Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
A worldwide patent was granted to Kramer, but lack of
funding meant he could not raise the UKP £60,000 needed to renew this
in 1988. This was, after all, the era of the Sony Walkman.
With no patent, the concept became open to
anyone to grab. And both Kramer and his IXI disappeared from view,
apart from the odd appearance in interviews about the history of the
iPod or MP3 players in general.
Until Kramer got a call from Apple, and gave that evidence, and was effectively told that he did, indeed, invent the iPod.
Speaking to the Daily Mail newspaper Kramer says "To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had
done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was
being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all."
He will be even more pleased, I suspect, if the negotiations that are
said to be underway between him and Apple regarding some compensation
for the fact come to fruition.
That could be a life-changer indeed when you consider over 160 million
iPods have been sold so far, and 100 are purchased every minute of
every day.
Not everyone is happy for him. One Daily Mail reader commented "Do you
want to be an "inventor" like this guy? Get yourself some graph paper
and some crayons and sketch out a weightless, holographic audio player
that's controlled telepathically. And when such a device is actually
created in the year 2090, feel free to claim credit for it."
Industry commentators seem to agree. Take Ron Miller who notes "That they brought Kramer
to testify in this law suit doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but
neither does it prove this guy invented the iPod. It only offers
further proof of the outlandish machinations that lawyers go through
during lawsuits."
David Bass
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