Germany Company IPCom sued Apple infrining on patented technology that gave emergency calls

Apple Incorporation is one of the largest organizations dealing into Information Technology. Apple has a host of products ranging from Laptops, Desktops, Mobile Phones and Multimedia Devices. The company has been extremely innovative in the field of multimedia and it owes it success to one of the greatest innovators, Steve Jobs. The company has always believed in innovation and that is the major reason why it has been so successful in the mobile phone segment. In recent years Apple is second only to Samsung in the Global Mobile Phone industry. However the operations have been largely based in the United States and in times of recession any organization needs to focus on economies of scale and thus focus on growth

- The smartphone industry is very capital intensive due to high research and development (R&D) costs and expensive manufacturing facilities. This raises the barrier of entry and makes it difficult for small companies to enter. Many of the firms that compete in this industry have existing long-term contractual relationships with mobile carriers and benefit from their significant brand equity. These companies also have a great deal of knowledge and experience through economies of learning, which gives them a major cost advantage over smaller entrants. New entrants will have difficulty getting carriers to adopt their phones because many carriers are already in profitable deals with the large mobile phone manufacturers.

In business, market structure plays an important role, which helps to shape the competitive landscape for businesses at all levels. Each business industry will naturally form a market structure that comes in numerous forms: Perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, or monopoly. Verizon Wireless is a well-known communications company and large enough to affect the market. Oligopoly is defined as a market in which only a few firms dominate, and judging from Verizon competition there are only a few firms involve: T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint. With only few competitors involve the barrier to entry is high, but there still lies a large pool of customers. The barriers are high because of the amount of money that has to into the infrastructure

There are many competing brands of smart phones and Samsung has reported a decline of profits in 2014. Information from GSM arena shows than Samsung released 54 new phone models in 2014 , compared with 24 by HTC , 11 Motorola and 2 by Apple, leading to increased production costs and lack focus on a specific customer segments thereby losing some of its competitive advantage (GSM Arena , 2015).The lack of popularity of its own OS (Tizen ) and dependence on Google’s Android platform makes it vulnerable on google to develop an “ecosystem”. There are component integration issues as well as loss revenue from potential App sales (Strategic Mangement insight , 2015). Negative publicity from litigation due to patents are likely to continue as technology patents are vague and Samsung with is large portfolio is likely to infringe on some of the patents (Tibken, 2014).

In spite of being a branded and reputed company, there is other several companies which are producing Smartphone like Samsung, L.G., and Sony so on. So there is a tough competition among these company to increase their consumer and sales. One of major threat is that other Smartphone have same operating system ( android) but iPhone has its own operating system(IOS) and cost of the android phone are cheap compare to iPhone. Furthermore, Apple biggest competitor Samsung has large number of phone in competitive prices so most of the customer are interested on other phone, as well as there

Innovation and R&D spending are signals of rivals’ competitive position. The key competitors in the Smartphone industry as of 2007 were RIM, Palm, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Apple. Each company holds a patent on its own operating system (OS) or a system based on Microsoft’s Window Mobile OS. Safe and secure voice and data transmission is critical to building a good reputation among consumers. The appearance, design and

In the opinion of Baumol and Blinder (2011, p. 235), "monopolistic competition is a market structure characterized by many small firms selling somewhat different products." The authors in this case further note that the output of each entity is small in comparison to the market's aggregate output of competing but closely related products. With that in mind, the mobile phone market exhibits some key characteristics of monopolistic competition. In this market, customers in need of mobile phones are presented with a wide range of options to choose from. For instance, a customer who enters a mobile phone handset shop has the option of purchasing a Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry or even an LG handset. All these products despite being closely related are also largely differentiated. As Tucker (2010, p. 268) notes, "the key feature of

There are three underlying issues with this case. The first is with the possible long-term consequences if Apple were forced to comply with the court order. Cook’s argument is that Apple can 't just bypass the protections for one phone and expect other phones to remain secure. In an open letter to customers he wrote, "Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices,” going on to say, "In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks." The FBI continues to say that after this one use Apple can destroy this software, which would eliminate the risk they are worried about. But this disregards they fact that in a digital world nothing can be so easily destroyed. Once created the possibilities of the technology getting into the wrong hands are huge. Apple is not alone in this opinion; many of the large technology firms are in agreement including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter. These companies are aware that if the FBI is successful in their suit against Apple, that they will be next in line for similar suits against them.

Firstly, we should divide Apple Inc. into the Mac line and the iPhone/ iPad line. In the Mac line, the barrier to entry is very high, causing very few new firms to be able to enter. Developing a computer OS is a very difficult business, because software also need to be compatible with your system, which is very difficult because software companies may have to completely rewrite a program to suit your system. So the entry barrier is extremely high. On the other hand, the mobile device market may have lower entry barrier, as we can see firms like Samsung and Nokia also has their relevant share of the market, but exit

1- Why are trademarks and Patents so important to a company like Apple? What benefits do they provide? What kind of role did Apple patents play in its case against Samsung?

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.

When two or more businesses are presenting the same products and services, that creates the direct competition. Food industry for burgers is a great example for direct competition since all of the businesses have the same product but with different shapes and tastes. As for this product the costumers are going to be looking for the best phone case that would be helpful for their daily life. There are some big companies in this field and those companies are:

Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. was the first of a series of ongoing lawsuits between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics regarding the design of smartphones and tablet computers; between them, the companies made more than half of smartphones sold worldwide as of July 2012.[1] In the spring of 2011, Apple began litigating against Samsung in patent infringement suits, while Apple and Motorola Mobility were already engaged in a patent war on several fronts.[2] Apple's multinational litigation over technology patents became known as part of the mobile device patent wars: extensive litigation in fierce competition in the global market for consumer

Apple operates with fierce competition in the consumer electronics segment which comes in many different forms. There are a large number of competitors in the different market niches who offer many similar products. Furthermore, many of these competitors' products are priced much less than an Apple branded products. Just as soon as Apple releases a new product, major companies begin imitating it immediately. In the personal computer industry, market pressure is continuously being exerted from such companies such as IBM, Dell, HP, and Toshiba (Wildstrom, 2009). Furthermore, with its flagship product the IPhone, Apple competes with companies like HTC, Palm, Blackberry, and Motorola (Wortham, 2011). Apple has had significant success despite the competitive environment because Apple commands a brand loyalty and dedication to innovation that few companies have ever achieved.

1. The Smartphone industry is a well established market and the threats of a new entrant is low, as technology needed to rival the devices already available is quite advance if they want to differentiate from them