the patents and this seems to be an attack on the Android OS rather then HTC and it’s hardware. it makes one wonder why hasn’t Apple named Google instead of HTC in this suit. It seems Apple is trying to send a message that the smartphone market is theirs and stay out. While this is one sided right now we don’t know what patents HTC has that will back up their position.
When this get this sorted out I wonder how the touch screen phone market is going to be like if Apple is victorious. Most phones out there with a touch screen violate these patents also. On the other side I wonder if there will be fallout for full OSes like Windows as part of the patents are for desktop OSes regarding background applications. In the end I don’t think anything will happen in the OS space, but it is interesting thing to consider.
The most common thing people on both “sides” are complaining about is software patent reform. Which I do agree needs to be fixed, but I’m not a patent expert. Most of these patents Apple is suing for are very common in the phone market now. I wonder how long before other phone manufactures are sued by Apple.
In the short term Google’s Nexus One will still go on sale this year and more Andriod devices will hit carriers. It will take years for this to resolved through the courts. Most of theses patent cases get resolved through settlements. Time will tell if there will be a settlement on HTC’s side.
No comments:
Post a Comment