More Of The Same

Apple filed the lawsuit with the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. District Court in Delaware. Apparently Apple feels that HTC infringed on around 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. Apple is requesting a permanent injunction barring HTC from importing or selling infringing phones in the U.S. You really have to wonder what those Apple folks are thinking.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” – Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Jan. 9, 2007

From the graphs above its pretty easy to see how quickly Android has passed all the other major competitors in relatively little time. This isn’t to say that they have caught up with the iPhone but rather how much farther they need to go in order to actually do just that.

It’s easy to see that Android has almost doubled it’s market share in the last year while the iPhone’s market share has been slowly dropping.

This doesn’t mean that the iPhone is loosing shares because, actually both the Android and the iPhone seem to be gaining shares. Unfortunatly for the iPhone, the Android is gaining them a little faster. This fact is only being compounded by the amount of Android devices that are either out now or on their way. Couple that with the reports that all US Android phones will get the new 2.1 Android update and you may soon see Android ready to battle it out with the Apple.

And now we can really start to see why Apple decided to sue HTC, who just happens to be the largest Android manufacture.

After reading about this I started to think about the reasons behind this bomb shell and if Apple really has a case.

Maybe this is just Apples way of slowing down anyone that is looking to build Android based smart phones. Or even those that are currently working on an Android based Net pad like Hivision. Or maybe this is just Apples way of trying to get some money out of HTC to help shore up the bleeding of market share they are starting to notice.

Now, if Apple is actually sueing HTC because of the the touchscreen functions as they are stating, then why didn’t they choose to sue Palm with their new WebOS? Hell, if we’re going to go down this path then we might as well have a court case agains Apple by Doctor Sam Hurst the founder of Elographics and Dr Martin Cooper.

You see, Dr. Sam Hurst was the inventor of the first touch screen and Apple is now using his idea in not only their iPhone but also several other devices. And lets not forget Dr. Martin Cooper the true inventor of the cell phone.

All that aside I have a strange feeling that we have seen this before. O’ yes, SCO tried this and we all remember what happened to them. So as this battle heats up it will be interesting to see not only how this all pans out between Apple and Android but also how the Cell Phone community will respond to this.

Just a little extra information to help you figure out witch side to stand on.

Like I said, more of the same.