Android’s future looks in danger and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google is showing no signs of being tensed. In Tokyo, at the Google’s Mobile Revolution conference, there was a question and answer round in which Eric stubbed the lawsuits which was filed in regards to patents issue, by rivals who include Oracle, Microsoft and Apple. ZDNet Asia reported that Eric termed this lawsuit as ‘legal fun’ and suggested that the lawsuit might had been filed against HTC and Motorola as they were riding high on success because of Android’s operating system.
He stats that the competitors were not innovative enough to respond via innovations that is the reason because of which they filed such a suit and he wasn’t really worried about the lawsuit. The report from ZDNet even saw Eric voicing confidence that Google can be of great help to HTC on whom Apple’s patent infringement case has been ruled against and even pledged that Google would see to it that HTC doesnt lose in any case. However there was no detailing as to how he plans to safeguard HTC. HTC has appealed against the earlier result ans a final verdict is expected later on during the year.
Uncle Microsoft has been long back approached by HTC as they were earlier in a dispute over the patents related to Android. This was noted as per Walter Pritchard’s report, who is a Citi analyst. It further said that HTC pays $5 to Microsoft every time they get an android powered phone shipped. Horace Dediu who is an asymco analyst, said that Microsoft’s income from shipment of Android phones counts to around 150 million USD which is at least five times of what they earn via Windows Phone licensing.
If we reconsider Florian Mueller’s view, then it would be hard to believe that Google can defend even itself against the patent problems as it was stated that these said patent act as a base for Android on the whole. Taking an example of Patent No. 5,946,647, which relates to the web browser in android-based devices redirects a user automatically to the on screen apps based. This technology additionally redirects a user to the android’s dialer which one clicks on a phone number and even the jump one gets to Google Maps when they go on to any address is via this technology. Its in any case a difficult assumption to make that android-based devices would work good without this technology. So is it that Google is trying to in fact defend itself in the name of HTC?
Android as an operating system in phones was launched a year after iPhone’s launch but looking at the market growth, Android is all over and it looks like the smartphone war is only between Apple and Google. But Google is just leaping milestones with iPhone trying to run faster is not able to catch up with Android.
Mueller had even stated that there is only a rare possibility that Android devices get away without infringing these patents which even means that the roots of Android has been shaken and it is possible that they might be uprooted too. Will it happen? Will this beautiful architecture and technology be gone? There is surely more related news coming up.
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