By 
Apple is trying their hardest to run the competition out of town, but one report claims the company is gaining little from their global lawsuit rampage. In fact, it sounds like Apple hasn’t been shy about dipping heavily into their own bank account, perhaps to fulfill Steve Jobs’ wish of destroying Android. Dan Lyons of Newsweek is reporting that in Apple’s case against HTC alone the company has spent as much as $100 million. Apple won a small victory when the ITC banned the import of certain HTC smartphones on grounds of patent infringement, but the Taiwanese manufacturer was able to get around the legal ramifications by working out a software fix that satisfied the court’s requirements.
Apple has been fighting tooth and nail to strike Android manufacturers down, going for the jugular with attempts to ban devices rather than simply work out licensing agreements that could earn the Cupertino-based tech giant a pretty penny. Though Apple has won a few battles, it seems they might be losing the war. It may be time to re-evaluate the war on Android as a business endeavor, not simply as a personal vendetta.
[via BGR]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *pause for breath* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Go Android screw up apple
With $80 Billion in cash, that is pocket change for Apple. Just saying…
well thats just HTC, lets say $300 mill for the samsung stuff, and another $100 mill for everything else. thats half a billion dollars, and i would almost guarnatee that they are spending more then that.
at the rate they are spending money, its not pocket change. i agree with deh2002, put that money towards design engineers and innovation, with that much money that could be the difference between the iPhone 5 having 4g, slimmer sexier profile, 2x the battery life, quad core CPU, and a better camera and the iPhone 5 being just another iPhone 4.
And besides doesnt 100 million dollars in the hole imply that apple had 0 to begin with before this lawsuit?
Look at it this way. A couple making a combined income of $100k can afford decent things. But if the wife comes home with a $500 pair of prada sunglasses you could probably expect some arguments to brew even though they can afford it but its a luxury item in a not so good economy.
Expect shareholders to frown on any kind of expenditure that may get out of hand and see what a shareholder revolt will do to a business and share price.
Apple’s stock is at an all time high and continuing to go up despite this “news” of them spending 100 millions dollars on lawyers. I put news in quotes because there is no substantial evidence to support this. Even so, I doubt shareholders will mind as long as the value of the company continues to increase, and especially won’t care when/if apple begins paying dividends which Tim Cook has heavily hinted to doing in the near future. All of these comments claiming apple is losing money and on the decline are hilarious. None of you clearly know anything about running your own business.
Exactly. What I really want to know is if they were under or over budget for things like this? If Apple has a budget for lawsuits of 1 billion per year then this isn’t much. Now if they have a 400 million budget then, yeah, this is news.
Steve Jobs has said they will go to “thermonuclear war” to destroy Android even if they had to spend all of their $40 billion in the bank to do it. It is in the SJ biography.
here u go with ur trollin ass. STFU
How can such a successful company be so freaking stupid? It was expected of Jobs, but why now?
Just think of the design engineers they could have hired for that amount of money. And that’s just the money spent on the lawsuits towards HTC, how much more has been spent against the other Android oem’s.
Hopefully either they will sue themselves into bankruptcy our get the message that it’s not gaining them anything. Use that money to innovate, I love Android but also would own an iPhone if it had a bigger screen and a more comfy form factor. It’s just my opinion, but I really done like such squarish edges. I prefer a device that’s more rounded off.
Imagine what $100 million could have done if it was invested in RND!
why research when you can rip others’ ideas off, patent them, then turn around and sue those same people who invented it? makes a lot more sense.
Imagine what 100 million is to the billions upon billions Apple posts EACH QUARTER in profits.
imagine it was spent on charities and the smiles that would make (where the penny really make difference)
Imagine if even a fraction of it were spent on improving the lives of Foxconn slaves.
True. Businesses dont work like that though. They have certain budgets for each sector. If that sector stays under budget they dont funnel those funds to other areas. Its then a profit.
100 Million is still a lot of money. If it has no ROI then shareholders might begin to question whether it is good business.
Yes, but this money I’m sure is budgeted somewhere. I highly doubt they took money from say R&D budget to fight a lawsuit.
Apple’s smugness and unwavering self entitlement may ultimately be their undoing.
Indeed. It’s happened to them before. Steve Jobs ran Apple into the ground with the over-exclusivity and locked-down, well, everything. What really saved Apple’s butt was the iPod, and to a lesser extent, the iMacs. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
100 million dollars is still barely anything for Apple, especially when you consider that at one point last year they had more money than the Federal Reserve.
no. It was more cash than the govt (but so do most large companies since the govt is always in debt) but not the federal reserve. The federal reserve is not part of the government. They are quasi govt like the post office. The only govt involvement is that the president appoints the head of the Fed.
