Apple goes after HTC

The internet is abuzz with Apple’s lawsuit today in the US, claiming that HTC has infringed about 20 of their patents. Gizmodo has an excellent breaking story of this, and they quote responses from both the Apple and HTC camps.

If successful, Apple’s action will get HTC’s phones banned — both Androids and Windows Mobiles — from being sold in the US, and be awarded “treble damages” and “interest at the maximum rate allowable by law”. Going by the list of patents Apple is whacking HTC for, it sure sounds like a hit job. It’s a big middle finger to the mobile phone industry not to mess with Apple, which had already tussled with Nokia in lawsuits late last year.

Not going to rehash the newspoints that you can find covered better elsewhere, but just some quick comments of my own.

Apple did shake up the mobile phone industry when it debuted with the iPhone in 2007, which birthed the touch phone genre. I can’t even remember when was the last recent phone I reviewed that was not a touch phone, so for this we have Apple to thank.

But of course the rest of the mobile manufacturers fought back, and this led to a flourishing touch phone market. End result: More choice for consumers, and Asian brands like HTC and Samsung are doing well in the touch phone space.

So of course Apple nips it in the bud by throwing roadblocks at the competition, namely number two (Nokia) and three (HTC). And with Android gaining fast ascendance, whack the phone manufacturer, i.e. HTC, which has rolled out the most Android phones thus far. Doh!

What these lawsuits will do: Not very much, I predict. Even if Apple gets its way, the US is not the only phone market in the world. In Asia alone, mobiles are huge, and we have two of the world’s most populous nations — India and China — in our patch.