Any worry about buying N1 with lawsuits pending

[CSI Guy]

I am thinking about buying a N1 but am concerned about the pending lawsuits. Do you think that there is cause for concern or would I already be on another phone by the time anything happens. I use a BB and need to know if the N1 would be suitable for business ie great voice, email, and text? I did have some issues with people hearing me when using my Droid.

 

[Cory Streater]

These things almost always end with out of court settlements, and even if something were to happen, it wouldn't affect current customers. The whole things is ridiculous in my opinion. I hope Apple fails at this.

To answer your second question, it is more than capable of accomplishing all those things, but you need to experience it yourself to be sure.

 

[tom28]

yup, Millions of dollars will exchange hands but that's nothing for you to worry about. So buy away and enjoy the phone.

 

[Rusty Shackelford]

No worries here. By the time anything happens we'll be into googles 3rd generation of phone with android 10.0 muffin! Ok, maybe not muffin.

 

[CSI Guy]

Yea, thats what I thought.

 

[YourMobileGuru]

This is gonna get laughed out of court, if you've read the exact patents that they are claiming as infringing it's ridiculous, half the advanced cel phones in existence (especially touch screens) are technically infringing because they are so vague.

They are picking on HTC because they are so small, any judge will see that. They can't go after Palm because palm owns the original patent for touch screen devices to begin with and they can't go after Motorola because they own the original patten for a mobile cellular phone dating back to the early 70's (c. 1973), which they themselves are obviously violating. And if they went after Google, since Google does not make money for the Android software to begin with it would be hard to demand a share of the profits, and besides Google and their army of lawyers would bury them they are so large and powerful. I know a lot of people like to think of Apple as being thus huge company bit copared to Google, Microsoft, and a few others they are nothing...

Get your Nexus and enjoy... I intend to

 

[doogald]

And if they went after Google, since Google does not make money for the Android software to begin with it would be hard to demand a share of the profits...

I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that patent licensing fees have nothing to do with shares of profits, and, in fact, Apple is probably not looking for licensing fees at all, but to get these phones to stop using their patented technology altogether.

I know a lot of people like to think of Apple as being thus huge company bit copared to Google, Microsoft, and a few others they are nothing...

As for the size of the company, Apple's market cap is $203.88 B, Google's is $183.3 B. Apple's annual revenue is $47 B, Google's is $25 B. They both have about $24 B in free cash. Apple has 34,000 employees, Google has 20,000.

All that said, remember the successful lawsuit by the very tiny NTP Technologies against RIM a few years ago? The size of the companies means absolutely nothing.

 

[z0phi3l]

The sad part of this is the lawsuit is only valid in the US, all other sane Countries don't accept software patents so there's no "infringing" going on anywhere else

 

[ads]

I don't think these lawsuits are anything like the one against RIM. That one was about the core of their existence, the ability to send emails. I didn't read the details of this one, but there's almost countless ways to do many of these things, and I expect if they look hard enough, htc can find something of theirs apple borrowed and this will end up with some cross-licensing and cash changing hands.
ADS

 

[GivenToFly]

I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that patent licensing fees have nothing to do with shares of profits, and, in fact, Apple is probably not looking for licensing fees at all, but to get these phones to stop using their patented technology altogether.

I think that Apple feels threatend by HTC. And they should. The iPhone has remained very unchanged and locked down for so long, and HTC is small but is making a lot of very user friendly functional and popular phones that are better than the iphone. They would much rather try to get a stop order rather than licensing fees to eliminate the competition. Apple is simply being a bully here for fear of losing their market share in the smartphone market. I hope the iPad fails miserably, and this lawsuit gets more public and turns into a PR nightmare for this "friendly" company Apple.

 

[ILoveBlythe]

They wont go after Google because they rely on their apps. Stupid Apple. Let it be. This whole nonsense of patent infringement is getting out of hand. When they make these patents they are no more than ideas so shove off Apple. Yea I can see it now, if Apple wins WHO is going to come to my house and take MY phone that I PAID for. No one. The whole idea of this is stupid.