The fed in fact makes billions on sale of securities and all that money gets infused back into the u.s. govt. Last year the fed made over $80 billion. No company comes close to that #.The issue is not really $100 million being a drop in the bucket for apple. But will this be a path they go down and pride prevents them from backing off. Apple is probably losing more on the basis of reputation and giving their lawsuit targets more notoriety than apple would like.
http://thingsappleisworthmorethan.tumblr.com/
Apple has a pretty impressive bank account tho….greedy as they may be, still an impressive amount!
” fulfill Steve Jobs’ wish of destroying Android ”
Hitler vowed to destroy Android too… see my profile it’s vid linked but Steve and Adolf, sorry buds, Android is here to stay with or without your silly little patent lawsuits or threat of thermonuclear war!
I guess this means Apple is
wait for it
DESTROYING STOCKHOLDERS VALUE!
(cue dramatic music) DUN, DUN DUNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!
Things apple is worth more then…..apparently…
http://thingsappleisworthmorethan.tumblr.com/
Without jobs, apple will collapse. though I didn’t like him, a he was a complete ass, he did know what technology to support and he did push this industry forward. Without him and his sought for success, apple will ride the iPhone/iPad train until it runs out of gas. I honestly don’t see the iPhone success laying much longer, maybe its successor will sell, but after that I don’t see much sales. They are spending tons of money on these lawsuits without making any attempt to make any of it back. The investors will eventually notice the amount of money apple is turning down and they will eventually pullout. Apple may be worth a lot of money right now, but with business antics like theirs, they will spend it before the realize their mistake!
Maybe this will end soon and don’t worry they will just increase costs to make up for this.
Die Apple Die ! Id say scavenge the carcass for remains afterwards, but what does Apple actually have that other companies dont ? its certainly not technological superiority. Its all outdated, stolen, crap.
This proves apple is a troll
woohooooo!!! i love apple products but they make some bitch moves
If apple wants to convert people to their products they should of offered a free iPhone to non users. $100 million would have gone a long way.
It wouldnt convince me to switch to apple, but the general public is not very smart and once you get them accustomed to one product they will likely stick with it.
There is still an extremely large number of non smart phone users, which is who apple and android need to target. Apple will never get anywhere going after the manufacturers.
Gee what do you know if you sue for dumb crap, you think it will be free?
i just want 2 or maybe 1 million and i will be happy for life.
Android and IOS are nothing alike apple is just pissed cause its a real threat to there attempt to take over the smartphone market.
So what company have they not sued? Apple is claiming they invented the digital camera and are going after Kodak to prevent them getting financing using digital imaging patents as a sort of collateral. They must have hired half the lawyers in the world trying to stop every company that has any chance of competing with them. They are not in the top 10 of new patents registrations in 2011. IBM is first and Samsung is second. Don’t know how many Apple has. But two of the patents they have are: slide to unlock and large touch pad
on a laptop. Very innovative isn’t it? Judge for yourself. This is the type of ideas they patent and call them innovative.
http://www.esato.com/news/samsung-galaxy-nexus-violates-apples-slide-to-unlock-patent-2210
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-patent-touchpad-trackpad-macbook,14512.html
I wonder how much HTC spent to defend themselves. Even one tenth of what Apple spent is a lot of money for a much smaller company.
And the winner was…The lawyers ! yay !
Glad that law school is going to pay off
I don’t understand why Apple is hampering innovation. I mean previously this was something least expected from the giant. 100 million $ invested in R&D would have yielded something great to help up its sales or some acquisition such as SIRI could really mean to Apple.
I’d rather they continue to fight than to just go for licensing fees. Apple needs to continue to lose money and lose face in the eyes of the public. I don’t want another Microsoft sniffing around Android profits looking for a free handout.
There might be a better long term benefit to Apple trying to leach exorbitant licensing fees like Microsoft is doing. In fact, if more patent trolls try to extract license fees, at some point the burden of it will incite a mass revolt among the OEMs paying this extortion.
Queue the shareholders in 3, 2, 1… Eventually they’ll plateau in profits and people will start to question why. When that happens, the head hunting will follow and the pointless lawsuits will come crashing to an end. They’ll never go away, but taking someone to court over a color or shape definitely won’t happen anymore.