As a consumer, I love the idea of the iPhone (=interoperability with Macs, iTunes, etc.), but in reality there are a number of features that need considering when looking at dropping several Franklins on a phone (e.g. GPS, WiFi, maintenance). Namely, Nokia announced this week that the N-Series line drove sales and profits.
Despite being a big Apple fan, I’m going to lay out some facts from an IP standpoint why Nokia is the horse to bet on…
Apple is a darling of Wall Street, while Nokia’s fortunes have only recently began to see an uplift. But what of both companies’ innovation machines and their potential for long term, persistent success? While patents don’t directly correlate to a company’s strength, metrics do provide a bit of insight into the future direction of each company.
From an patent perspective, Apple comes to the cell phone maker ‘poker table’ with Nokia essentially having been dealt a quarter of the deck, and is getting about 5 to 10 cards dealt to it for every card Apple gets. Sure, a lot of those patents are not very valuable, but as a couple smart brainstormers say, “Quality through quantity.”
In the end, Nokia’s roughly $2 billion spent annually on R&D, combined with a high cadence output of IP, a strong developing high-end phone line and the potential for Google to make the US cellular market for Nokia more open make a solid case for long term success.
Interesting match up by atmasphere…
http://www.viddler.com/player/41fb027d/
Which horse would you pick?