Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple's legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people's lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators."

That has to be the most polite way to respond to a lawsuit I've ever read - who wrote this, a Canadian? Anyway, the press release outlines some of the interesting firsts that HTC has made in the market. I didn't realize they created the hardware for the first Windows PDA back in 1998. That would have been an HPC if memory serves - Palm-sized PCs weren't out yet, were they? I wonder which HPC HTC was an OEM for? Compaq? Philips? HP? NEC?

"Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC will not cause major problems for the Taiwan technology company in the short term, analysts said Wednesday. But it could strain its relations with partners in the crucial U.S. market and test its leadership, adding to its challenges in the increasingly competitive smartphone field."

The article points out that, short term, there's not likely to be any impact on HTC as these types of lawsuits tend to take three to four years to come to bear. It will, however, be a distraction for HTC and a drain on their resources. Engadget asks if Google will come to the aid of HTC since Andriod is part of what Apple is targeting. I still find the whole thing pretty ridiculous; Apple is doing quite well in the smartphone space and I fail to see why they think this will improve their position there.

"Looks like Apple's going on the warpath, kids. Just a few months after Cupertino got into it with Nokia over phone patents, Apple's filed suit against HTC, alleging that the company is infringing 20 patents "related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware.""

Jobs is ticked off that the world isn't worshiping his iPad and in a fit of childish rage, he commanded his minions to sue HTC so he'd feel better about himself. ;-) Seriously though, "Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor" - it's patentable to reduce voltage to a chip? That's common sense I'd think...that's what bugs me about patents; most are not about inventing anything, they're about a concept, like left-right-left of your feet being walking. I think this is going to blow up in Apple's face; it makes them look weak and foolish, like they can't figure out what to do with the iPhone next, so they'll sue HTC to slow them down and get them off track. Personally, I think Microsoft should partner up with HTC and even Google, all three should dig into their patent chest, and blast back at Apple. Might as well make this a real throw-down. I'm all for companies defending their innovations, but this doesn't seem like that's what Apple is doing.