So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
How about WP7? Or WebOS?
Both have shown a very different UI is plausible (and I will admit that I much prefer WebOS, minus the lack of ecosystem, and the poor HW, but dislike WP7 coz its too swipey).
However, Google, and Android, chose to simply copy iOS.
Whether Apple wins the case is a big question mark, because I don't think there have been many successful lawsuits in the "look and feel" space. However, its ridiculous to deny the complete ripoff Android was (and the iOS ripoff happened only after they had ripped off Blackberry's OS).
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
It doesn't have to be radical but they should try to innovate. Samsung should be asking itself what it can make to differentiate themselves in the market. They seem to have gone to some effort to emulate the the iPhone in some of their designs in my opinion. When I look at those pictures I think the designers at samsung got paid to design something that looked like the very popular iPhone(both hardware and software), not for coming up with their own ideas.
They are component suppliers. They don't see the designs.
With 222,000 employees, Samsung is essentially a bunch of companies under the same name. Apple is essentially working with one department and suing a different department for patent infringement.
I have always thought that Samsung has independently come up with a style that is somewhat similar to Apple's. Although in this case it does feel like a complete ripoff of Apple's designs.
That is not always true, I have direct experience with Samsung as component supplier and they will refuse to provide you necessary information to use their parts unless you share with them information about your product. If you willing not to use their low cost solution then you do not have to do business with them. But they use all kinds of means to get information about what you are doing even if they are not being designed into the product.
I can tell you Samsung is not capable of having unique ideas which was not already thought of by someone else. I will say one thing they are very good at recognizing which ideas are the best and copying them.
In the case of Apple, you are correct that Apple probably never shared the design with them since Apple does not tell any supplier which products or program their parts are even being considered for. Many times Apple has Foxconn buying the generic parts for them so supplier have no idea if the purchase is made for Apple or not.
Keep in mind apple does build prototypes for all their internal testing and development and many times they use the same companies to prototype parts as sumsung uses so I have no doubt that Samsung saw prototypes long before they were ever revealed to the public
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
Oh please. Just take a look at Windows Phone 7. As much as I dislike MS, I give them credit when it is due. WP7's UI is completely different from iOS. The Galaxy UI is a blatant iOS rip off.
As for the hardware, almost all smartphones have been copying the iPhone to one degree or another. The Galaxy is one of the worst offenders on that score as well. Take a look at the Palm Pre for an example of a design that tries to be a little different.
How does 4% of sales make Apple the second largest Samsung customer after Sony? Does Sony have 5% or 10% or 90%? and if so then how many other customers does Samsung have? would have to be an awful lot of customers if Sony is say, 20% and Apple is 4% and no other single customer is close to 4% - 75 other customers each around 1% ?
Even if Apple wins, they may see a net loss, because they more or less rely on Samsung to meet the market demand on their products.
And Samsung needs Apple so that they can manufacture tablet and mobile phone components at a scale that significantly lower their cost, thus benefiting not only Apple but Samsung's own tablets and mobile phones.
You and I know there are no one way streets in any commercial transaction.
The more I think about this this could be an attempt on Apple part to get Samsung to decide which of their business are more important to them. Of the $142B that Sam Samsung makes most of that comes form heavy industry like construction and ship building. Because of the way they report their numbers it hard to know if their electronics businesses actually turn a true profit.
Apple could be forcing Samsung to make a choice, either to be a component supplier to Apple or be a Electronic supplier competing with Apple. In the case of Apple having other sources that not going to be hard. For memory they got other choices who would love to have larger share, same goes for displays, and their are rumors that apples is moving the SOC production to another company anyway.
As someone already pointed out does Samsung think they can make $8B in electronic sales to make up the lost in component sales they risk if Apple changes suppliers. In little over a year Apple can completely design out Samsung if they wanted to.
How does 4% of sales make Apple the second largest Samsung customer after Sony? Does Sony have 5% or 10% or 90%? and if so then how many other customers does Samsung have? would have to be an awful lot of customers if Sony is say, 20% and Apple is 4% and no other single customer is close to 4% - 75 other customers each around 1% ?
Yes Samsung has 100's of customers all fighting for a few fraction of a %, The fact that Apple and Sony have about 5% is important to Sansung.
How does 4% of sales make Apple the second largest Samsung customer after Sony? Does Sony have 5% or 10% or 90%? and if so then how many other customers does Samsung have? would have to be an awful lot of customers if Sony is say, 20% and Apple is 4% and no other single customer is close to 4% - 75 other customers each around 1% ?
Um, have you noticed all those TVs and refrigerators and phones with the Samsung logo on them? They sell those to millions of customers. Apple is one of their largest component customers, but their retail sales account for a large percentage of the $142 billion.
To be fair to Samsung (& all the other phone manufacturers out there) there's not really anything they can do about having a similar look to the iPhone.
Seriously, how else can you make a touch screen phone? The display naturally sets the design, it's rectangular and usually 3.5". Apart from rounding the edges a bit more and maybe making it bright green what else can they do!
The OS is also very similar & Apple should sue google accordingly.
Apple might as well issue a law suit against every major phone manufacturer out there and just do it in one go.
Apple already complained of HTC
Google don't make money from android neither they do products for customers with it. Google is not concerned by patent here.
The more I think about this this could be an attempt on Apple part to get Samsung to decide which of their business are more important to them. Of the $142B that Sam Samsung makes most of that comes form heavy industry like construction and ship building.
Really, cos I see that in 2009 out of $172B revenue, $117B of that is "Samsung Electronics". Where did you get your figures from?
