Re:A US judge rules Samsung 'infringed' Apple's auto-complet...
by rayiner on Wednesday January 22, 2014 @12:48PM
(#7104162)
1) People broadly tend to perceive it as "unfair."
2) It tends to hurt American companies, who have a competitive advantage in design, which is easily copied, and help Korean/Taiwanese/Chinese companies, who have a competitive advantage in manufacturing, which is not easily copied. Apple versus Samsung is of course the paradigmatic example of this.
3) It tends to lead to commoditization of markets which I don't think is particularly good for innovation. When you can't compete on design, because someone else can easily copy it, the industry just becomes a race to become the biggest/most outsourced/most vertically integrated. And once that vertically integrated leviathan emerges, it is unassailable. It can destroy everyone on price and also copy any competitive design that gets traction with consumers. Samsung in the Android space is the paradigmatic example of that.
I probably have an atypical, at least among HN-ers, view of the cell phone industry. I view Apple as the underdog, fighting to keep the industry from turning into something like the PC industry, where innovation is more or less dead because everyone is too busy fighting for the thin scraps of profit that are available.
2) It tends to hurt American companies, who have a competitive advantage in design, which is easily copied, and help Korean/Taiwanese/Chinese companies, who have a competitive advantage in manufacturing, which is not easily copied. Apple versus Samsung is of course the paradigmatic example of this.
3) It tends to lead to commoditization of markets which I don't think is particularly good for innovation. When you can't compete on design, because someone else can easily copy it, the industry just becomes a race to become the biggest/most outsourced/most vertically integrated. And once that vertically integrated leviathan emerges, it is unassailable. It can destroy everyone on price and also copy any competitive design that gets traction with consumers. Samsung in the Android space is the paradigmatic example of that.
I probably have an atypical, at least among HN-ers, view of the cell phone industry. I view Apple as the underdog, fighting to keep the industry from turning into something like the PC industry, where innovation is more or less dead because everyone is too busy fighting for the thin scraps of profit that are available.