This week Qualcomm won their critical appeal on the FTC litigation that Apple instigated. And it was a decisive win given the Appellate Court didn’t send any part of the case back to the judge that tried the case – they vacated her biased judgment. I believe that judgment was predicated on a false (think fake news) claim that Apple manufactured to change the world from the one we are in now to one where Apple was far more dominant. That world, similar to the one IBM mistakenly tried to create before its collapse in the early 1990s was, I believe, not only problematic for users, but problematic for the U.S. Technical dominance, and would have resulted in the same dire outcome for Apple as it almost did for IBM.
I think it is interesting because I’ve lived through both worlds and the pain that resulted in IBM when it had to shift from a lifetime employment company to an employment-at-will company while I was working there. The trauma for IBM’s customers, employees, and investors was pronounced, and it not only led IBM to disavow the model Apple is using but made me want to work to avoid that model every time it shows up.
Let’s contrast Qualcomm’s model, which has to do with technology sharing and standards, with the older model that IBM used to have and companies like Apple and Oracle champion today.