Fruity Competition
Recently Apple launched the iBooks 2 application for its iPhones and iTablets, hoping to revolutionize educational publishing. This a cause close to my heart. Consider the possibilities: Digital textbooks with animations, exercises with solutions, background info and of course rounded corners. Exciting stuff, so three hurrays to Apple for pushing the fronteer.
But Apple, why in the name of brushed aluminium would you limit these wonders to those owning Apple devices? And if this is your decision, then why will you undoubtedly sue the pants off any competition that will surface? The answer, quite obviously, is money, and while I don’t begrudge Apple making a lot of money, I am confident they can do it while facing some healthy competition.
It’s a little known fact that apples have been voted ‘most stylish fruit’ on several occasions. Apple obviously made a pass at the market and its iApple’s looked absolutely gorgeous. In this case though, Apple’s trademark brushed aluminium look proved too hard to stomach.
We can debate the amount of innovation Apple can really take credit for, and how big a compensation, in the form of patents, it deserves, but that is not really the core issue here. Most important is that in the world of technology and software, patents no longer seem to serve their purpose. That purpose is to drive individuals and companies to innovate, by rewarding them for having good ideas. Currently, technology patents seem aimed at destroying competition in an effort to make innovation unnecessary and lawyers rich.
Before we get to that, lets first consider how patents are supposed to work. Suppose you are the proud inventor of the motorised pen and decide to patent it. Then you will be granted a temporary monopoly on motorised pens. This will make it easier for you to make some money of your invention, before competition from the likes of Ferrari and BIC will drive prices down. If anyone could just copy and sell your invention from the start, you might not have bothered inventing it in the first place. Then we would live in a sad, sad world without motorised pens.
Inventing medicines for instance takes a lot of work and money. If you spent years finding a chemical to treat colour-blindness, then the pills it ends up in will have to priced quite a bit higher then the cost of manufacturing them, to make up for time spent only on research. Faced with competition, that would be impossible.
Not among these are colour-blindness pills. Those are half-green, half-red.
In the world of technology, things seem to work different. Technology companies don’t produce a single idea on which their livelihood will depend for years. Rather, they crank out good ideas as fast as is possible. Products filled with a lot of these new ideas tend to be successful. It’s the rate at which companies come up with new ideas that matters, as any single idea will be taken for granted within less than a year. Apple has this down. It has managed to release innovative products time after time after time and not without any rewards, because Apple has grown to become the biggest technology company of the world.
Innovation seems to be a successful strategy on its own in the technology world. Each time Apple makes a leap, competitors are behind far enough for Apple to make a lot of well deserved money. But when competitors do catch up, Apple tries to sue them out of business. This practice is not in the interest of the public, because less competition means there is less of an incentive to keep designing still better products and more of an incentive to keep prices high.
I don’t expect Apple to quit what seems to be a successfully business strategy. Instead, lawmakers need to reduce the power of technology patents. That way companies can spend more money on making their own products better, rather then on lawsuits to make others’ products worse. As a plus, more people will enjoy the benefits of writing with motorised pens. I should stop writing now, as mine is almost out of gas.