For the past year, I have been wary of Apple’s (AAPL) aggressive lawsuit campaign. I often have written about the potential dangers and consequences of the lawsuits as Apple was fighting a multi-front war against Samsung, Google/Motorola, HTC, etc. While Apple has had some very big favorable rulings over the years, the company was finally hit with the big one.
The US patent authority has “temporarily invalidated” Apple’s “pinch-to-zoom” patent in a case against Samsung. This is huge because Apple has been using this patent as one of its main sources in the fight against its competitors.
Another headline that broke along with the patent void caught my attention because a Brazilian smartphone company has just started to sell smartphones under the name “iPhone” after the company won the right to use the name in the phones it sells in Brazil. To make matters worse, the phone runs on Android from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).
Needless to say when you consider the sheer drop of Apple stock price that fell from $700 in mid-September to its current $522. We all know that Apple has good fundamentals but the fact of the matter is that since September we have started to see a shift of investor and consumer attitudes towards Apple. For years, Wall Street’s overall favorite has been Apple and consumers obviously are the driving reason.
To be fair, Apple’s bad luck lately could be called a breather. Apple has been a hit for over 10 years now with no real break in the action along the way. Now as other factors like the Fiscal Cliff come into play, investors are forced to make the hard choice between selling the stock or risking a jump over the cliff.
The patent is a pretty big setback, however. The “pinch-to-zoom” patent was used back in August against Samsung, which resulted in the courts ruling that Samsung copied certain features of Apple’s products and was forced to pay $1.05 billion. The problem here is that now that the US has basically said they will not recognize the patent, other countries may follow suit. We do not know the full impact of this ruling and that is going to be a major source of pressure until we know.
On the other hand, there are rumors floating around about an Apple TV coming in 2013. The company has made no official announcement but has hinted that 2013 will bring some highly anticipated new products. Could an Apple TV or a redesigned iPad, etc offset the setbacks the company has faced since September? Obviously time will tell but this is an uncomfortable position that Apple is not used to being in.
The bottom line here is that Apple’s popularity is cooling off right now. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the end as some have depicted, but it certainly is something to watch and be concerned about. Ultimately the 2013 product lineup could be a deciding factor in Apple’s future success.
Disclosure: None
