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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Apple already eats up 71% of the mobile profits. Looks like they never forgot how to act like a monopoly in all these years and they like getting up on stage and playing all their 20 year old tunes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager#L...

Buying their products is saying, with your actual wallet, and your actual real money in completely unequivocal terms: "Yes, I fully support these blunt litigious anti-competitive tactics. Please do this more."

It's almost like a more evil serpent version of the Windows tax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_refund#The_.22Windows_t...

What if Apple spent all this lawyer money instead on making a superior product that would beat their competitors, you know, because it was a better product, and not just go around and be the corporate Tonya Harding?

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Not sure what you mean by "act like a monopoly". But you're right that Apple never forgot that microsoft ripped them off and dominated the industry with their sub par OS. (I know about the Xerox stuff). This is why Steve Jobs said very clearly at the iPhone launch "and boy have we patented it".

Many companies in the tech sector have effectively been using Apple as their R&D department for decades. Samsung is just the latest and most blatant.

you did see this http://i.imgur.com/KPGYL.jpg right? A large-screen candybar phone isn't really revolutionary. Nor is a touch-screen interface. I really don't know what you mean. Something with a web-browser? http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/wce/wceapps.htm A home-screen? http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/palm-treo-600-at/4505-64... An app store? http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3504_7-5021267-1.html Face-time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dell_Axim_X30_624.jpg

Nothing that Apple did was really that new ... they have never been the "new"; just the people that came up with the right marketing sauce to convince people to buy it; and that's just a US thing. US lagging behind in mobile tech was an on-going joke up until about 2007 because other companies had had run-away successes in the Asian and Europe markets already. Just nothing of that scale in the US.

There were touch-screen smartphones in 1994 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_Simon_Personal_Communi... ... Oftentimes there were widely available commercial equivalencies 10, 15, even 20 years prior to the Apple "Innovation" event. And then a few years later they (Apple) pretend like they invented and own all of it.

I don't see Palm or Rim or LG or Qualcomm or IBM or Sony or Nokia or Ericsson or even Microsoft going around and suing the pants of people in the Mobile space; even though they clearly have more of the prior art right than Apple does.

With Apple, suing people out of market has been their modus operandi at least since Lisa.

And I really don't know what you mean with the Microsoft comparison; you can do a very identical analysis with early 80s computer UIs ... from visicalc to desqview to deskmate to countless utility suites that did WIMP pre-lisa, some even graphically (e.g., wordperfect, wordstar)

Round shapes weren't uncommon until someone used it for displacing things, hence inventing the wheel.

Syncing data over a network wasn't unheard of as well, but then someone came with dropbox.

Nothing today is "really new", but the novelty is in the way this is put together and used.

And what would have happened if round shapes or syncing data over a network were patented and everyone who tried to reuse them in novel ways were aggressively sued?

There's a big difference between "uncommon" and "untried". Fact is, most of what Apple has popularized with their line of iDevices has already failed previously in the market. This just proves Apple's ability to iterate, perfect, and market their products. It has no bearing on how well they innovate.

There may well be something special about the packaging of a particular set of features, but that isn't the standard for patent.

Downvoted you because you are just another anti-Apple troll. Apple succeeded where others had failed, usually by innovating and by relentless attention to detail. Consequently everyone else copies "what Apple did" in "the way that Apple did it". This "patenting round corners" BS is just nonsense spouted by the feeble minded who do not, or will not, understand the issues being tested by these court cases.

Samsung did not just copy one or two isolated design details, they copied the whole damn thing. Do not your let your fandroidism or anti-Apple bigotry blind you to the reailty of what is being contested here.

Downvoted because accusing someone of trolling when they (quite clearly) are being genuine is rather inane, and the name-calling doesn't help the standard of discussion here.

You're right, it's ridiculous. What is an iPhone if not a combination of silicon, carbon, oxygen, aluminium, potassium, copper, boron, phosphorus, nitrogen etc.? Did Apple come up with any of these elements? Was it the first to bring them to market? With such prior art as clocks, wires, plants or rocks, going back lustra or even scores, it's a wonder their case has not been thrown out yet.

