Walk back 6 years, and virtually all smartphones were sold by Nokia. Of those that weren't, the majority were made up of Sony-Erickson and Motorola. Samsung was an also-ran at best, and (almost literally) no one had heard of HTC. Now they're #2 and #3. How are they not "newcomers".
Of course, Apple too is a newcomer by that metric. But nonetheless I don't think it's incorrect or inconsistent with the grandparent's point. I suspect if Nokia had shot first in 2009 and gotten an iPhone ban on something equivalently ridiculous, you'd be pretty upset, right?
So the answer to my question is "nobody", then? Apple in fact hasn't sued startups using their patent portfolio?
I'm willing to be wrong but not willing to accept the idea that Apple is oppressing startups with their patent arsenal without at least one actual fact to back it up.
To be fair, HTC was considered an up and comer around 2006. The main difference is that the HTC phones before the iPhone were mostly white labeled under the carrier names or under another company's name. My first HTC Windows Mobile phone was actually labelled as an "Audiovox" phone. My HTC Excalibur was sold in the US as the T-Mobile Dash.
Around 2006, however, HTC was just beginning selling under their own brand, and were doing quite well as a Windows Mobile smartphone maker. Of course, once Android came around, things got even better for them.
Thank you. So you've changed your mind and now think Apple shamelessly copied from Nokia and deserved to be sued. :)
Nokia was wrong. Apple was wrong. At least my opinions are consistent.
(edit: even the "similar sum" bit sounds a bit spun to me -- the settlement was obviously private, but one assumes someone would have noticed a billion dollars on Nokia's balance sheet)
Well, it was noticeable. In the second quarter 2011 result Nokia reported a payment of 430 million Euros from Apple. The exchange rate was around 1.45 at that time, so that means 620 million Dollars were paid. Also Deutsche Bank analysts assumed an ongoing royalty of 1% from Apple. Which would mean Nokia gets every quarter another $200 million. But I am too lazy too check that up.
Interesting, thanks! I'll note, though, that given the 55M units Apple shipped in 2011 (hopefully that's right, read it off the google results page and didn't click through) it comes to about $11/unit. The 1% number, if it's based on retail price, is about a third of that. That's a big deal, and honestly much larger than I expected.
But reports were that Apple demanded $30/unit from Samsung, and pushed ahead with the suit when they didn't get it. That's not quite in the same realm of "compromise". Nokia was happy to be a parasite. Apple wants Samsung dead.
