In a sense, you're right. Apple offered to license it's tech to Samsung in 2010 for a whopping $40/device - personally, I don't think that a fee that exorbitant counts, but that's personal opinion. I thing Apple knew they were offering an untenable fee and that Samsung would have no choice but to refuse.
Apple doesn't need to support the bottom-feeders. If Samsung can't pay Apple, that means they're not making enough money on their phones.
Samsung and all Android phone makers are fighting a losing battle as long as they keep such low profit margins. It's the failure of the licensing of one common OS for all phones. Nothing distinguishes these phones enough to allow one company to raise above the rest.
Samsung and the other Android phone makers can't count on anyone's loyalty. The Android user is only interested in the freest phone, regardless who makes it. Today Samsung, tomorrow X (fill in the mark).
> Samsung and all Android phone makers are fighting a losing battle as long as they keep such low profit margins. It's the failure of the licensing of one common OS for all phones. Nothing distinguishes these phones enough to allow one company to raise above the rest.
Apple is fighting a losing battle trying to protect their exclusive, high-end slice of the smartphone world. They've already conceded the future (e.g. India, China and the rest of the developing world). Now they're just haggling over how long the present is going to last.
At the same time, patents were created as a mechanism to distort the free market in order to promote progress and innovation, not to be used as a weapon against it.
Apple's profit margins clearly demonstrate that these protections are not necessary for the kind of innovation that drives the mobile market these days.
Society doesn't need to support Apple's destructive war when it is working directly counter to the purpose of the patents used to wage it.
Perhaps it is time to force Apple to actually compete on free market terms.
