Probably because they can see what happened with PCs happening again. If they don't fight android with everything they have now then in 5 or 10 years they might not have the chance.

Their market share is already going away progressively. There's way more Android devices being sold than Apple ones nowadays. They still have a clear edge on tablets, but for how long ? I can't see how Apple's growth can be sustainable unless they come on new segments (just like they did with the iPhone and the iPad in the first place). Fighting to the death on existing segments is not going to cut it in the long term.

All of this assumes that Android is Windows and that another open source platform, such as Firefox OS or Ubuntu Touch, wouldn't be available to pose any challenge to Android. The mobile sphere is probably dynamic enough to support such changes.

If the FOSS projects in mobile work hard enough now, they can eat into Android's market share, at least in the developing world. We shouldn't consider Android's position to be unshakeable.

Which is harder to nuke - a behemot of several billions dollars or a small non-profit company making browsers.

"even" beyond the grave?

They're onto the desperate measures now because without Steve they can't hit their revenue targets through actually making better products.

The groundwork for these measures was laid a long, long time ago. Many of the patents Apple has used against Android OEMs have gone back to the mid-90s - when Apple v Microsoft was recent history and their inability to get "patent-like protection" from UI copyrights was fresh in Apple's mind.

Yes, they have been prepared for this a long time. They could have launched this strategy any time they wanted.

And I'm saying that the reason they're doing it now is because they're out of ideas.