Apple may seek to stop U.S. launch of Galaxy phone | Hacker News Reader

Apple may seek to stop U.S. launch of Galaxy phone

reuters.com

11 pointsmitchie_luna32 comments

I am getting quite sick of this. I have no interest in an iPhone and was looking forward to the Galaxy S III (have a Nexus S currently).

Why is Apple so fearful of competition?

Companies learn from each other. That is how we progress. Especially when it comes to designs.

Imagine the early car manufacturers would have behaved like Apple... "Hey, you can't have a slanted windshield, because I have a design patent on it". Bah.

> Why is Apple so fearful of competition?

Because the battle with Android is going to have the same result as Windows vs. Mac did back in the 90s. If you look at the market share numbers, it's clearly trending in that direction. Apple is, of course, desperate to stop this by any means necessary, and that includes litigation.

This is a drastic move for Apple

In 1988 they filled a lawsuit against Microsoft and HP, alleging that Windows and HP's NewWave violated Apple's copyrights in Macintosh's user interface. They cited things like the use of resizable/overlapping windows in Windows and the whole thing was about "look & feel".

So yeah, the history is repeating itself.

As they are so dependent on Samsung as a supplier I can't help thinking they're trying to get leverage for negotiations of future components, rather than actually kill the Galaxy

It's a mutually dependent relationship. Apple are Samsung's largest customer, Samsung may compete with Apple but they need Apple as much as Apple need them.

To understand how important Apple is to Samsung, Apple have just started buying RAM from someone else (in addition to Samsung). In response the value of Samsung dropped $10bn.

The parallels with Windows and the Mac don't stand up.

Standards, largely around the internet, mean that there is no real drive for there to be a single winner the way there was on the desktop at that time.

I have an iPhone, you have an Android phone and we can both text each other, mail each other, tweet each other, share photos, contact each other via Facebook, share links and documents, IM and the rest.

That wasn't true back in the days of Windows vs. the Mac and that was why Windows won out - if you were in the minority camp back then you were genuinely being excluded.

But now users can work together regardless of platform, Apple make money, Samsung make money, Google make money. There really is no drive towards a single platform. Sure those companies all want market share but there's no reason to believe that it has to end up with a single dominant MS-style player.

And in terms of market share numbers it's not clearly trending in that direction. Until very recently both iOS and Android were gaining market share (squeezing Windows Mobile and BlackBerry). Google has a larger market share yes but it's not winning at the expense of Apple, they're both winning at the expense of others and grabbing more of the first time smartphone customers.

As regards the most recent market share figures [1], if anything the momentum is moving away from Android. Android market share actually dropped while iOS continues to grow.

It's still around 50% and I don't think anyone is suggesting it's in any sort of trouble (Horace's headline is a little mischievous), but the narrative that you're suggesting isn't really supported by what's happening.

What really looks like it's happening is a market dominated by two players with everyone else fighting for scraps.

[1] http://www.asymco.com/2012/06/04/trouble-with-the-robot/

They are fearful maybe because they might be beaten by the small player.

Samsung's a bit larger than Apple.

And Apple has said before that they'd rather have these companies (Samsung, HTC, etc) make a license agreement for the patents (like Microsoft's and HTC's deal with each other) rather than sue them or try to block the sale of their products.

It's not like Apple's the only one that does this either, most recently Motorola/Google tried to block iPhone/iPad sales in Germany over iCloud.

Our industry is quickly becoming a clusterfuck of lawsuits, so I don't understand why you feel the need to excuse Apple's behavior by pointing fingers, when they started this whole mess in the first place. I don't see how the old proverb "you get what you sow" doesn't apply here.

Also, what was Google's involvement in this? Stop reading the blogs of shills.

Google owns Motorola Mobility, one can assume they have some say in these recent suits.

I think this whole thing (companies suing each other over things like this) is wrong, but It's how the system works and so Apple has to play as well.

Suing over "auto-correcting typed text" features, come on. I think they are the only ones doing this sort of thing at the moment, it is patent trolling at its worst with entry level features. We are not talking about defending any sort of innovation here, it is simply gaming a flawed system to hold on to sales while keeping direct competition down.