Apple aren't trying to claim exclusive use of any chemical elements that I'm aware of.

This isn't about whether or not Apple make good and/or innovative products. It's about their claim of exclusive rights to the concepts they use in building them.

So the Android OEMs are just sending Microsoft checks for each smartphone sold out of the goodness of their heart?

Apple already eats up 71% of the mobile profits.

You're making it sound like there's this big profit tree out there that everybody's supposed to get an fair share of. Nobody "eats up" profits. They earn them.

My apology ... that's a partial statement. They have 33% of the market and 71% of the profit.

Apple has the most profits with all other companies, except the one they are suing, selling at a loss. Yes, at a loss. http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/30/apple-samsung-take-profit/

The basis of these types of IP arguments is that the competitor can take short-cuts and thus price the originator out of market or at best make a much more handsome profit because they didn't have to do the R&D or some other type of fair-play argument line. You certainly don't have to prove that harm is being done for patent violation, but the idea is that such a system exists to stop it. If there's a sniff test here, the highest-profit-margin-in-the-industry Apple isn't passing it.

You can't view the market that simply.

Until recently Apple had no presence in the low end of the market which meant that a large proportion of the market that Samsung and other Android handset manufacturers had was in the budget sector. That part of the market is always less profitable on a per unit basis and more reliant on volume.

It is also arguably more competitive than the high end. Few Android handset manufacturers other than Samsung are making models that compare favourably with the iPhone, however down the bottom end there are loads of players (many fighting for their lives) cutting further into margins at those price points.

Interestingly Samsung, arguably the only Android manufacturer that does compete successfully at the top end is massively profitable itself.

But if Samsung and other choose to scrap it out in a low margin market, you can't really blame Apple when that strategy fails to realise the same profits and you can't really use it as any sort of justification.

They have 33% of the market including most of the high end and they design 1 new phone every 18 months or so. How much do you think R&D is going to cost them vs Samsung which comes out with a new model every month or so and has a smaller slice of the mid to low end market.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that Samsung should stop coming out with a new model every month.

> Apple already eats up 71% of the mobile profits.

How do you suppose they did that? With lawyers? I don't think so.

> What if Apple spent all this lawyer money instead on making a superior product that would beat their competitors

They already do. They didn't need this lawsuit to stay competitive.

If they don't need this litigation to stay competitive, I think it is natural to ask why they did need it.

It wasn't a matter of need. It was a matter of principle. If you spend billions of dollars in R&D to invent a device, and a competitor just copies it, then it stands to reason that they should pay loyalties for every one of theirs that is sold.

They didn't invent cell phones or touch screens. Apple is standing on the shoulders of giants.

They are not claiming to have invented cell phones or touch screens.

If you read the documents, this is all about trade dress, which may be inspired by others but can be claimed as your own if you build a strong enough case.

Samsung's deliberate copying of the iPhone, as directed by management and documented quite extensively in the evidence, is the source of most of these problems. When you have Samsung saying "Make it more like the iPhone" you have problems.

"What if Apple spent all this lawyer money instead on making a superior product that would beat their competitors, you know, because it was a better product [...]"

I think it's safe to assume they have enough money to develop new products and keep an army of lawyers fed and watered.

A monopoly position is not defined by share of profits.

Should it be?

No.

Pricing power is a signal

The Ritz-Carlton charges high prices, but that doesn't mean they have a monopoly on hotel rooms.

A luxury vendor charging luxury prices is not necessarily high pricing power.

Samsung and the other Korean phone companies used many anti-competitive tactics against foreign phone companies in South Korea. The original iPhone's introduction to South Korea was delayed, for instance. See articles I've linked in my history.

Samsung are an extremely unethical company. I try not to have anything to do with them whenever I can help it.

> What if Apple spent all this lawyer money instead on making a superior product that would beat their competitors, you know, because it was a better product, and not just go around and be the corporate Tonya Harding?

That's exactly what they did do with the iPhone. Samsung used their might to stop it from coming to South Korea and give themselves time to develop a knock-off of it.

I'm pretty sure when I buy an Apple product I'm saying "I like this thing you have made, please give it to me."

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