Tim Cook Prefers Settling To Suing and Has a Huge Quarter 246
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's current legal battles with Samsung encapsulate a large number of patents, innumerable suits and counter-suits, and have resulted in legal motions in 11 jurisdictions across the globe. As you may remember, Steve Jobs in his biography was quite vocal about his intent to go thermonuclear on Android, vowing to spend every last dime in Apple's coffers to destroy Google's mobile OS. But Tim Cook is a bit more level headed about things, expressing during Apple's earnings conference call yesterday that he has has always hated litigation and would much rather settle than to battle in court. The caveat, of course, is that Cook doesn't want Apple to 'become the developer for the world.'" It may not be what Jobs would do, but as zacharye notes, it doesn't seem to be hurting earnings. "Despite early-morning jitters on Wall Street, Apple on Tuesday reported yet another blow-out quarter. The Cupertino, California-based company managed the second most profitable quarter in its history, posting a net profit of $11.6 billion on $39.2 billion in sales. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones into channels last quarter, along with 11.8 million iPads, 7.7 million iPods and 4 million Mac computers. While the firm continues to dominate the technology industry — Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world — several analysts think Apple is just getting started."
Developer for the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Developer for the world sounds like a bit of a tall claim.
Apple really don't invent much new stuff. What they are excellent at is combining existing, often poorly implemented, inventions into very well polished consumer products. That's their business and they're very good at it.
But, it shouldn't be subject to patent protection, and their patents tend to be dubious at best.
The other thing is that patents or not, it's an extremely hard thing to copy.
But he is still arrogant. (Score:3, Insightful)
To bad the summory missed the best quote of the conference call
Finally, one analyst dared ask a question about Apple's litigation battles when it comes to patents. "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it," Cook said, but "we just want people to invent their own stuff."
He is still an arrogant ass (yes I will probably lose some karma for that one)
Re:Hardware vs Data (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, you've been digging up pundit's predictions from 2002, I see.
Re:Hardware vs Data (Score:4, Insightful)
"Settle" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Apple Fever"? TMZ Meets Market Analysis! (Score:4, Insightful)
several analysts think Apple is just getting started
I find this particularly interesting since I would assume that market penetration should be causing their growth to slow -- hell they did worse than they did last quarter which, although still good, is a sign they're slowing somewhat, right? So I looked it up on this BGR blog site and it appears that only one analyst thinks so, Brian White. Can anyone provide several other analysts who thing "Apple is just getting started"?
I also found some of Brian White's quotes to be less than analytical:
“Apple fever rocks on”
and
"Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world and we see no end in sight to this trend"
I hate to engage in character assassination but that really doesn't sound like any of the analyst reports I've ever read. They're usually dry as hell and stick to the numbers. Numbers numbers numbers, usually that's all that matters. Anyone got numbers on market penetration instead of telling me "Apple fever has no end in sight"?
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this is the situation we find ourselves in. Everything is patented, no matter how absurd, and companies are basically performing rent-seeking by suing everyone who makes something resembling one of their "existing, often poorly implemented, inventions" (which as often as not are just copies of other ideas which have been around a while).
The problem is the absurdity of the patent system, much more so than any of the players. They're all playing the same game, and nobody wins in the end except for the big companies.
How much is Microsoft making off every Android phone again?
I don't see how any company could possibly not be getting embroiled in this unless you simply roll over and cough up a percentage of your earnings to any schmuck who comes along and says he's got a patent.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't invent things that deserve a 20 year monopoly and a legal right to run everyone else out of business.
Re:Tiring (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple really. It's the Golden Rule.
He who has the gold, rules.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, whatever you want to call it, Apple does seem to lead the industry (at least recently) and they probably do get a bit tired of seeing everyone make stuff that looks and feels like theirs.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean before and after the LG Prada [wikipedia.org], right? Which came out before the iPhone and was the first phone ever with a capacitive touchscreen.
Re:Hardware vs Data (Score:4, Insightful)
And what makes you think they'll stop inventing new devices?
As someone involved the tech world in exactly this "data is king" business model, I can tell you from direct experience that there's a hard limit on the value of data, and that's the value placed on it by business consumers. To quote the Calgary Flames marketing department, "we don't give a shit about surveying our customers". And they don't. They know who their customers are, what their demographic profile is, etc. They cared about (and used) our product because it offered another avenue of engagement, which is a separate concern.
Everyone involved in the data side always spins great fantasies about precision marketing and deep knowledge of your customers, without acknowledging that in many cases, deep knowledge isn't even useful or worth paying for because it doesn't increase engagement or conversion rates or redemption ratios. Remember Xmarks, the bookmarks plugin people who thought there'd be tremendous value in having an aggregate-able database of everyone's bookmarks? They built that database, and then ran out of money because no one wanted to do anything with it. They were saved only because someone else saw an opportunity to sell a premium version of their plugin.
I'm not saying data's worthless, by any means. But it's not particularly valuable in and of itself.