 

[doogald]

Yea I can see it now, if Apple wins WHO is going to come to my house and take MY phone that I PAID for. No one.

You are absolutely right. Nobody will take your phone. Instead, should Apple and HTC actually take this to trial and go through the whole thing without a settlement, and HTC loses, HTC will be forced to pay back licensing to Apple for all of the handsets that they sold, and would likely be forced to reengineer their phone lineup to be non-infringing before they could import them and sell them again. Consumers would not lose their phone, nor would they pay a dime.

I assume that you are equally upset about Nokia's lawsuit against Apple?

 

[YourMobileGuru]

I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that patent licensing fees have nothing to do with shares of profits, and, in fact, Apple is probably not looking for licensing fees at all, but to get these phones to stop using their patented technology altogether.



As for the size of the company, Apple's market cap is $203.88 B, Google's is $183.3 B. Apple's annual revenue is $47 B, Google's is $25 B. They both have about $24 B in free cash. Apple has 34,000 employees, Google has 20,000.

All that said, remember the successful lawsuit by the very tiny NTP Technologies against RIM a few years ago? The size of the companies means absolutely nothing.

I wasn't referring to income here. I meant they physical size of the company. Apple itself is relatively small compared to Google when it comes to assets (ie Google's server farms) and employees.

I think Apple want a bit of both I think. They pay Google a small fortune each year to integrate Google Maps and other Google services into their phone and know full well that if they were to switch to something like Bing or Yahoo (one in the same now) they would loose a lot of their customers come upgrade time. They want to earn some of that back.

They file these patents and make them so vague that they cast a wide net so as to encompass anyone who does something even remotely like them. You can't patent an idea, only the IMPLEMENTATION of that idea, but Apple seems to think you can.

To follow their logic, Motorola should sue them for infringing on their "mobile phone" patent and Palm should sue them over their infringing on their touch screen patent, but Apple would be the first ones to cry foul if they did so.

 

[doogald]

I wasn't referring to income here. I meant they physical size of the company. Apple itself is relatively small compared to Google when it comes to assets (ie Google's server farms) and employees.

Total current assets: Google 40.5 B, Apple 53.9 B. Apple has more liabilites, so the two companies have almost exactly the same total equity. I've already listed that Apple has more employees.

I think Apple want a bit of both I think. They pay Google a small fortune each year to integrate Google Maps and other Google services into their phone and know full well that if they were to switch to something like Bing or Yahoo (one in the same now) they would loose a lot of their customers come upgrade time. They want to earn some of that back.

I could be wrong about this, but I actually think that Google pays Apple for search on the iPhone, not the other way around. See here. All of these rumors that Apple was replacing Google seem are so far incorrect - the iPad demo showed that Google maps was still there.

They file these patents and make them so vague that they cast a wide net so as to encompass anyone who does something even remotely like them. You can't patent an idea, only the IMPLEMENTATION of that idea, but Apple seems to think you can.

I really don't want to get into an arguments about the validity of software patents, but I will point out that Apple has used these patents in actual products. They are not patenting technology that they have not implemented in products as a patent trap.

To follow their logic, Motorola should sue them for infringing on their "mobile phone" patent and Palm should sue them over their infringing on their touch screen patent, but Apple would be the first ones to cry foul if they did so.

I think that it's rather universal for any company to cry foul over being sued over patent infringement. Show me a story where a company came out and immediately acknowledged patent infringement. Nokia sued Apple a couple of months ago over GSM patents. Are you outraged over that one? If not, why not?

 

[Future1investor]

Google For the People

I was originally going to get an Apple iPhone till I heard the rumor that Google was going to spec out a phone. The first rumor's of the phone spec weren't impressive so I still was leaning to iPhone. Then as things started to shape up, I was determined it would be from Google.

A lawsuit from Apple was certain despite all the fun that Apple poked at the phone. In reality, Apple must be really threatened now that their once great phone is getting competition. Not only that but going out over more than one carrier (iPhone = AT&T only). Then there are the other Android phones. This is a huge threat to Apple.

That along with the power of the Google development staff who work incredibly hard to please people and provide useful and upgradeable apps.

Google truly is for the people!