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.
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.
So yeah, the history is repeating itself.
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.
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/
Disclosure: I work at Google.
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.
- 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 :(.
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.
Also, what was Google's involvement in this? Stop reading the blogs of shills.
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.
2) Apple have expressly stated that they have no interest in licensing their patents to Android manufacturers.
And the Samsung conglomerate is huge, with $220 billion in yearly revenue and ~350000 employees. Apple's revenue in 2011 was half that.