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HTC Patent Lawsuit Spurs Late iPhone 5 Delay Rumor

The long, meandering line of smartphone legal battles winds on: Could the later-than-usual release of the iPhone 5 be a result of an aggressive patent lawsuit levied by HTC against Apple? 
There is probably nothing more boring to read about in the iPhone 5 rumor mill minutia than about lawsuits over technology patents. And yet, the issue over lawsuits and patent infringement continues to enter into the conversation — especially as it pertains to the iPhone 5 and its delayed release.
News today indicates that the late iPhone 5 release could have something to do with a weighty patent lawsuit filed by competitor HTC. As ITProPortal reports, “the autumn months could come and go without seeing an iPhone launch. The reason? HTC has filed a patent-related complaint with the International Trade Commission against the Cupertino-based company, which could see the iPhone release being delayed.”
This new perspective on the iPhone 5 delay comes after some analysts have surmised that Apple is also looking to position the release of the iPhone 5 after preemptive strikes by Samsung’s GS2 and the rumored Nexus Prime in a bid to wield the precedent set by a powerful patent victory of their own for touch screen and gesture control technology.
But as you can now imagine, all of these smartphone makers could be in for a series of compounded patent litigation battles in the last quarter of 2011.
2011: The Year of the Patent Lawsuit
2011 has been marked by a series of lawsuits that involve all of the major players in the smartphone market: Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and HTC to name a few. Back in mid June, when Nokia won a decisive victory in the courts that forced Apple to make royalty payments to them on all iPhone sales, Nokia went so far to say that patent litigation was fast becoming a primary focus for them for competing in the smartphone sector, boasting that ““This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.”
Now,With Google’s recent move to acquire of Motorola, they now hope to jump into the legal fray by wielding all of the patents that Motorola holds in mobile technology.
The problem with all of these patent battles is that it ultimately comes to hurt the consumer, as the both the wins and losses are costly — and those costs invariably get tricked down to the consumer. PopHerald is reporting today that the iPhone 5 may hold the same price as the iPhone 4, employing a similar approach to Apple’s same price strategy with the iPad 2. But given the royalty that Apple will have to pay Nokia on its iPhone sales, it would stand to reason that the loss in net revenues from that royalty will be made up out of the pockets of consumers.

This post was written by: Irfan Jam

Irfan Jam is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Facebook