1) Apple is the largest company in the world (by market cap - Samsung $120bn approx, Apple $540bn). Specific to smartphones, Samsung ship more smartphones (by unit), Apple have higher revenues and profits from smartphones.

2) Apple have expressly stated that they have no interest in licensing their patents to Android manufacturers.

They offered to license patents recently, http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/03/though-steve-jobs-famou...

And the Samsung conglomerate is huge, with $220 billion in yearly revenue and ~350000 employees. Apple's revenue in 2011 was half that.

Out of curiosity, why do want the Galaxy S 3 instead of the Galaxy Nexus, especially after a Nexus S?

Disclosure: I work at Google.

I am mostly looking for a larger screen and it needs to be a GSM phone (so that I can use it in Europe as well).

There is a GSM Galaxy Nexus. In fact, it is thinner and lighter than the LTE Galaxy Nexus, and has a larger capacity battery.

It's actually 1,750 mAh HSPA+ compared to 1,850 mAh for LTE - but yes the HSPA+ will last longer due to drain from LTE.

The GSM Galaxy Nexus I've seen had a 1900 mAh battery.

Oh interesting, from memory I thought the GSM had a slightly smaller battery and I pulled those numbers from Wikipedia (they could of course be wrong).

The battery is physically smaller. Not what I was expecting when I opened one up, especially after reading that it had a higher capacity.

You can buy an unlocked GSM Galaxy Nexus directly from Google https://www.google.com/nexus/

I love my Galaxy Nexus but the camera sucks. I'm pretty convinced I'll ditch my Nexus within 12 months for that reason.

Really? I quite like the camera on my nexus. It doesn't do well in low lighting situations, but that's about it. What don't you like about it?

That's exactly it -- low lighting situations are terrible. The year-old HTC Thunderbolt I used to use was better (and also higher resolution). But mostly, if you compare the image quality to the iPhone 4S, it's a no-brainer. The iPhone destroys the GN in image quality.

BTW, brings up another thought: I'm pretty sure Android is more aggressive about JPEG compression by default than iPhone. I haven't thoroughly researched this except to notice the relative sizes of files the two generate at the same resolution.

While I'm not the original poster, I'm in similar situation and I hope someone at Google is listening (for next Nexus):

- Hardware: S3 has better hardware. (I know, GN is 6 months old. We are comparing from the POV of today's purchase though). The camera also cannot compete to it's contemporaries. GN is more related to S2 than S3. Given that outside States, S2 was available for 6 months before GN, there was never a reason to upgrade to GN.

- Limitations: where I live, GSM GN is available only in 16GB version. S3 is 32GB + MicroSD slot. My current phone (Xperia Arc) has an 32GB card in the slot currently. Do you think that I would buy new phone with less memory than my current one? (That was rethorical, of course not). I do not have problem to be MTP only, but 32GB is minimum to be acceptable. At the end of the year, 64GB will be minimum.

Looking at available phones, the killer would be combination of HTC's One X design, finish and build quality, S3's hardware and GN's stock android upgraded by Google. However, no such thing is available :(.

Yay, yet another example of a large company doing something that does nothing but hurt consumers. I hate to use such an overused phrase but this is why we can't have nice things.

Maybe they are troubled of competition with the Galaxy phones that is why they are moving this kind of move.

If either Presidential candidate put software patent abolition as a primary platform topic, that'd be an automatic vote from me.

I'm curious what impact such actions have on the market visibility of the product being sued. Basically, will this make more people take a closer notice of the Samsung Galaxy S III and pay attention to it, then would have otherwise, and then have a positive impact on sales (unless some stupid judge blocks the sale).

In other words, will the impact on Apple be more adverse than if it would have not sued at all.

Some of this data might help convince litigious companies that this does not help them in the long run.

I have an iPhone and an Android phone, and I'm probably going to upgrade the Android to an S3. I'm not a diehard fan of either platform, and without knowing anything about the patents, as a consumer I'm getting pretty sick of what appears to be sour grapes on Apple's part. I guess I would get desperate too if I saw my main rival rack up preorders of 9 million units...

I'm a pretty big fan of Android but I would totally understand Apple going after Samsung for S-Voice - it's quite blatant in its copying of Siri's design.

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