Tuesday Grok: War and peace, Apple and Samsung

Back to the courts we go

Predictably Samsung’s lawyers went the tonk yesterday in the New South Wales Federal Court, bringing an action against Apple to halt the sale of its iPhone 4S in Australia.

Samsung is using the same argument currently before the courts in Europe, that Apple infringed Samsung’s 3G patents.

Good luck with that one fellas.

The SMH quotes Watermark’s Mark Summerfield, who said Samsung’s decision to delay this action until after the completion of the recent Galaxy case “would make it much harder for Samsung to make a case for pulling the iPhone 4S from shelves.”

On the one hand, it's unfair to criticise Samsung for protecting what it believes are its intellectual property rights. On the other hand, it's hard to see how they can get much mileage by beating up the prettiest kid in the crèche.

Apple sold 4 million iPhone4S units in the first three days on sale, according to the Associated Press. That compares with 1.7 million sold in the first three days of the iPhone 4 last year. But before we all get carried away with the comparisons, this time around there are two extra countries on the launch schedule and a slew of extra Telco sales partners. So we can’t be sure how much of the increase is due to Apple’s essential excellentness, and how much is simply a function of a wider sales pipeline.

We need country by country, telco by telco breakdowns for that, and we are not expecting Apple to be so forthcoming if the result does not conform to the myth.

Meanwhile here’s a hint for Samsung: Threatening to get in between consumers and their shiny new Tickle Me Elmo phone is likely to accelerate Apple’s sales in the short term as no one wants to be left standing at the front of the queue when the bailiffs chain the door.

Backfooted Blackberry

While Apple and Samsung feed the lawyers, spare a thought for Blackberry. The company that once owned the corporate market for mobility can’t seem to take a trick right now. The well publicised problems with its network on the past few weeks have only reinforced the view within its traditional base that it's time to bail.

According to a story in the Fin Review this morning, "The business community is pressing ahead with plans to hang up the BlackBerry as widespread service outages hit users” around the world. (Subscriber only content but the first 50 views on this link are free due to the magic of Grok)

Telstra’s Thodey on the NBN

“The government invested $36 billion in our industry and there was value destroyed for Telstra share holders. I think on the day it happened 70 cents came off our share price.” So begins BRW’s interview with Telstra CEO David Thodey, which for some reason seems to be locked on BRW’s site but completely, stone motherless FREE on the AFR’s TV site. Go figure.

It a good get for BRW (as we say in the trade) and a good primer on Telstra’s evolution. Go and watch it here.

Most interesting of all in the current context; there’s nary a mention from DT about the internecine machinations of handset manufacturers.

Grok is off to recharge his prepaid iPhone 3GS (20 bucks a month and never blown the cap) Follow him on Twitter @ag_birmingham.

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