Betting on people wanting iPhones (what the OP was referring to) is a no-brainer. It's as sound a bet as one can make. It's only the financial execution that is in question (which is what you are referring to). But the premise that people want iPhones is sound.

On the financial side of things, Sprint doesn't even have to make all that money back in the short term, all they have to do is lose less money having done this than if they didn't do this. If the iPhone can even just slow their decline, it's helping them.

The only gamble here is whether that money could have been better spent elsewhere. Using it to acquire the top selling phone seems quite rational. Do you have any better suggestions?

Yeah, what a craaaaazy bet that would be!

It's not the seller that sets these rules, it's the copyright holders. Anything under copyright can be limited in some ways. That's the way it's *supposed* to work.

Symbian isn't a phone.

"Excuse"? iPhone *is* #1 in pretty much every metric. Market share, revenue, profits, customer satisfaction...

Then you haven't been paying attention to Firefox's politicking during the ongoing HTML5 <video> debate.

PROTIP: He didn't say "open source".

Google yanked H.264 support from Chrome in order to match their "open" ideals for the project.

This is correct.

This is not. Unless you kill people for eating the wrong foods, adultery, children for talking back to parents, being gay, or the wrong religion, etc. And make women subservient to men, and countless other moral absurdities contained in just *one* book of just *one* religion.

Of course, there are *some* morals in the various religions of the world that are worthy of keeping, but a lot of ancient nonsense that needs to be cast off.

Tablets can already easily render web pages today.

You don't get access to all a companies patents. They only get access to the patents that are related to the standard in question. The design patents Apple holds for their phones and tablets are not part of 3G, not related to 3G, and not even critical in the making of phones or tablets.

Defensively? No, of course you have the right to defend your right to royalties.

But that's not what Samsung is doing. They are using their patent offensively. They are using it as a counter-attack, and that is a right they very much gave up in order to have their patents used in a worldwide telecom standard. That's exactly what FRAND is all about.