Re:"Huge Quarter" - is this still SlashDot? (Score:1, Insightful)
Inertia?
What happens when all the people Jobs hired start drifting away?
I see AAPL as too late to buy and too early to short. It looks like a bubble, but it's PE and other metrics aren't too bubbly. At some point, the iDevice market share will saturate. They'll cut prices to fight that, the market will mistakenly regard that as a favorable move rather than a death gasp, and then it will be time to short.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:2, Insightful)
Right, because Apple is the only one allowed to make clean, sleek designs. So anything clean and sleek is a copy of an Apple product. If that's not transparently ridiculous, nothing is.
I see someone else has already pointed out that your claims about phones and tablets are hollow. Current smartphones are very much like a palm from the late '90's on steroids. Exactly what any of us would have come up with given the resources. Basically capacitive touch screens made on-screen keyboards usable and the rest is history. Apple was in the right place at the right time with a good product. They deserve credit for good products and infrastructure, but not monopoly protection -- which is what they are requesting in the courts.
Re:Hardware vs Data (Score:0, Insightful)
But that's just do to slick marketing to brain dead fanbois who'd buy a dead fish and hold it up to their head if it had an apple logo on the side. It's all about the apple logo. There can be no other possible explination for why everyone eles in the world would buy stuff that smart people on slashdot know is crapple.
Re:But he is still arrogant. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no skill in polishing. It's all about holding up a clunky rock and expecting people to beat a path to your door. Making it attractive and comfortable and fun to use is just useless fanboi marketing techniques. No skill involved there. Thats why everyone does that and there's only a couple companies out there that make new stuff.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet the iPhone sold better...hmmm....
Your point?
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite a few things new ways of looking at the world come directly from Apple, or employees they have hired and bought their inventions when no one else was looking at them -- not willing to foster these ideas into something tangible.
Such as?
And most of the stuff Apple has been complaining about have been things that could have been found by others, but weren't.
Again, such as?
And if this is the case, why did every single tablet that came out before look pretty fucking shitty
Simple: they didn't. Many did, but there were a few good looking ones.
Have you ever seen a Palm TX, by the way?
Re:But he is still arrogant. (Score:0, Insightful)
No skill involved there.
So that's why apple is rich, everyone else is utterly retarded!
How the hell did you get modded insightful for that garbage?
Tim Cook's quarter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:4, Insightful)
The iPhone was released in late June '07 but was *announced/demo'ed* January 9. This is a critical point because it widens your hypothetical reaction time between iPhone and N810 from 3 months to 10. Not saying there was any copying, or that the N810 was a reaction to the iPhone, but with almost a full year after the iPhone was demo'ed, it's harder to claim parallel development with near-100% certainty.
The N810 also had a *resistive* touchscreen, and... well, wasn't a phone but an "internet tablet" that relied on wifi or a Bluetooth bridge.
Meanwhile, the LG KE850, aka Prada was not announced Jan 2007, it was announced Dec 12, 2006, less than a month before the iPhone was demo'd. And if your original point with the N810 was that 3 months wasn't enough time for Nokia to copy Apple, Apple definitely didn't copy LG, with less than a month between both announcements (and over Christmas, too).
I watched various video reviews (example [youtube.com]), and LG's own promo video from 2007, and about the only thing similar between the Prada and iPhone is that it has a capacitive touchscreen. The user interface in no way measures up to the original iPhone UI. The Prada at launch didn't have a full keyboard (so T9 only for text entry), and judging from the various apps they basically just transplanted onto a touchscreen the same small-screen, large-text interface seen on phones with a T9 keyboard, with very few UI innovations. Entering contacts was as awkward as I remember when I borrowed a phone in 2005. No multitouch, and what little swiping I saw was for scroll bars, which the reviewer had a very awkward time using, and the responsiveness was jerky (but "good enough", of course).
I tried finding images or video of their internet browser. Instead my top hits included an 8-step guide for setting up its internet connection first. I gave up after reviews said it was hopelessly outdated, and navigation/display options were "very poor" [slashgear.com]. No wonder they never bothered showing it in demos and reviews.
I know this particular thread is about the hardware. I am not the original poster, and I have no problem saying there's parallel development in touchscreen hardware for phones.
But judging by what I see of the first Prada... no way in hell was it Apple's marketing alone that propelled the iPhone to the top, like you're implying.
The Prada got into user's hands before the iPhone by a few months, but its UI carried over far too much baggage and inappropriate interface elements from older phones, so it was completely and rightly eclipsed less than a month after its intro by the iPhone's intro/demo. And unlike Microsoft's infamous vapourware demos, what we saw of the iPhone in Jan 2007, we got that summer.
Re:Developer for the world? (Score:2, Insightful)
Jobs' legal and emotional responses in this area sprung from narcissism and anger management issues that were part of his psyche, not any specific events. Considering Jobs reacted with shrieking anger to any other perceived slight, whether or not Apple had previously dealt with that issue, suggests that this is completely about neuroses and immaturity that Tim Cook lacks.