Of apps and scraps

Not being used to such a collectivist set-up, Apple refused to pay up, which triggered the first big legal skirmish over smart-phones. A year ago Nokia lobbed a lawsuit at Apple, alleging that its American rival’s iPhone infringes on a number of its “essential patents”. A couple of months later, Apple returned the favour, alleging that Nokia had copied some iPhone features. Since then both sides have upped the ante by filing additional complaints.

Lending ferocity to this legal firefight is the fact that competition in the smart-phone market is not merely about individual products, but entire platforms and operating systems (see chart). These are the infrastructures that allow other firms to develop applications, or “apps”, for these devices. Should any one firm gain an important lead, it might dominate the industry for decades—just as Microsoft has dominated the market for personal-computer (PC) software.