For those of us watching the trial of Apple vs Samsung this week, the fact that Judge Lucy Koh made the companies reveal confidential sales data is something of a no-brainer. The jury will need to look at the sales of the various devices from the two mobile technology giants to decide at some point what the damages should be, if any.
It seems that making your latest product look exactly like the market leader isn’t always the fastest route to success. As Samsung found when it aired its first commercial for the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the device is so similar to the iPad that half of TV viewers thought it was an Apple product. Only 16% realized it was made by Samsung.
The NPD Group announced a report today that confirms what many other analysts and data firms have been saying for a while now: Apple and Samsung are the top smartphone brands in terms of growth. Samsung and Apple’s combined unit sales rose 43 percent in the last year, from the second quarter of 2011 to the just finished second quarter of 2012. Other smartphone makers’s unit sales fell 16 percent.
Here’s something to read over your morning cup of joe this morning: amassive 132 page report Apple released into evidence this morning in its trial against Samsung, proving without a doubt that this case is about a lot more than — as the Korean handset maker would have you believe — “patenting the shapes of rectangles.”
The evidence contains a lot of snippets from a 2010 report, translated from Korean, in which Samsung’s engineers went through their phones feature-by-feature and stacked it up against the iPhone. In almost every instance, Samsung’s engineers decided their phones would work better if they were more like the iPhone.
Ouch. That’s damning.
It’s looking undeniable at this point that Samsung systematically and shamelessly ripped-off practically every aspect of the iPhone’s design, right down to the UI. Comparing a Samsung smartphone pre-iPhone and post-iPhone is like comparing a Cambrian trilobyte with a 21st century ballerina.
Does anyone else get the impression that Samsung might not win this one… and that they know it?
Source: All Things D
In a funny sneak preview clip, embedded below, Conan O’Brien plays a video from a “Samsung VP,” Nick Wood, who appears in the video to tell us all how innovative and completely different Samsung’s products are from Apple’s.
“And what about our Galaxy Tablet?” says the fake VP, while an image of the iPad next to a very similar Galaxy Tab is shown. “Not even close.”
Keeping up with all the latest Apple vs Samsung happenings can be tough, and confusing. The trials is underway in San Jose California. Some days are filled with interesting witnesses taking the stand, while others are packed with lawyers hammering boring witnesses with silly questions.
To help you keep up on the Apple vs Samsung trial we’re compiling each day’s events into one short news story that consists of the best tweets from the reporters there on the scene. Here’s everything you need to about what happened in the Apple vs Samsung Trial on day five, August 7th.
To defend their allegations that Samsung has been shamelessly copying their products, Apple has had to bring in a few outside experts to testify in the Apple vs Samsung trial. So far the expert witnesses have included people in the fields of product design, graphic design, and marketing.
So how much have they made total? About $205,000 between the three of them to endure the pains of lawyers asking them the like a billion questions. Here’s how much each expert has been paid so far –
Microsoft’s first tablet won’t reach customers until later this, but the company is already working on Surface 2. According to job adverts posted on its Microsoft Careers site between June and August, the company is “currently building the next generation” of “devices that fully express the Windows vision.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned blogging about Apple, it’s that the company doesn’t stand for copycats — especially when those copycats go after patents that Steve Jobs was particularly proud of. That’s what Samsung did when it copied Apple’s inertial scrolling feature, right after Jobs told them not to.
An internal Samsung email was submitted today into evidence in the Apple vs. Samsung case being heard in Northern California. In the correspondance, head of mobile communications for Samsung JK Shin praises the iPhone, and describes the difference between his own company’s user experience and that of the iPhone as “the difference between heaven and earth.”
It’s fairly rough evidence for the Korean electronics maker, who had tried to keep the document out of the trial until a misstep today by Samsung legal counsel John Quinn, who mentioned the phrase “crisis of design” from the email, allowed it to be admitted.
While Apple and Samsung duke it out in Northern California this week, it makes sense to take a little time comparing the two on sales numbers, units shipped, and profit made. And while many folks these days like to bring up the fact that more Samsung devices are sold than iOS devices, those same folks are missing the boat.
According to a report from Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, via website AllThingsD, Apple’s iOS devices are making its company a ton more profit than Samsung’s devices are. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Keeping up with all the latest Apple vs Samsung happenings can be tough, and confusing. The trials is underway in San Jose California. Some days are filled with interesting witnesses taking the stand, while others are packed with lawyers hammering boring witnesses with silly questions.
To help you keep up on the Apple vs Samsung trial we’ve compiled the entire day’s events into one short news story that consists of the best tweets from the reporters there on the scene. Here’s everything you need to about what happened in the Apple vs Samsung Trial on day four, August 6th.
Susan Kare, the graphic designer famous for creating a number of icons for the Macintosh, will be called as a witness in the ongoing trial between Apple and Samsung. Kare will reportedly talk about the similarities between the user interface graphics on the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices.
Apple went after Samsung today in the most direct and perhaps damaging interchange, yet, using Samsung’s own internal documents to prove Apple’s claim that Samsung’s practices go beyond mere competition and are truly copyright infringement.
