Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#281

Post by jonhohle » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:02 AM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #227

pooriaazimi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market has punished [Apple] for it You're serious? They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market, with Samsung at the second place (26%) and HTC, third (1%), their stock is booming, they have more money in the bank than all of their competitors combined (they can buy Samsung, HTC and Dell and shut them down and still have a few billion dollars left). I'd call that reward, not punishment. http://www.asymco.co…

>They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market I chuckle every time I hear this. How much profit of the web server market does Microsoft take with IIS vs. the free alternatives like Apache and Nginx? Who wins in the Server OS market of Windows Server vs. Linux/BSD? Who dominates the web dev tools market of Visual Studio vs. Eclipse/etc. ? The same arguments you make can be made against the above too. The idea of p…

> I chuckle every time I hear this. How much profit of the > web server market does Microsoft take with IIS vs. the free > alternatives like Apache and Nginx? > > Who wins in the Server OS market of Windows Server vs. > Linux/BSD? Who dominates the web dev tools market of Visual > Studio vs. Eclipse/etc. ?

In the not-to distant past (early 2006), I worked on a system which hosted millions of domains on Linux and Apache hosts. Microsoft called our company and offered them mega-bucks to switch the system to Windows and IIS so that they could increase market share. You can confirm this with netcraft - http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey... . And we weren't the only shop they called with similar deals.

In this case, the one with the profit bought themselves 15% marketshare. I had real fears around that time that web stacks were going to start looking an awful lot like the desktop ecosystem.

Don't discount the power money can have.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#282

Post by Anechoic » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:06 AM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #279

Anechoic wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but all one has to do is look at the old Palm Pilot to know that they completely ripped off the design and layout. You're forgetting about the Newton.

Right, any computer with square icons arranged in a table format must have originated from the Newton. How could anybody have figured out to put icons into rows and columns? But seriously, Palm had an SDK and a phone with a touch interface and downloadable apps a good three to four years before the iPhone was introduced. Any brick with a touch interface does not fall into that category I'm afraid.

You wrote "they completely ripped off the design and layout" of the Palm Pilot. The iOS layout owes as much, if not more to the Newton than to the Pilot.

Any brick with a touch interface does not fall into that category I'm afraid.

Absolutely. For example, Microsoft managed to develop a touch phone interface that owes very little to the iPhone. Hopefully Samsung can do the same.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#283

Post by forensic » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:09 AM UTC

angryasian wrote: post #253

cageface wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any particular loyalty to Samsung but these cases set a chilling precedent for the platform that looks likely to dominate the computing industry for at least the next decade. There's much more at stake here than a few billion dollars and a few icons and scrolling techniques. If this continues we're going to spend the next decade tiptoeing around every trivial implementation detail of mobile UI instead of…

Not only that, its going to set innovating in the mobile space back even farther. While Apple outlines every decision meticulously for planned obsolescence, Google and others take a more throw something out there, see if it works and run with it approach. With both strongly competing it pushes the entire industry forward faster.

It's easy to argue that they aren't competing. Apple innovates in their sphere of innovation, their competitors copy them and produce cheap knock-offs attempting to cash in Apple's R&D.

It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other companies just copy them and try to win on price.

It would be competition if Google tried to out-do Apple, but they don't.

Samsung doesn't compete with Apple either. They are more similar to counterfeiters who sell black-market Oakley, Nike, and Prada stuff in alleyways.

Competition would be if Samsung improves on Apple's designs to create something superior.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#284

Post by forensic » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:11 AM UTC

kamechan wrote: post #274

benihana wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've refused to compete with Android on price, features, and form factors and the market has punished them for it. In what universe did the market punish them? Apple has shipped 250 million phones and made 150 billion dollars in revenue in the five years since the iPhone shipped[1]. Each iPhone version has sold more than every other version combined [2]. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/strategy-analytics-ap…

In the global market where android now has 60 something percent market share and iPhones have 18.

