18 
If your heart grew two sizes when Apple and HTC decided to settle their patent disputes with money instead of lawyers (or guns?), prepare for shrinkage. When asked if Samsung would follow suit — or lack thereof — its mobile head, J.K. Shin, gave an emphatic no. To the jousting field!
It’s not like anyone expected Samsung to forgo its legal battles; it can afford the fight better than HTC can, for one thing, and also already has so much invested in it that it may as well double down. Besides, in a lot of countries — Japan and the Netherlands, specifically — it’s winning. There are lawsuits in 10 countries still being contested. Why give up now?
So sorry, you holiday true believers. The only people who have much to be thankful for here are patent lawyers with sky-high piles of billable hours. But for the rest of us who like a good knock-down, drag-out fight, things are just getting good. [AFP]
Image credit: Crying baby from Shutterstock
They should turn this into a reality show. I’d watch it.
Is this really a surprise?
They had their chance to negotiate without the courts but refused. Why would the back down when they’re making so much money out of it.
It’s only a game as long as your business is doing well.
If ever your business dulls down to profits less than say, a billion pounds, you’re looking at the biggest risk to the very existence of your firm. Apple’s money pile could help its case, but soon they’ll have to rethink this.
Few would back down in Samsung’s position. They got attacked and went on the defensive, winning everything but a questionable case in the States that will likely get overturned. Worse than that they get attacked by their partner in crime, fuck. I thing Sammy’s nose is out of place here – Walter White would have killed Apple for this kind of indiscretion . So Sammy are now in a position to teach a stagnating Apple a serious fucking lesson they will never forget, and we all get to play a small part in that. Let’s do it already.
I doubt that. Sammy need the chip business Apple bring in. They should just suck it up, pay the fine or whatever and move on.
Apple are not ‘on the decline’. They’ve had a blip which I think they’ve learnt from pretty quickly. Right now Samsung are acting like whiny brats.
It is madness to suggest the Samsung need Apple’s business, everything you have is likely running Samsung memory chips, then they have the best selling phone lines, TVs, laptops, and practically every company in the world is a Samsung customer.
When a blip lasts for 3 years, it may be time to redefine it as something other than a blip.
Samsung are acting like how anyone would then someone just tried to take you out a failed tragically.
Hey Mark,
I’m sure I have a lot of memory made by Samsung in a lot of bit of crap I own. Still think they’re being stupid. There’s a lot of convergence going on at the moment. A lot of disparate products using the same(ish) GUI. They should sort it out like adults no matter who anyone thinks who started it.
I personally think Apple are acting like they invented the car and are pissed everyone is copying them. Sure, they have some copyrights but you’re never going to stop other companies making tablets that use gestures etc.
Hopefully, they’ll get over it.
All your USB sticks, SD cards, computer memory, phone memory, tablet memory… Samsung did that. They hold 40% of the world DRAM market and 40% the NAND flash market, Apple accounts for 2.5% of Samsung’s DRAM/NAND buiness. They also make 26% of the worlds large LCD screens, 97% of active matrix OLED screen, 18.7% of Lith-ion batteries, 18% LCD monitors, 9% harddrives, 17.2% of TVs, 25% mobile phones, 11.8% digital cameras, 12% application processors. They don’t need Apple’s business.
Probably not ‘all’ of them. As you point out, they don’t have a monopoly. I was also referring to their litigation for products, not parts.
Where did you get all that data from? Press release?