There’s no end in sight for the smartphone patent wars. Apple was awarded a notable patent in the burgeoning field of NFC, but if wielded against competitors, consumers are the ones who lose out. Today, Apple was granted a patent for travel-related check-ins using near-field communications technology.
Google’s search engine was created when most of the web’s information was open and available to anyone willing to capture it. In today’s more restrictive environment, Sergey Brin and Google CEO Larry Page may not have even tried.
When it launched last November, Amazon’s Kindle Fire was touted as the first tablet to seriously challenge Apple’s iPad. Since then, the iPad and Kindle Fire have seemingly been embroiled in a zero-sum war of tablet market dominance. But perhaps that’s not exactly what’s going on.