The Cheap Geek
 
Mar 6 / 12:22pm

Patents Cause Innovation

Nilay Patel writing at The Verge

But it's clear that the current state of Android patent litigation is having a much deeper effect on the products in the market than just Samsung's minor redesign of the Galaxy Tab 10.1N's shell — it's changing how Android actually looks and feels for the end user.

I understand the complaints about software patents and the litigation around them but in this case they are actually causing companies to create new ideas rather than copy existing ones. This also isn't just another pro Apple comment either because it goes both ways. Apple directly copied Androids notification tray with the notification center because it was better. If Google or an Android OEM had patented that implementation Apple would have been forced to come up with a different way to display notification center. Who knows, but maybe if they had been forced they could have designed something even better.

Scarcity breeds innovation and no one is going to blow the lid off of the mobile industry in the future like Apple did in 2007 by copying Apple's ideas.

Filed under  //  Android   Apple   Linked   Mobile   patents  

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Sep 23 / 10:11am

Google testing MVNO waters

Zach Epstein via BGR

Google may be preparing to take its mobile efforts to the next level as it tests a Google-branded MVNO in Spain. Unconfirmed reports accompanied by photos of a Google SIM card and a Nexus S running on a “Google_Es” network suggest that Google is toying with the idea of becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or a company that provides cellular service by leasing capacity from existing wireless carriers and piggybacking on their networks.

As an iPhone owner I probably will never use Google as a carrier, but I like the prospect of Google disrupting the wireless telecom industry. Google would surely attempt to act as a dumb pipe providing only data to the devices it services by routing voice and sms over IP using Google voice. I hope that Google could be a large enough presence in the industry that other carriers would have to follow suit.

Filed under  //  Google   Linked   Mobile  

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