Apple is Suing to Keep their Lead

It seems you can’t pass a business publication today without some talk of tablets. Why the fuss? The tablet market is exploding! Gartner is forecasting about 300 million units in yearly tablet sales by 2015. Everyone on the planet knows that Apple is winning right now. Not only that, they’re suing the major tablet manufacturers for patent infringements; it’s clear the company wants to keep their stronghold.

Gartner is forecasting almost 300,000 yearly shipments by 2015 (compare this to about 240,000 yearly pc shipments). The key to success here will be which manufacturer will add the right business apps to eat into the laptop market. If this happens, it’s anyone’s guess as to how big this market will actually be. It’s interesting the business take-up despite the lack of a killer app.

Apple’s strategy is working – a bit. Last week, European courts stopped Samsung from launching their new Tab tablet in most of Europe. But this week, the courts reversed their stand and allowed them to continue. The Dusseldorf regional court said it was questionable whether its authority extended to international companies operating outside Germany, so it restricted a preliminary ban imposed last week on Samsung Electronics to Germany.

Apple has sued Samsung in an Australian court case to keep their stronghold in that market (Samsung has decided to delay launch there). Apple is suing Samsung in a total of 11 countries and also has claims against HTC and Motorola to protect their intellectual property. They’re suing in the U.S. as well, winning a preliminary ruling last month from a U.S. trade panel that HTC infringed two of Apple’s patents.

But here’s the rub- it could take years to get these cases settled (remember RIM and NTP a few years back?). Theoretically, any injunction won by Apple, if enforced, could mean that these companies may be forced to take out the offending feature from its software design. So the fastest way to resolve all of these claims is money. And for Samsung and others, the market is moving way too fast to sit back and wait… especially when the market life for a specific tablet is under a year before a new one comes out.

There’s a reason Apple is suing. They have literally hundreds of utility patents, design patents and trademarks on several iOS system app icons, and a host of trade dress registrations on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and their packaging in getting to where they are. The iPad uses a lot of this proprietary stuff. The stakes are huge- they’ve sold over 60 million iPod touches (as of March 2011), over 110 million iPhones and 25 million iPads to date and are leading in every market. They’re going to fight hard to keep their turf! For now, suing seems to be working. Michael Gartenberg, technology analyst with Gartner sums it up nicely- “Apple is using everything in its arsenal to defend itself.”