After a raft of injunctions against Samsung, in a dispute over patents and the ‘look and feel’ of the new Galaxy tablet, Apple have now decided to start threatening retailers in Europe.
You have to wonder why Apple appear to be so scared of the new Samsung tablet. According to reviews the Galaxy is good but no class beater. The legal action is even stranger given that Samsung supplies important electronic components for Apple’s iPad. So why all the lawsuits and where is it going to stop? Is Apple’s next move going to be to demand that Samsung hand over details of individual Galaxy Tab customers so they can go after them? That seems to me to be an obvious next step, given Apple’s behaviour so far.
I decided a while ago, as Apple became more and more litigious, that I would never buy another Apple product. However, this does not mean that Apple will never get another penny from me in the future. Apple, like other big players in the IT market, have a huge portfolio of patents. These relate to all aspects of computing and especially to mobile devices.
Chances are that any mobile/internet/wireless device I might want to buy will have an Apple/Microsoft/Google/whoever tax built in. Unlike the taxes that our governments levy, it is well nigh impossible to know who is getting the money and equally importantly, how much each party gets.
Until consumer rights are improved to give us an irrevocable right to such information, (from the purchase price down to how much Mrs Chang gets for assembling each iPad) the only way to be sure you are not contributing to Mr Jobs’ war chest is to just stop buying consumer electronics.