Ouch! Nokia suing Apple over iPhone tech

Yeah, Apple will settle for close to a billion on this one. If they fight, it will delay things and will LOSE bit time for several billion dollars. The thousands of GSM and UMTS patents that Nokia has is no joke. Next is Ericsson who has even MORE patents on GSM/UMTS/HSPA. So it is in effect a double-wammy for Apple. Such is the price of admission to the Telecoms world,so welcome Apple, pay upon admission or else gets sued and pay later for a much larger amount. Fight and pay huge amount (which you can afford) but the patent holders are not "spring chicken" as you already know.

Signs of a troubled company:

1. deny new products have impact on your market
2. chide the new entrants lack of market share
3. try to slow down new entrant with patent lawyers
4. bury head in sand and hope decline will be slow

@CC
thanx for the observation....
keep posting. Will be visiting back soon.
(http://www.r4-nintendo-ds.co.za)

Q: What is Iphone without Nokia's patents? j
A: Just ipod touch

60 BILLION in R&D? That seems like....a lot.

If I understand correctly, Nokia joined several technology consortia (covering GSM, 3G, and WiFi) under their various financial and IP sharing terms, and now they don't like the deal they struck 15 years ago to share their IP with the rest of the world? And now Nokia expects Apple, who looks like a fat, juicy target with $34 billion in the bank, to pay for their mistakes? That's kind of ridiculous. I could understand if the consortia sued a manufacturer for not paying licensing royalties, but another manufacturer?

I don't know why everyone is bashing on Nokia for this. If you read into it, you'll find out that Nokia was going to charge Apple the same amount as Motorola, Samsung, HTC, and numerous other manufacturers have paid, but Apple didn't want to pay whatever amount it was. I understand this is an Apple site, and hey, I wouldn't be here if I didn't like Apple products, but infringement is bad. It's not like this is totally out of their realm like Monster products. Besides, negotiations have been going on for years before Nokia was forced to take this route. Why shouldn't Nokia be able to recoup some of the $60B it spent in R&D? By saying their hurting for money and this is the only way to come out of it, you should realize they are still by far the number one phone manufacturer in the world. Also, doesn't Apple sue anyone who wants to use a piece of fruit on their logo?!?!

Side note: I don't own any Nokia phones, and I can't stand the S60 OS.

I think many ppl here are looking at this from the wrong point of view. Firstly, Nokia has every right to sue Apple, if their IP is being violated. But, they also have the obligation of suing all other companies violating that same IP...

This means that Nokia knows that Apple is a big menace to their business, so they opt to try to "distract" Apple somehow. Not that this will affect anything Apple has already rolling on the pipeline.

Anyway, Nokia is still a big player in the cellphone market. Profits down, but still... they can easily pick up again. The "payment" they want from Apple won't make them recover what they already lost, not even close. It's up to Nokia to rework their strategies and fight back.

Why Apple? It's a company that went from noob to leet in the smartphone market in less than a year and still growing.

Apple has far too much support from other products. Nokia has to compete with that and Apple's success. Suing is fair, but won't solve the problem Nokia has right now... they have to fight Apple with their own "talent".

(Yes, I know I just left all other key players in the smartphone market out of this.)

Microsoft and Nokia formed a Global Alliance to Design, Develop and Market Mobile Productivity Solutions in August.... and now this.

Think Microsoft is behind this?

Yes,

Patents and IPs are very valuable assets for a company that does R&D.
In compnies like Nokia (or Siemens..) there are (were..) entire departments working on devoloping new patents; ...and there are other companies, mostly in new devolpoing countries, that [ab]use those pantents.... ..so it's very easy to be more competitive, avoiding laws and making unfair competition....
Maybe it's difficult to sue far east companies..... so it's correct and necessary to sue eastern wolrd companies that are making unfair competion too.

This is funny. This is almost like guy who invented telephone (if he was alive) comes back and sues all handset vendors (AT&T, Panasonic, VTech etc.) saying that did not pay their share. If Nokia has to resort to lawsuit to reverse the tide as it is losing marketshare, it is pathetic, as it means company has run out of ideas for innovation.