Quite surprised to see the total Apple love-in going on at the moment, driving its shares to new high sand getting it good coverage on all the business pages. Apple is an odd company, which is the secret of its success and its own challenge too.
I like my ipad for example, its a neat bit of kit that is perfect for casual web surfing and games for the kids. it is useless for much else, but so what? As a brilliantly simple machine to work, it is genius. the iphone is the same, revolutionary when it came out, moving phones to a new level and rightly taking huge market share. But today the competition is closing, just as it always does. Apple's insistence on its own software universe, high prices and aggressive approach to content pricing create room for other vendors. Apple's mac's were always better than PC's but that did not mean Apple won that war in the 1980's and 1990's.
Now today Samsumg, Google and others with developing technology and more open access to software and programming are taking serious market share. Apple's response is to try and sue them for patent abuse. in the UK and Korea this did not work, in hometown California this has worked so far.
The response of sentiment and share prices shows what a great job Apple has done in managing its media profile. Perhaps its new products will take on new areas of the media like TV and make yet another huge step forward for the business. Certainly it has billions of profits to spend on whatever the company needs.
But suing the competition for being there, especially on old patents, is an aggressive strategy and a very defensive one. Perhaps in a few days the media and markets will see what taking a defensive approach like this is signalling.
Anything that makes lawyers happy generally has a bad ending for everyone else...
