Ben 's Techdirt Comments
Latest Comments (47)
-
On the post: Less Than Expected Sales Of Beatles Rockband Shows It's Not Just About The Music
-
On the post: Less Than Expected Sales Of Beatles Rockband Shows It's Not Just About The Music
Ben ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 10:55amIt is sad that this point has to repeatedly be made, if you overvalue and overprice your product than what the customer wants to pay, then you won't sell. Not to mention that the Beatles music is not hugely popular with the age group that consists of the majority playing these games.
-
On the post: Disney's Keychest: Is Giving Back Your Fair Use Rights With More DRM Really A Step Forward?
Ben ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 10:42amThis seems like another "Play-for-sure" with a slightly more permissive DRM. Otherwise, a failure before it gets started.
-
On the post: Nokia Getting Killed In The Smartphone Market… So Of Course It Sues For Patent Infringement
Ben ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 10:30amBTW I found the numbers, 50% of all iPhones were sold in the US. http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/23/where-in-the-world-are-those-18-6-million-ipod-touches/
-
On the post: Nokia Getting Killed In The Smartphone Market… So Of Course It Sues For Patent Infringement
Ben ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 10:23am"Most the innovatative products do not come from Nokia, sorry they make great phones, but they usually make them after others prove out a niche or a feature... other than the N-Gage and well i think it made a stink for true innovation"
Nokia is pretty much responsible for the smart phone market creation (see Symbian history). Not only the phones, but the technology underneath which this is about. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_full_rate
"And the iphones been out for 2 years and Apples already grabbed how much of the market share (even give its draconian software limits and single carriers)... i am willing to be Nokia said when it came out, its novel but not a threat, now it and other like it (palm pre if Palm ever decides to not screw up... but thats another story) are now a pretty good threat..."
13% approx. If you can show one piece of evidence Nokia said anything like that I would like to hear it. Although some PR maybe said that (like Ballmer did) I bet everyone in the phone market was watching Apple. And again, Apple sells the majority of it's phones in the US. You take that out of the equation, and Apple falls by a lot.
"I know my company just did a switch over on phones, we didnt even consider a Nokia for a smart phone, it was Crackberries and Iphones (basically the tech ppl vs. the upper management ill let you decide who wanted what)."
1. I bet your in North America, the only place on this planet Nokia is not at the top 2. iPhones have little presence outside the States, the states being where the majority of iPhones are sold. 3. The plural of anecdote is not data.
"So yes ill give you Nokia has a ton to offer, but i dont think in the oncoming smartphone war (basic handsets will go away at that time and it will be the market) Nokia has fallen behind what you see from Crackberry, Apple, Palm, and some of the others (watch phone LG) its a war they can win but i don't think this is really the way to go about it, or is even feasible... what could they make if they took the money from the lawyers and grabbed like 3 geeks out of college... I BET A FREAKING CRAZY phone..."
Fallen behind? The last two quarters, Nokia has sold more smart phones than Apple ever has. The N900 is the phone to be looking at if you want to see where Nokia is going. Educate yourself and check it out. It is an amazing piece of technology: Excellent Interface build on a well matured OS system (Maemo) with quality hardware and developer support. And I am sure that the amount spent on lawyers is not anywhere near the 40 billion euros they have spent on R&D. You really should educate yourself on what Nokia has been doing. People in NA, the one place where Nokia doesn't have a massive presence, are really in the dark on the stuff Nokia has been doing. Apple seems where it is at, and they have done well and kicked many producers in the butt, but Nokia has not been idle. -
On the post: Nokia Getting Killed In The Smartphone Market… So Of Course It Sues For Patent Infringement
Ben ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 05:34amRe: Some Issues With This
"Funny how this works, right? Just a week or so after it's first ever quarterly loss and an admission that it totally screwed up in the smartphone market, Nokia suddenly sues Apple for patent infringement over the iPhone."
Quick things to note here. The loss was not due to their smart phone division (which on it's own made a good profit) but their network division which had a big write off. Nokia still holds worldwide 50% of the market and only went down 2% YOY for the quarter. Not great, but not totally bad as you state.
"It looks like the old adage is true again: if you can't innovate, litigate! It's the same story all over again. A company that was a leader in the market but got complacent and lazy, suddenly finds that it lost its lead to a more innovative upstart. Since it's so far behind, even scrambling around doesn't help it to catch up, so it just starts suing over patents."
