Apple the winner in HTC suit, or are they?
Yesterday, a decision was reached in the Apple/HTC lawsuit in which Apple claimed infringement on 10 patents. In the sound bite headlines making news yesterday, one could walk away with the impression that Apple emerged victorious and HTC (plus all other android phone manufacturers by proxy) would be severely impacted in their ability to produce smart phones.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. This article shows that out of the 10 patents in question, only 1 patent was upheld. This patent was extrapolated to cover the feature of having a phone number in an email be clickable to auto dial that number. Not a show stopper guys.
Not surprisingly, HTC is already testing new phones to workaround this issue. And, since they can sell existing phone until April, this victory amounts to a huge number of legal hours on both sides with HTC essentially able to continue cranking out great phones.
The gap between open source android capabilities and the proprietary iPhone capabilities has closed. This ruling is good for competition and thus good for innovation. Apple is an amazing and innovative company. So are Google, MotorolaGoogle, HTC, Samsung, et al. This all bodes well for mobile internet innovation for years to come.
Already on a tear by far surpassing Apple in market share for smart phone devices, 
It’s been a busy week as usual this time of year, but right in the middle of the week appeared my very own shiny Droid phone. I’m still just a little in awe that Google has offered a new Android based phone to everyone at the conference. Wow, what an impressive display of financial clout. I feel it is a smart move – to get the people that obviously care most about what Google is doing to get interested in building Android apps.