Apple co-founder Steve Jobs believed Google's Android mobile operating system was a stolen product and said he was ready to fight to destroy it.
"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product," he said, according to biographer Walter Issacson. "I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Apple has not quite gotten to nukes, but it has taken aim at Google and pulled the trigger. It launched patent lawsuits against Google's Android hardware partners, HTC in 2010 and Samsung in 2011. It challenged Google on its home turf, advertising, with the introduction of iAd. It began working with mobile carriers beyond AT&T in the United States to limit Android adoption in markets where it had withheld the iPhone. And it launched iCloud.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, the gloves came off. Apple revealed that Google would no longer provide the backend map technology for the iOS Maps app. The divorce affects all iOS developers who use iOS Map APIs: Apps approved for iOS 6 must use Apple's Map Kit API, which no longer utilizes Google's map services.
[ Take a look at Apple's updates revealed at WWDC. SeeApple WWDC: 17 Cool Innovations. ]
Apple is not without allies in its war on Google. Microsoft has convinced most of the Android handset makers to enter into patent licensing agreements, which make Android more expensive to distribute. And Microsoft's complaints about Google's search business, along with complaints from like-minded Web companies, have regulators poised to punish Google for anti-competitive behavior. Oracle sued Google claiming that Android violated its patents and copyrights, but lost in court.
Nonetheless, Android continues to thrive. Google's head of Android, Andy Rubin, recently said via Twitter than Android activations had reached 900,000 per day, up from 850,000 per day in February.
And Apple's legal campaign against Android has suffered some setbacks. Last week, Judge Richard Posner, overseeing Apple's claim against Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, tentatively decided to dismiss the case because neither party had established a right to relief.
Apple claims Motorola's Xoom tablet and Droid violate its patents, and Google claims Apple infringes a Motorola cellular patent.
Apple caught a break on Thursday when the judge reversed himself and decided to hear Apple's arguments for an injunction. But Judge Posner's initial inclination to dismiss the case suggests Apple faces an uphill fight.
Earlier this week, Judge Lucy Koh, hearing Apple's patent infringement claims against Samsung, issued an order indicating that she would not issue an injunction to block Samsung's Galaxy S III smartphone prior to its June 21 release.
Two weeks from now, Google will get to fire back at its own developer conference. Android 5.0 (Jelly Bean) is expected to be shown, along with an Asus-made Google Nexus tablet.
This isn't a war Apple can win by litigation. It may achieve some success in court, but patent infringement claims won't make Google, Android, or Google's hardware partners disappear. There's almost certainly a way around Apple's patents, as Google's victory over Oracle's claims demonstrated. And even if Apple had been successful in blocking the import of Samsung's Galaxy S III, phone models can be reconfigured so they don't infringe. Plus, there's always another competitor to step in when one is stymied.
Apple CEO Tim Cook appears to recognize that litigation isn't the way. Bequeathed Jobs' war, he has indicated he's less enthusiastic about fighting over Android than his predecessor. During Apple's Q2 2012 financial call, he opened the door to negotiating an end to the conflict.
"I've always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it," Cook said. "We just want people to invent their own stuff. And so if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we could be assured that's the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that's occurred, I would highly prefer to settle versus battle. But it--the key thing is that it's very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff."
The thing is they don't. Technology companies build using other people's stuff. They stand on the shoulders of giants. That's not to say there isn't genuine innovation out there, innovation that deserves the protection of the patent system. There is. But most of what's being patented isn't genuinely innovative.
To fight Google, Apple has to change. Yes, Apple is one of the most successful companies in the world at the moment, but it is only one company. It seeks to control too much, and in so doing, it stands to lose out on the next big opportunity, the Internet of Things.
Apple lost the desktop war to Microsoft, though its armistice treaty with Microsoft--when Microsoft bought $150 million in preferred Apple shares in 1997--helped Apple survive long enough for Steve Jobs to turn things around.
Apple has dominated the mobile era, but Google has been closing the gap. Apple should remain a leader for years, but Google will not be crushed the way Apple was by Microsoft at the height of its power.
The Internet of Things will require partnerships, openness, and connectivity. It will be a continuation of existing computing trends: Computers started as room-sized behemoths, got smaller, and ended up on desktops. Then they became luggable, portable, and finally mobile. Soon mobility won't matter: Computers and networked things will be everywhere. Take a look at what Samsung has done with TecTiles and extrapolate from there.
Phones, tablets, and computers will be obvious interfaces for the networked world. Augmented reality glasses too, and TVs with Kinect-like gesture capture. But the ecosystem won't matter as much; the Web will supplant the operating system and app store. Apps have enjoyed supremacy because Web technologies have been slow to mature, to accommodate touch interaction, and to incorporate offline functionality. That will pass.
While Apple has demonstrated its ability to orchestrate a vital ecosystem through iTunes, iOS, and OS X, its desire to control everything and take a cut will be its downfall. The success of Apple's ecosystem has a lot to do with the quality of Apple's products. But it also has to do with Android's late start, subpar software development kit releases, version fragmentation, and lack of mobile carrier coordination. For everything Apple did right, Google was doing something wrong.
But that's changing. Google is now a hardware company, thanks to its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. It has bought arms for the patent war. It has learned from its mistakes--direct phone sales, Google TV 1.0, and so on. It isn't yet the finely tuned, focused machine that is Apple, but it's becoming a lot more like Apple.
Apple is becoming more like Google, too: It owns an ad company, has invested in maps, voice interaction, and cloud services. But it could do more. Apple needs to do less toll-taking and more enabling, even if there's no immediate revenue benefit to Apple in so doing.
The company's recent rejection of Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil Speakers Touch 3 app offers an example of unnecessary heavy-handedness. Airfoil Speakers Touch 3 had a feature that allowed users to receive AirPlay audio from another iOS device or from iTunes directly. Apple removed the app, citing developer rules violations.
"You may be asking why Apple would want to prevent users from having this functionality," Rogue Amoeba CEO Paul Kafasis said in a blog post. "Only Apple can provide a full answer here. We do know that Airfoil Speakers Touch's ability to receive audio directly from iTunes and iOS enabled some users to forgo purchasing expensive AirPlay hardware, hardware which Apple licenses. It seems Apple has chosen to use their gatekeeper powers to simply prevent competition."
Apple encrypts AirPlay, and Rogue Amoeba's software defeated that encryption, which presumably represents the rules violation Apple cited. Rogue Amoeba defends its actions as allowable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for purposes of interoperability. Apple's rules however render the company's legal argument irrelevant. Apple is within its rights, yet what it is doing is unnecessary. It is limiting competition and it doesn't have to.
Apple should be using licensing programs like AirPlay and MiFi to promote innovation on its platform rather than stifle it. It should relax its content limitations for apps and focus on technical criteria for approval. It should design apps like iAd Creator and iBook Author with an eye toward interoperability instead of hamstringing them with contractual restrictions.
Apple should spend more energy innovating and enabling its developers to innovate and less energy on policing. That's how it will stay ahead of Google. LINK
Posts
