The maxTouch sensors from Atmel used by HTC may soon be replaced with similar products by Synaptics or Cypress Semiconductor. HTC may be forced to change its touch-sensor supplier based on a court ruling later this week. The issue is that Atmel’s sensors use “touch ITO pattern” technology which is very similar to some of the touch related patents held by Apple.
Technically, the issue doesn’t have anything to do with HTC since the panels are made by Atmel, but if the touch-sensor is found to infringe on Apple’s patents, the courts could block HTC from selling any of their phones which use the panels. Fortunately for HTC and consumers, it looks like there are quite a few other viable touch-sensor panel options on the market. Switching your supply chain isn’t something an OEM like HTC takes lightly since there are a lot of costs involved and a new component from a different manufacturer could mean a short disruption on production while they figure out the changes in logistics.
Source: Barrons
It seems apple have become the most hostile company on earth trying to “protect” their “patents”. I personally despise their methods as they try to replicate the big dog and bite everyone who approaches them. They are backed by an outdated and uneducated patent office in the USA which itself is supporting this war on small business. I wonder where their limits are or if we will lose the ability to use the colour white, the letter “i” and draw rectangles. You don’t see television manufacturers clawing each others eyes out over design, I would like to see apple go up against someone like Sony and receive a whalloping. Their inability to come up with world leading products has turned their attention to pettiness. I have the feeling they are very close to the boundaries of people’s tolerance and may start losing customers. Which would be a good thing
I really can’t see anything significant apple has invented, the iPod? nope, Touch screen phone? nope, that wasn’t theirs either. Tablet perhaps? nope, I’m seeing a pattern here. I grant you apple products are stylish, but not very innovative. So attacking with patents, just looks ridiculous. Though to be fair, most of their customers believe the hype!
Apple is smart on how they sell, who they sell to, and what they do. they sell to the largest group of people by focusing on the crowd not the nerd. of course their customers believe the hype, they are not tech savy (for the most part). they sold to at&t because they were big, verizon got bigger so they didn’t re-up with at&t. and finally, apple buys other people’s hardware and focuses on their ios or ui. this leaves a solid resulting os made by a huge company where-as samsung (example) has to split their company between hardware and software. why is htc sense so popular? because htc is similar to apple in that they focus on the software. apple sees that and gets sue happy so they don’t get fair competition. and google is screwing up this whole time by just giving a basic skeleton of android to people instead of a solid and complete ui experience (they don’t make hardware, so what’s the problem?). in fairness, i will make note that ios is a bunch of tiles on a wall. of course it’s gonna be smooth, it doesn’t do anything…