[kartu]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but, even metaphorically, they fall far short of war. As the OP article kind of indicates, settlement is a likely outcome.

Apple has spent more than 100 million USD on sueing competitors.
They were silly enough to take on patent monsters like Nokia or Motorola. ("reality distortion field" of hypno-Steve worked I guess)

And when you check WHAT kind of patents they are using to sue anyone, it isn't even funny. What came out from Apple's R&D pretty please? Multitouch? Uhm, they bought it. (but ok) Intertial scrolling and gestures for zoom in/out. Yep. Anything else? Oh, they've "invented" rectangular tablets. Oh, they've re-invented magnetic lock, by taking 20+ year old patent by somebody else and adding "on mobile devices" to it. Nice.

Patent laws around the globe change from non-existent/don't-care in developing countries to poor/pray-to-god-that-judge-is-not-Johanna-Brueckner-Hofmann(DE)/idiotic(I won't name the country) With enough cash you can go frenzy suing for imaginary damages and even succeeding at it.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

MS Office has *nothing* like 100% market share.

Oh yeah. On about 1 billion of Win PCs out there, they "merely" have 750 million active users. But I got your point, both 18% and 75% is "nothing like 100%". `

But the point was, you CAN have dominant position in the market you've pioneered and we have examples of that.

Cisco?
Last I looked (which isn't often--they're not *that* important in the consumer space) their competition was squeezing them just fine.

Last I looked, Cisco still had 75%-ish market share.

Oh, and Intel is cloase to finish AMD.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

High margins means somebody is *willing* to pay a premium price for *some* reason. No more, no less.

That *some* reason is exactly what I'm talking about and it comes down to "oh, there is no real competition", situation where capitalism sucks badly, e.g.:
1) Company is in a monopolistic position
2) There is a cartel agreement between major players (e.g. roaming prices)

No, it's not a valid strategy, it is something that *must* but isn't yet eliminated by the government.

Originally Posted by wizwor

wikipedia is the TRUTH!

Oh, wikipedia is the lies, I'm sorry. No sources, just some silly text made up by anonymous guy passing by.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If Apple was really waging a business war, they would sell their devices cheaper than Android.

This would make sense only if it would lead to more sales, which is arguable.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Instead, they are expending cash, that could have been used to crush competitors, to pay dividends and buy back stock.

Seriously? When was the last time they've payed dividends? This year? How much % does it return per share?

Company owns its customers good and hard with insane margins. With 18% of the market they have bigger income than remaining 82% combined. AND they don't know what to do with that amount of cash so they simply sit on a 100bn $. (spending 10 billion on buyback doesn't really change the picture)