That global market is mostly made up people who would never become Apple customers. Apple really doesn't target poor people; Android does.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#285

Post by sahaj » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:14 AM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #129

MattLaroche wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been following this closely, but if I understand correctly, the jury found against Samsung on the Nexus S. That is a Google phone built straight from Android and with no specific Samsung code at the UI level. (Don't think a disclaimer is necessary in this case, but I used to work at Google. Not on Android.)

That is correct. The case is much more nuanced than suggested. This case was Samsung and Google by proxy vs Apple

The case was only against the Nexus S 4G - the Sprint version - which hasn't been updated to Android 4.1. The AT&T version was not part of the case. Android 4.1 removed infringing features.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#286

Post by forensic » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:14 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #246

mikeflynn wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the market is really "punishing" them all right: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL (stock currently at $663) Google and Apple may have, at a high level, opposing strategies, but Apple's approach is being adopted more and more (app stores, having more control on the experience, etc...) and companies wouldn't do that if it wasn't working. Hell Google's own products, the ones where they stamp…

Apple's strategy assumes that a single company and a single line of devices can indefinitely command the lion's share of the most important computing platform of our time. This just doesn't seem tenable to me. For every consumer that's completely satisfied with the Apple experience there will be 3-4 others that prefer some other product for any number of reasons. When in the history of the world have we ever seen a s…

>When in the history of the world have we ever seen a single company and a single line of products dominate a mass-market consumer segment for more than a few years?

the historical norm is monopoly, not competition

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#287

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:14 AM UTC

alayne wrote: post #262

cageface wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course profit is ultimately the metric that counts. But time and time again in the tech world we've seen that it's much easier to build something cheap and ubiquitous and eat your way up the value chain than it is to start at the top and try to tenaciously cling there. It didn't work for Apple last time and I think it's starting to slip for them again now.

Which companies would you give as examples of "eat your way up the value chain"?

Microsoft (against IBM, DEC, Novell, SCO (the original, Microsoft's own spawn).

Sun, against IBM and AT&T.

Red Hat, against Sun.

Salesforce against bespoke business solutions.

Google Apps against Microsoft Office.

Gmail against MS Exchange.

More generally, read/refer to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#288

Post by jyap » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:16 AM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #227

pooriaazimi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market has punished [Apple] for it You're serious? They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market, with Samsung at the second place (26%) and HTC, third (1%), their stock is booming, they have more money in the bank than all of their competitors combined (they can buy Samsung, HTC and Dell and shut them down and still have a few billion dollars left). I'd call that reward, not punishment. http://www.asymco.co…

>They take 73% of the profit in smartphone market I chuckle every time I hear this. How much profit of the web server market does Microsoft take with IIS vs. the free alternatives like Apache and Nginx? Who wins in the Server OS market of Windows Server vs. Linux/BSD? Who dominates the web dev tools market of Visual Studio vs. Eclipse/etc. ? The same arguments you make can be made against the above too. The idea of p…

Say company X sells 200 phones and makes $1000 profit.

Company Y sells 150 phones and makes $10,000 profit.

In this case we are comparing apples with apples. So it is a valid metric of comparison. In the same reasoning, if company Z sells 200 phones and loses money then obviously that is bad and company Z could potentially go bankrupt.

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#289

Post by linuxhansl » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #269

linuxhansl wrote: post #263

That's what you get from having lay people (with no training in either software development, UI design, etc) making decisions like this. These patents are quite obviously ridiculous. 381 patent: "rubber band" effect 915 patent: Pinch to Zoom 163 patent: "Double tap to enlarge/zoom" D '305 patent: "Grid of rounded square icons" This is supposed to be what sets off iPhones from competition?! W.T.F.? How did we get to t…

This kind of comment is what you get when you have non-lawyers try to interpret patent litigation...

Nice. Maybe you want to read this: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120824175815101

Re: Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes

#290

Post by LiroXIV » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #113

barista wrote: post #5

It feels good when the judgments reflect what is a common sense to a reasonable person. Glad the common sense prevailed here. It was obvious that the android devices were copied from iPhones.

And what iPhones were copied from?

Legally, nothing.