1. You go with Android and have both Apple and Microsoft come after you.
2. You go with Windows Phone.
I suspect the Windows Phone team is breaking open some champagne now.
In other words, these lawsuits demonstrate international inconsistencies in patent laws, courts, and markets, and will only serve to fragment the international market and make developing a smartphone riskier and less predictable. Who loses? Consumers and smaller hardware and software companies.
Apple is going to regret this in the long run, I suspect. They should have spent their energy going after the Chinese iPhone cloners that put junk hardware in an actual iPhone case instead.
After this, I think many Android handset manufacturers might feel that the US market is too risky to enter. As it is, their mindset regarding a cellular phone is completely different as compared to others. They treat it as a service (which is why subsidized plans with criminal monthly rates exist) instead of decoupling the device from the subscription plans. Although in their defense it doesn't help that each of the carrier rolls with their own tech making cross-compatibility virtually impossible.
This lawsuit did not find that "Android" helplessly infringes Apple patents in all cases. Just that the combination of Android, Samsung's software modifications to Android, and Samsung hardware, together infringed several very specific Apple patents.
With Windows Phone, you're protected from this through MSFT's cross-licensing deal with Apple - Apple even pointed to the Nokia WP phones as an example of being able to do something different.
(Don't think a disclaimer is necessary in this case, but I used to work at Google. Not on Android.)
As magicalist points out elsewhere in the thread, it is utterly impossible for anyone to build anything resembling a modern smartphone without infringing claim 8 of Apple's '915 patent. You can build a phone or a tablet, but whatever you build will not be capable of competing with an iPhone or an iPad.
Regardless of what you think about Apple, the iPhone, or patents in general, it is not OK for a judge or jury to hand an entire market over to a single player for 20 years. Claim 8, by itself, is enough to do that. By granting it, the USPTO walled off all possible competitive approaches.
I see.
But it was clarified by Samsung attorney in the trial that you do not infringe Apple patents by having one finger scrolling and pinch to zoom. So it is possible to make a modern smartphone.
Those would be the same Samsung attorneys who just lost a $1 billion patent suit?
If the outcome of this is that Apple effectively gets $10/device for Android then Windows Phone at $15/device has something approaching price parity.
However if I was a phone vendor I would still prefer Android for various reasons including the optional nature of the license(s), the flexibility, superior third and first party apps, the fact that Nokia has better access to WP7, etc.
3. License RIM's OS, if it ever comes out
4. Boot to Gecko
5. OpenWebOS?
This kind of stuff is incredibly easy to look up.