I can’t really tell when the above film will end. Different seasons and episodes is really making it a whole lot interesting. The smartphone wars began in 2009 but was believed to have been dying down.
The latest one mentions a slew of patent law suits filed against Google and its Android partners by a technology consortium consisting of Microsoft, Blackberry, Apple, Sony and Ericsson.
The group banded together under the name Rockstar to launch what is tagged a ‘nuclear attack’ against the search giant’s smartphone business.
Rockstar purchased a portfolio of more than 6000 patents from a company called Nortel which went bankrupt in 2009 on which this new law suits are based.
Google has initially offered $900 million for the patents before a bidding war between the search giant and Rockstar pushed up the bidding price to $4.5billion.
Following their defeat, Google purchased the hardware division of Motorola for $12.5billion. This deals was motivated by the extensive patent library of Motorola.
The hardware partners of Google that makes Android phones include: Samsung, HTC, Huawei, LG electronics, Asustek , Pantech and ZTE
The patents allegedly being infringed upon cover a wide range of technology, from technical protocols involving 4G communication to a patent for an “associative search engine” that “provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network”.
The global mobile market is expected to be worth $341.4bn in 2015 with smartphones accounting for 75.8 per cent of this revenue, according to a report from Markets and Markets.
Let’s watch and see what unfolds…
