Chinese Manufacturers Unite Against Apple
A number of handset manufacturers from China reportedly formed an alliance in preparation to face the possibility of a patent lawsuit by major international manufacturers such as Apple. Those who are joined in an alliance including the China’s Lenovo, ZTE, TCL, Coolpad, and Konka. Several sources in Taiwan said concerning the formation of the Chinese alliance to the site DigiTimes last Friday (December 30, 2011).
The background of China’s alliance formation is the skyrocketing circulation smartphones in China. According to data compiled by Strategy Anaytics, shipments of smartphones in China has reached a total of 24 million units in the third quarter of 2011. It made China for the first time managed to surpass the U.S. in terms of smartphone shipments to the market. The impact of that is making China the world’s largest smartphone market.
Seeing the rapid development of the smartphone market in China, international scale manufacturer such as Apple, Nokia and Microsoft reacted by strengthening their own patents. It has been can be seen from the royalty payments required Microsoft to Huawei and the presence of a similar lawsuit from Nokia for a number of small manufacturers in China.
However, DigiTimes source say that the handset manufacturer based in China mainland can still defend themselves considering Huawei and ZTE already has a number of patents for wireless communication technology. In addition a number of other Chinese producers also can develop local interfaces even operation systems.
In addition, the mobile operators in China also social media site operators have agreed to release smartphone models with their own brand. The handset is targeted to markets outside of the market segment that has dominated by international manufacturers such as Apple.