Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Post 5 Blackberry Z10 - Next trigger for a new patent war?

As you may know, two of the most dominating smartphone before the emerge of iPhone and Android-platformed smartphones are produced by Nokia and Blackberry. Now both companies found themselves struggling to gain back the market share of the smartphone industries. Nokia, well, is launching its Lumia series loaded with Microsoft mobile platform, hoping to fight back from at most 5.4% of the market share since Feb 2012 (as shown in the image below).

Nokia and Blackberry are struggling, obviously

Meanwhile, Blackberry loaded with RIM OS is still holding its ground, and is still quite popular among business users. However, it's been a while since its had a growth in the smartphone market. The latest product of Blackberry, Z10, bears the hope to win back its users. Note that this product has already suffers from endless series of delays from an April 2012 release all the way to Jan 2013. So what's the spec of this new phone from Blackberry?

The BlackBerry Z10 is the first BlackBerry smartphone to feature a dual-core processor.  There will be 2 GB of internal RAM. The Z10 also claims to feature a display of higher resolution than Apple’s “Retina” technology while also incorporating an 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with backside illumination (BSI) and a 2-megapixel camera for use in video conferencing. However, many engineers and tech analysts agree that Z10 "seems to incorporate many of the component selections of the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE." In fact, from this detailed breakdown, many of the components used by Z10, is in fact, manufactured by Samsung. I am very curious about the reaction of Samsung about the resemble of Galaxy S3's IC designs and the applications of 4G LTE chips from Qualcomm. Will there be another series of lawsuit coming?

The story does not end here, Z10 has a rectangular shape with rounded corners, a black box, and an icon with a telephone, three of the design patents infringed in the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit. Although undeniably Blackberry finally makes a step to make a more conventional smartphone for general market, I am not certain about how Blackberry will handle waves of potential lawsuits as the product releases. What do you think? Please comment :)



1 comment:

  1. RIM is so dead! Given a rapid deterioration of fundamentals, an acquisition becomes a more realistic possibility. The best case scenario might be finding a buyer for the company’s IP.

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