Samsung vs Apple

-BATTLE OF THE GIANTS Samsung and Apple are the two biggest smartphone companies with a combined market share of more than half the global smartphone market. Every year both the companies bring in new innovations in their smartphones, which greatly increases their smartphone sales. But in today’s market where there is cut throat competition it is given that each company will try to outdo the other in every possible manner.

Hence I would like to discuss the fierce battle raging between these smartphone giants-Samsung and Apple. Apple created a boom in the smartphone market by launching the iPhone, which had more features and was the most advanced smartphone at that time. The company made a huge profit and Apple became a household favorite. But with the rise of competition and the growth of Asian giant –Samsung, Apple’s success was not to last forever.

Samsung came up with the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone with identical features as that of the iPhone and slowly but steadily the sales of Samsung smartphones rose. Over the years there have been many new versions of the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy smartphone series and to surpass each other both these companies have been guilty of imitating the technologies used in their smartphones and have also filed for various lawsuits against each other.

Samsung has been accused by Apple of violating patents and: – 1) Copying their icon arrangement display pattern. 2) Accused of imitating the iconic iPhone’s shape which in official terms is called as “tradedress”(e. g. smartphones resemble the iPhone 3g and iPhone 3gs in shape). [One such example of tradedress is that Apple on conducting a survey with “BestBuy” found out that there were many people who returned the Samsung phones because they thought they were iPhones.

This Apple accuses was Samsung’s strategy for increasing their smartphone sales against the iPhone and also to tempt buyers into buying Samsung phones which look identical to iPhone] 3) Imitating features like “double tap” to zoom, “pinch and squeeze “ to zoom and the “rubber-band” effect. On the other hand Samsung has accused Apple of: – 1) Using Samsung’s 3G technology in their smartphones without a legal permit from Samsung. (Apple uses this technology on millions of phones) 2) Use of E-mail in a camera equipped phone. ) Multitasking in the mobile device. Hence by weighing the claims of both these companies, in my opinion, Samsung tried to ape the specific look and feel of iPhone to increase its sales. However, this is not the only reason that translates directly to lost sales on apple’s part-from price to carriers. To sum up, the software patent claims made by both the companies seem pretty baseless to me and I strongly feel there needs to be some kind of protection for genuine innovation. References: – www. businessweek. com www. ibtimes. com www. forbes. com