Unfortunately, in the race to win the smartphone OS battle, it’s hard to see Windows Phone or
BlackBerry make any inroads into Android and iOS’ market share anytime soon due to this
reason: most smartphone buyers tend to fall into two categories: those who love Android huge
selection of devices and prices or those who prefer a closed system worked on a premium
devices such as IPhone and IPad.
Google first released Android on September 20, 2008 and this operating system quickly gained
immense popularity thanks to its beautiful appearance and a huge amount of applications.
Google Play is an official app market which contains millions of different apps for android
devices. Top manufacturers are using Android in their devices are Samsung, HTC and Sony.
Currently Android is one of the top operating systems and is considered a serious threat for
iPhone. As for it wide range of price, Android market share is strongest in low income countries.
Turing to IOS operating system, it was introduced in 29th June 2007 and through many upgrades
it has reached IOS 8. It is still exclusive used by Apple and unlike Android, the company focus
on the performance rather than appearance. In another word, Apple sell experience,
not
hardware. IOS also has App Store which contains millions of applications. One benefit over
Android is that it is a closed system so its security is much better and at the moment it is still
the best looking phone.
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GRAPH 6. Smartphone popularity graph (Adapted from Shout me Loud 2015)
3.2.4 Patents
Patents are invented to protect intellectual property and encourage innovation, giving innovate
companies advantage over their rivals. However, these patents have been used as threats through
litigation. It all started in 2009 when Nokia kicked off the “smartphone patent wars” by suing
Apple of using some of Nokia’s standard essential patents (SEPs) without paying.
However, in
2011, Apple agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money as a part of settlement to gain approval
to use Nokia’s patents.
Apple started war against Android in 2010 when it sued Taiwan's HTC Corp (2498.TW) over
20 patents dealing with user interface and its operating system. Along with its federal lawsuit,
Apple has applied to the International Trade Commission, the US, again targeting the Android
software behind HTC's smartphones. The International Trade Commission issued a statement
in late 2011 to halt imports of HTC smartphones violate - the One X and EVO 4G LTE - starting
in April. Shipments of the two smartphones to the United States has been delayed. Apple has
filed at least two additional complaints with the International Trade Commission demanding
emergency action against more than 25 HTC devices. In the past 14 months, HTC shares have
fallen 72 percent, while Apple shares have risen 65 percent (Whiteman 2014).
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Motorola Mobility joined the battlefield in October 2010 when it filed a lawsuit against Apple
in what was considered to be a pre-emptive attack. However, Apple counter sued in the very
same month. However, the judge Richard Posner in Chicago canceled the trial was set to happen
in June, and denied the request from those two companies. Just 2 years later, Motorola was
bought by Google.
