Quote ="Leeeigh Leeeigh"Fair do's michael. But its all about making money and lots of it. And with that money ensuring at all costs (marketing and hype for product launches) they keep that monopoly, buying up patents so the common small business or individual have a minefield to dodge when trying to create something innovative without being sued.'"
Apple would be out of business now if they hadn't built their patent portfolio. Unfortunately, this is the way business has to be done. The patent system need fixing to avoid this situation.
Quote Apple was running away with the smart phone market - so much so that we was heading towards Apple utopia of which Micro$oft would be proud of. Ie a smart phone would be like buying a tin of soup at a supermarket but without different flavours to choose from.
Luckily Google gave manufacturers a chance to compete with Apple, and give people a choice. Once Android found its feet it outsold Apple in a very short space of time, where only in the high end of the market does Apple still win but they are getting pegged back in that too. Android offers limitless options and price ranges, and differing ideas due to the OS being contributed to by different companies (even tho they compete with each other for sales) working together for the common goal.'"
Competition is a good thing, always has been in free market situations.
But their was no 'luckily' about Google's entry in to the smartphone OS market. They copied the main themes from the iPhone and enabled manufacturers to produce phones similar to the iPhone, and they did it to get ad impressions through their software.
Apple currently make around 75% of the profit in the mobile space, Samsung 25% and HTC are breaking even — everyone else runs at a loss. Apple's clever move was to avoid joining a race to the bottom, and they won't release products that won't generate them a healthy profit. If only every company realised they need to be in profit to continue innovating, we'd see much better products across all markets. Unfortunately, we continue to see cheap crap.
I was just making a point which you obviously have a different viewpoint. 
