The importance of patent protected differentiators to mobile device manufacturers

By Tim Higginson

Mobile device manufacturers need to focus on acquiring or developing: user-facing, patent-protected differentiators in order to compete in the brutal game between non-Apple manufacturers.

This is for two primary reasons 1)  The vast number of consumers do not care about the internal specifications of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc) •  so differentiating by way of internal components – slightly more memory, or slightly more processing power, etc – is not an effective means to drive a buy decision by most consumers, and especially not enough to create brand loyalty 2)  User-facing differentiators drive buy decisions by consumers, but if the differentiator is not patent-protected, every competitor will incorporate any meaningful differentiator in their next product release, ie, within one or two quarters.

See the presentation for a more detailed explanation.

[This presentation is also available at slideshare.]