I’ve got a couple of things I would like to share with you. First of all: happy New Year! Since it is the 6th, this is still allowed in our culture and as our website enjoys an increasing number of viewers, I consider this my last best whishes for 2011 to all.

Secondly I would like to thank everybody who has given me strength over the last five and a half months. I am recovering rapidly and look forward to pick up the pieces again fully by the 1st of February.

Number three. I found a little something regarding who was suing whom for patent infringement in the mobile landscape by the end of last year
As the writer of that article points out, the chart was based on bad data but still gives a good depiction of how companies can lame others (and themselves) in terms of innovation. Read the whole story at Cult of Mac. Isn’t it strange to see that Nokia is sort of leading the pack?

Number four. w3schools.com has published some OS statistics. Most popular OS platform in 2010 is Windows XP. For those who say huh? These OS’s are for desk tops, laptops, notebooks but not smart phones.

And according to an article in Wikipedia , the most used mobile OS is Symbian with a dazzling 36.6% global market share in Q3 2010.

Number five. Geek.com http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/the-symbian-foundation-is-going-on-life-support-and-symbian-os-will-be-the-next-to-die-2010119/ announced back in November 2010: The Symbian Foundation is going on life-support and Symbian OS will be the next to die. For those who are not really into mobile, Symbian was at one time the most prestigious operating system in the world. Hence, nowadays Android is the apparent new runner up in OS’s.

Conclusion. With Nokia leading the Symbian movement that once started as an (more or less) ideological enterprise an Symbian loosing ground, why should it bother to sue on patents. Suing costs money. A lot of money. Anyway. You may also take a closer look and try to figure out why ‘who is suing who’. It may explain a lot about where we, as simple and ignorant consumers, are heading in the mobile world. I bet 2011 will show us some pretty nice new directions.

tagged with: symbian, os, 2011, mobile

Comments

Rogier Brussee on 17 January 2011 at 16:25

In theory patents are ment to protect the interest of inventors, and there are many examples where the patent system has protected investments in research and development.  However, in practice, sueing over patents is often used to block competitors, in particular smaller from smaller innovative firms which often do not have the resources to fight a claim of patent violation in court. Indeed owning blocks of patents to have a plausible threat to sue back,  has become one of main reason companies pursue patent.  It does not help that patents lose their value if you don’t “defend them” in court either. Many people, especially in the open source community, have come to beleive that patents in the software business are actually stiffling innovation. It is also widely believed that software patents in particular are given to easily and that is has become effectively impossible to write a non trivial application without stepping on some patent.  Europe has much stricter rules for awarding software patents than in the US, but software can be patented if software is part of a larger technical solution.

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