Although I do believe this in general, I don't know that in this case this is entirely true. Nokia has been the one to innovate and continues to do so. It is ignorant to suggest otherwise. Their R&D in the cellphone market has exceeded 40 Billion euros, and many of their innovations show up in other phones. Nearly every other manufacturer uses these innovations and licenses them. Nokia has not lost their lead at all, though they have decreased in market share. They are still 3-4 times the size of apple in the smart phone market. And vast majority in the dumb phone market.
"This story nicely highlights a few other points as well. We keep hearing from patent system supporters how the patent system is necessary because, without it, the market leader would always just immediately copy the upstart and "steal" their idea."
This seems like a weird tangent, but if that is the way they present it... (I mostly agree that the patent system is broken). I just don't see this case being a great example of it.
"Of course, Nokia has had two plus years to "steal" Apple's idea, and where is it in the smartphone market?"
50% majority, with the groundbreaking N900 (based off an OS they have been developing since 2005) to be released in November, and Nokia is still selling 17 million smart phones a quarter. They have the 5800, N97, N900, X3, X6, and they have sold a ton of others (N95, E71 etc.) If you take the numbers, YOY, RIM gained 2%, Nokia lost 2%, Other manufacturers lost 11%, Apple gained 11%. I would say most of Apple gains have come at the expense of the other manufacturers, and not so much Nokia.
"It's not so easy to just copy someone else's idea -- especially if you're a huge player like Nokia, who will often view the disruptive innovator as not being worthy of paying attention to (which basically was Nokia's reaction to the iPhone)."
This seems like a general statement with little bearing in reality of this specific situation. I highly doubt Nokia wasn't paying attention to Apple.
"Separately, remember how confused we were when Steve Jobs proudly hyped up the fact that Apple had over 200 patents on the iPhone concept? We've pointed out that it's hardly done anything to stop lawsuits."
So what? Maybe those patents don't hold up. And it is not like Apple has never been a litigious company.
" Apple has been sued over and over and over and over and over and over again for patent infringement. Welcome to the tragedy of the anti-commons, where it becomes impossible to do pretty much anything innovative without facing massive legal costs. Basically, if you build anything even remotely innovative these days, you're going to get sued for patent infringement, probably multiple times."
A definite problem with the system. But I think an equal problem is that R&D costs on the order of which Nokia has spent, which ARE innovative and are responsible for the phones we have today, should be protected especially for a company releases actual products. Although patents typically are too general or broad, companies that actually innovate and patent in the first place and release a product that uses those innovations should be protected. Why should Apple get a free ride on the innovation Nokia spent billions of dollar on and created. Especially when the rest of the market had no problem licensing these (except Qualcomm as mentioned) This is exactly the situation patents should be used. It is not like they are a patent troll with no actual product or R&D.
"It's become a massive tax on innovation, rather than a lever for innovation."
In terms of patent trolls yes, but I think companies that actual spend the money to research and develop these ideas, release the actual products in the market should be protected. Though pantents do have many problems, I don't see this instance as one of those cases.
(In terms of your "disclosure" fun going on, :) , I use a blackberry bold and love it) -
On the post: Bell Canada Looking To Use Pricing Change To Knock Out Competitors
Ben ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2009 @ 07:27amThe reason I had left Bell and Rogers was because of their traffic shaping and low caps. The reason Bell was given money from our government was so they would build the network with the understanding they will be providing wholesale access to encourage competition. Now they are trying to get out of their obiligations. It is time in Canada to have a municipal level built fiber optic connections owned by the people and leased to other ISPs etc., to provide competition in the market in Canada. The third party ISPs (like Teksavvy They offer reasonable rates and their first cap is 200GB!) are the only reasonable providers of internet access, and Bell is losing customers, so instead of trying to offer something better they pull crap like this, and the aformentioned forced traffic shaping. It is time the Canadian government does something about this.
Wrong http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/739/woodstock-gentler-generation-gap-music-by-age http://pewsocialtrends.org/assets/images/739-20.gif
You may of missed this at the bottom:6. Twenty was the practical limit we could test in a pair of national telephone surveys; this meant that many great performers could not be included in the list.
And:Differences less that 11 percent may not be statistically significant.
I don't think these numbers can be used to determine that the popularity of the Beatles is high for the age group that buys these games.