ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on handheld computing devices that have the ability to make phone calls over cellular networks and can transfer data and run applications over mobile computing networks. The smartphone industry is characterized by a thicket of patents and a business battle by every major smartphone manufacturer in which patents are used as leverage against competitors to secure or increase their respective market shares while slowing competitors' progress. Business is the only discipline that's 50 years behind, in that it looks at imitation as a dumb thing that's done by people who can't innovate. When imitators execute well, they usually succeed better than the first movers, because they study the errors of the innovators and learn from them, as Facebook learned from the mistakes of MySpace. T. Devaney and T. Stein point out that Facebook is a copycat. "The founders of the Berlin-based imitator incubator Rocket Internet, they have cloned dozens of successful Internet companies, from eBay to Facebook."