Apple called Justin Denison, Samsung’s chief strategy officer, to the stand today. Attorney for Apple Bill Lee, after some preliminary questioning, went right for the jugular, directly calling out Samsung, and asking Denison point blank if Samsung had copied Apple products. Denison denied the claim, and then Lee pulled out a set of internal documents from Samsung. Some of the titles of these reports were pretty incriminating.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) released preliminary data yesterday from its Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet Tracker. The study shows that total worldwide tablet shipments for the second quarter of 2012 are estimated at 25 million units, which is up from 18.7 last quarter. That’s a quarter-over-quarter increase of 33.6 percent, says the data analysis company, reflecting the total year-over-year growth rate of 66.2 percent of retail tablets in the US.
Guess which tablet is the largest part of those numbers?
Remember the excluded Samsung documents we told you about yesterday? The ones that Samsung sent out to the media after they had been denied the ability to enter them into court? We told you how Samsung’s lawyer, John B. Quinn, argued that sending them along to journalists was neither unethical nor illegal. Apple has a different opinion, which they filed in court today.
The iPad continues to dominate the global tablet market and, according research firm IDC, the iPad is responsible for the strong growth of tablets across the board.
While the numbers announced during Apple’s most recent financials call continued to show strong year-over-year growth for the iPad, they didn’t illustrate how significant the iPad’s growth is compared to the rest of the tablet market.
In the latest filing in the Apple vs Samsung patent case, the Korean-based electronics company argued that the documents they leaked after US District Judge Lucy Koh excluded as trial evidence were public domain, anyway, and that Samsung had done nothing wrong or unethical.
Samsung has been trying to accuse Apple of ripping off Sony’s design as the inspiration for the iPhone as a way to justify Samsung’s own smartphone copying tactics. Their argument is based on a prototype iPhone mockup by Shin Nishibori created in 2006 that was supposed to look like an iPhone that Sony would make.
Shin’s mockup was requested after an Apple designer read a profile on Sony’s top designer in Businessweek. Thing is, the article wasn’t about Sony’s smartphones at all, it was about their newest Walkman – the NW-A1200 (pictured above).
Today, Apple and Samsung both presented their opening arguments in front of US District Court Judge Lucy Koh in the second day of the legal case originally brought by Apple against Samsung for patent infringement. Samsung countersued, claiming its own patents were infringed upon. Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, No. 11-1846 began yesterday with jury selection, and opening statements were made today, along with some expert testimony by Apple designer Christopher Stringer.
Not surprisingly, Apple believes that Samsung has copied the iPhone wholesale. Korea-based Samsung continues to repeat that it has not copied anything, but rather a simple matter of American-style competition.
Lawyers for both sides squared off today in court with their opening arguments.
An interesting jury has been selected today in the high-profile patent case between Apple and Samsung. Of course, any details about said jury would be interesting simply due to their inclusion in such a pivotal legal case, but the list does sound like somewhat of a lead in to a stand-up comedy routine. An insurance agent, an unemployed video game enthusiast, and a project manager for AT&T are three of the ten jurors selected today to decide the issues behind the patent case between the two electronics superstar companies.
Last week we found out that back in 2006 Apple Industrial Designer, Shin Nishibori, was asked to create mockups of what an iPhone-like device would look like if created by Sony. Nishibori’s prototype mockups have become a hot item of debate in the Apple vs Samsung trial as Samsung was hoping to use them as evidence that Apple copied Sony.
The court recently dismissed the images, but Samsung wanted to get their creator on the stand. Even though Shin Nishibori no longer works for Apple and now lives in Hawaii, Samsung was hoping to subpoena him to the court and have him testify against Apple. How were they going to get him there? A $60 check.
Jury selection for the Apple vs Samsung trial has just gotten underway today. The court will be selecting jurors from a pool of citizens called in to be potential jurors. To ensure the jury is impartial to the proceedings, the judge has been asking potential jurors if they work for Apple, Samsung, Google, or Motorola, or have relatives that do. Turns out a lot of potential jurors are linked to Apple, and one is even an Apple employee.
During the selection process this morning it was revealed that one of the potential jurors is an Apple employee. There’s no shady practices going on though. U.S. Citizens are selected at random to perform jury duty, so it’s mere coincidence that he was a put in the Apple vs Samsung potential juror pool.
Once a staple of any vacation, the postcard has since faded into obscurity due to the advent of technology and instant sharing. One company meshing the best of both worlds, Touchnote Ltd., has a popular app on both Android and iOS that allows users to turn photos into personalized postcards and have them sent for around a $1.49 per postcard. In celebration of the 2012 Olympic Games, both Touchnote and Samsung want users to have the luxury of sharing their amazing moments via a postcard without having to visit a local London gift shop. That’s why Samsung is sponsoring a promo that will allow users to send free Touchnote postcards up until August 31st.
The patent war between Apple and Samsung is just starting to heat up, with both tech giants scheduled to appear in U.S. court today. Apple accused Samsung of copying the iPhone and iPad back in April 2011, and Samsung countersued with similar accusations. In the months leading up to the trial, there have been treasure troves of previously hidden information uncovered, including hundreds of early iPhone and iPad prototype designs.
One design in particular, aptly named “Jony,” sparked an accusation from Samsung saying that Apple borrowed from Sony’s designs to create the first iPhone. To combat Samsung’s claim, Apple has since produced an early (and possibly first) prototype design of the iPhone from circa 2005.
