Quote:
Originally Posted by AntimonyER
The way I see it, this signifies one of two things... Apple is no longer worried about HTC's competition, and is settling so they can focus on the one manufacturer who is truly threatening them, or there is finally a realization from Apple that this massive litigation streak in the mobile industry is not going anywhere, and is only taking money away from development... I soooo hope its option 2...
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Option 3, they could have been facing the possibility that their products would have to be changed or made not for sale here, causing investor panic, like they kindly did for HTC.
This last year, HTC was trying to get one or more Mac models from coming into the US over an HTC patent, and nearly succeeded. This could have all been the result of that action.
Cook said he would carry out the policies of his predecessor. HTC is not nobody, despite Samsung's stellar sales. HTC made the first Android. Losing HTC to Apple with Google doing nothing would have sent a message to the other makers: this could happen to you. That's exactly why Google stepped in and helped.
Google bought Motorola for their patents and their intellectual property. Some of these Apple patents have gone unchallenged but are prior art for Motorola, and the Apple-Google-rola court cases have been heating up as well, with Apple insisting they'd pay $1/unit for FRAND patents and the courts seeing that as a nose-thumbing.
Apple has three ways to get back on top - innovate beyond the competition, the competition loses innovations, or the competition gets hamstrung. Being able to screw either HTC or Motorola significantly would be enough. Samsung investors were not happy last year until their CEO assured them that Samsung's Bada OS was alive and well and that they'd turn to that if dealing with Google became a problem.
Apple's been playing dominos and has been successful in getting people to believe the fairy tale that others actually stole from them.