Apple Has Spent More Than 100 Million Dollars on Android War

By now, most of you have heard Steve Jobs’ infamous “war on Android” quote from his recently-released biography. It goes something like, “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”



He wasn’t kidding. The latest estimates suggest that Apple’s litigation fees its incurred in its ongoing legal battles with Android manufacturers add up to more than $100 million dollars. And the war is far from over…

Newsweek contributor Dan Lyons reported the staggering number this morning on his personal blog, citing a person familiar with the situation:

“But a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million just on its first set of claims against HTC. Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.”

For the most part, Lyons is correct. Although Apple has won a number of court victories over the past two years, including multiple injunctions against Samsung in Europe and Australia, they’ve yielded little results in the grand scheme of things.

As expensive as lawyers are individually, it’s not hard to imagine that Apple’s crack team of litigators cost a fortune. And if its efforts against HTC are running in the neighborhood of $100 million dollars, you have to wonder what Apple has spent on its entire endeavor.

Has it been worth it?