Lawfer -
Very different, for these reasons. 1) Motorola is the only android phone maker who has not licesned the patents in question from MS. While HTC has already fixed their 'offending' software, but they're still being held up. Samsung is just as guilty, but gets away with it because they can afford lawyers.
2) The MS patents are about 'calendar and appt making' functions, which are very widely used on smartphones. The thing HTC has violated is clicking on a phone number in an email to call the person, which far fewer people even care about.
3) MS is not dominating the smartphone market in the way Apple is dominating HTC. I'd bet Motorola sells more phones than MS. So the impression I get is MS grapsing at straws to save their tiny market, compared to Apple squashing the little bug on the windshield that is HTC.
I don't undertsand your comment. There's nothing there that fundamentally contradicts what I said on both of my paragraphs.
Read your latest comment, and then read my previous comment again:
Truth is, everyone is using patents to screw over competition. And while I might not like it, I can't say they are not in the right to use whatever they have against the competition, they are a business after all. And trust me, Apple is not afraid of HTC taking over or anything; this is just another chess move to keep a tight grip of the market share before the SIII comes out and hurts them even more. Apple is more afraid of Samsung than HTC.
[FONT=Helvetica]In fact, it's even being reported that, not counting devices sold up until the release of the One X, more Lumia 900s were sold than the One X in the period it was available; HTC's fanbase seems to be dwindling at a quick rate, and while I know this temporary ban does not help one bit, not having it wouldn't have done much either. Your own percentage attests to that.[/FONT]
It still holds true.
And as for the difference between the HTC case and Motorola case, the degree of "cruelty" is irrelevant when you factor in this simple fact (which I vaguely implied in my response): they are businesses. An approximate analogy to this would be how a, say, apex predator such as a lion hunts its prey. It doesn't matter to him whether the prey is on the brink of extinction or not, it is what they must do to survive. Essentially, it is in their nature.
You don't seriously expect Apple, Microsoft or any tech company for that matter (including HTC), to give a competing business even the slightest opportunity, do you? Or, even better, you don't expect a sport's team to just slow down or take it easy on the competing team just because the competing team's star player is absent that day, do you?
HTC got the ban because a lot of their handsets infringed the patent. Those that don't, are being progressively let go through customs. In the end, the point being is not that Apple shouldn't have acted because HTC barely holds 2% of the market share, the point is that the competing businesses' very nature is to make sure it doesn't grow <I>any</I> larger.
I'm not asking you to like it, but to understand it.
