The iPhone has enjoyed a strong run, leapfrogging RIM to claim second place in the smartphone market with 17.3 market share, as reported in Ars Technica. But will Apple be able to hold or grow its iPhone market position in 2009?
I polled a group of 17-year old neighbors yesterday, asking them what gadgets they crave. Most would love an iPhone but, barring that (due to cost or carrier reasons), one phone that got a lot of praise is the Samsung Glyde. While CNET didn't give it much love, these teens loved the slide-out keyboard. (Giving how often some of them bathe, it's probably ideal to keep touchscreens away from them.)
Samsung and others will likely give the iPhone a run for its money, but I would guess that the primary competition to Apple in 2009 will actually be spending inertia. I've wanted the 3G iPhone for months, but I simply can't justify the purchase: my old iPhone works just fine, and this economy isn't the time to be spending on nice-to-haves.
While the iPhone is better positioned than RIM to win over both businesses and consumers, in a recession the best option may be to buy nothing at all. Even Apple can't compete with that.
I'm sick of patent lawsuits.
Earlier this week Spansion filed suit against Samsung for alleged patent violations in the latter's flash chips. On Thursday, Leader Technologies actually issued a press release announcing a lawsuit before it had even bothered to serve notice on Facebook, as Techdirt points out.
Is Leader playing to the judge or to the media?
From the press release:
Leader was founded by Michael McKibben in 1997 and is a pioneer in Web-based collaboration platforms. Leader has filed several patent applications, dating back to 2002, that cover its technology. "We have spent a great amount of time and effort in procuring our intellectual property," says Michael McKibben, founder of Leader and named inventor of Patent No. 7,139,761, "and have taken the steps necessary to protect our proprietary and inventive ideas."
Indeed. You may remember Leader from...well, no, you've never heard of them. At least, I haven't. Leader bills itself as "The Intellectual Capital Company," and lists its products as "Web-based collaboration platforms that merge voice and data." Yet Techdirt parses the patent and describes it as dealing with a "rather obvious process of associating a piece of data with multiple categories." Techdirt suggests that Google would have been a more obvious target.
Regardless, patents have become the province of also-ran companies seeking to milk their "intellectual property," which often is light on both intellect and property.
If you spend more than a millisecond on Leader's Web site, it becomes plausible that Leader is suing Facebook simply to raise money to improve its Soviet-era site. Leader should go away.
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