I don't think Apple will appeal, but Samsung will, which is a good move because if they concede and pay up hoping that this goes away then Apple will use that as a springboard for a thousand more lawsuits.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be an iPhone "lookalike". I don't believe that much about the iPhone look and feel that people usually point to is actually patentable- trademarkable, maybe, but not patentable. The things that Apple is attacking Samsung and Android over are fairly specific functions. For the practical purposes of the mobile market, I truly don't think this outcome is going to effect Samsung (or any other manufacturer) a great deal.
As for MS, yes, they are highly profitable, but my point is that they used to be the feared leader that owned the software market and all distribution to it. Now they have very little respect in the consumer electronics market which is quickly moving up-market and disrupting the enterprise market. I think Microsoft continues to lose market share into the foreseeable future because 1) their leadership is pretty bad in the sense that they are all over the map in terms of product development and lead on very few products and 2) their software is shit and their strategy of getting people into their full stack of web hosting/development/browser framework will never get them any kind of dominance there.
I am a bit biased here because I absolutely hate Microsoft's implementation strategy. For example, at our office we use Microsoft Project Web Access which they only allow you to use in Internet Explorer, offering its users no choice of browser. In the long run that doesn't seem like a wise choice. They're building in an unnecessary limitation that any competitor can exploit. Do they really think I or anybody else won't use Chrome or FF or any other browser just because they make me run their shitty software in IE?
I guess it depends on what you consider to be an iPhone "lookalike". I don't believe that much about the iPhone look and feel that people usually point to is actually patentable- trademarkable, maybe, but not patentable. The things that Apple is attacking Samsung and Android over are fairly specific functions. For the practical purposes of the mobile market, I truly don't think this outcome is going to effect Samsung (or any other manufacturer) a great deal.
As for MS, yes, they are highly profitable, but my point is that they used to be the feared leader that owned the software market and all distribution to it. Now they have very little respect in the consumer electronics market which is quickly moving up-market and disrupting the enterprise market. I think Microsoft continues to lose market share into the foreseeable future because 1) their leadership is pretty bad in the sense that they are all over the map in terms of product development and lead on very few products and 2) their software is shit and their strategy of getting people into their full stack of web hosting/development/browser framework will never get them any kind of dominance there.
I am a bit biased here because I absolutely hate Microsoft's implementation strategy. For example, at our office we use Microsoft Project Web Access which they only allow you to use in Internet Explorer, offering its users no choice of browser. In the long run that doesn't seem like a wise choice. They're building in an unnecessary limitation that any competitor can exploit. Do they really think I or anybody else won't use Chrome or FF or any other browser just because they make me run their shitty software in IE?