And that's exactly Apple's point. There was a large variety of different devices before the iPhone came out and no one unifying theme. Then Apple introduced the iPhone and suddenly dozens of near clones appear.
Too bad none of the major phone manufacturers was able to innovate on their own.
Exactly!
A while back I was at a restaurant where I admittedly peeked at a guy using his phone at the next table. I thought it was an iPhone at the time, but the grid on the screen seemed a little off. After seeing these pictures, it could very well have been this phone that I mistook for an iPhone!
The comment above gets it exactly right. The look and feel of the physical design and the menu systems of smart phones was all over the map. Heck, I remember throwing away my wife's Samsung phone because, after a year, we still couldn't get photos off the darn thing onto the computer (no way to update the "OS" to fix the menu bug). The single biggest unifying event in the industry was Apple releasing iPhone. Then all the big players got their copy machines fired up and came out with the clones...and tech geeks like me are now mistaking these cheap knock-offs for the real mccoy.
I actually have to give Microsoft credit here. They made a very reasonable effort to not copy everything about the iPhone in Windows Phone 7. The UI design is significantly different enough that, for the first time ever, I don't feel like they just ripped off Apple. What, couldn't Samsung hire an art director with a little originality?
When tens of billions of dollars in profits are on the line, big companies will stop at nothing. So they blatantly copy. It's sad: They have no scruples about doing it, they're defensive when they get caught, and then they fire back offensively with their own lawsuits when someone seeks damages from their theft. I think they need to take it a little less personally: "Yeah, we made a bad judgement call and came out with a product that looks too similar to yours. Our bad. Let's come to an agreement on damages, and we'll try to do better in the future."
I'm sure Apple isn't immune to this either, but it seems to me Apple has a lot more character. I can't think of any cases where they blatantly ripped off a successful product...seems to me they're more likely to license it or buy it. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they don't come to mind.
Granted, I don't know any details surrounding these lawsuits and I have no connection to either company. As a developer and content creator, I just hate to see it when someone steals someone else's work.
To be fair to Samsung (& all the other phone manufacturers out there) there's not really anything they can do about having a similar look to the iPhone.
Seriously, how else can you make a touch screen phone? The display naturally sets the design, it's rectangular and usually 3.5". Apart from rounding the edges a bit more and maybe making it bright green what else can they do!
The OS is also very similar & Apple should sue google accordingly.
Apple might as well issue a law suit against every major phone manufacturer out there and just do it in one go.
Many, many, years ago I had an IBM Simon phone with a touch screen (and a stylus). Trust me, the user interface was completely different from Apple's. Just because it has a touch screen doesn't mean it has to look *anything at all* like an iPhone.
Granted, the Simon wouldn't compete in today's market, but it's proof that you *can* come up with something completely different and still use a touchscreen. For that matter, Win 7 phones do a pretty good job of looking different from an iPhone (versus the Samsung units, anyway).
I think I would have just said "stop making those galaxy things look like our stuff or we stop buying from you." And then make good on the threat. The whole lawsuit thing is so lame and risky.
I don't know why you say that. First, Apple won an injunction against Future Power for manufacturing iMac knock offs. Second, Apple got Meizu to stop manufacturing its M8 iPhone knock off (using the Chinese legal process to boot). Third, and this is the most important one, Apple was successful in proving Microsoft stole the copyrighted look and feel of its Mac OS. Ultimately, Apple lost the case because the Court found Apple gave Microsoft a license to use elements of Apple's Mac OS. The judge did however find Apple had a valid copyright in the look and feel of the OS.
Trade dress is also an actionable lawsuit, where one company creates a look or environment and another copies it. Do an internet search, there are tons of restaurants suing other restaurants for emulating the others environment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister Snitch
The whole affair is bizarre. Apple's lawsuit is also pretty unwinnable. The case they want to make is that 'people should be more courageous, farsighted and original'. Yeah, I guess they should be, but they're not. That's why no one was making 'tablets' before Apple, and now everyone has a tablet or 'plans' for one. It's why houses on the same block look alike. It's why everyone (except maybe the top, top boss) in a corporation dresses alike.
Comments
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
How about WP7? Or WebOS?
Both have shown a very different UI is plausible (and I will admit that I much prefer WebOS, minus the lack of ecosystem, and the poor HW, but dislike WP7 coz its too swipey).
However, Google, and Android, chose to simply copy iOS.
Whether Apple wins the case is a big question mark, because I don't think there have been many successful lawsuits in the "look and feel" space. However, its ridiculous to deny the complete ripoff Android was (and the iOS ripoff happened only after they had ripped off Blackberry's OS).
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
It doesn't have to be radical but they should try to innovate. Samsung should be asking itself what it can make to differentiate themselves in the market. They seem to have gone to some effort to emulate the the iPhone in some of their designs in my opinion. When I look at those pictures I think the designers at samsung got paid to design something that looked like the very popular iPhone(both hardware and software), not for coming up with their own ideas.
They are component suppliers. They don't see the designs.
With 222,000 employees, Samsung is essentially a bunch of companies under the same name. Apple is essentially working with one department and suing a different department for patent infringement.
I have always thought that Samsung has independently come up with a style that is somewhat similar to Apple's. Although in this case it does feel like a complete ripoff of Apple's designs.
That is not always true, I have direct experience with Samsung as component supplier and they will refuse to provide you necessary information to use their parts unless you share with them information about your product. If you willing not to use their low cost solution then you do not have to do business with them. But they use all kinds of means to get information about what you are doing even if they are not being designed into the product.
I can tell you Samsung is not capable of having unique ideas which was not already thought of by someone else. I will say one thing they are very good at recognizing which ideas are the best and copying them.
In the case of Apple, you are correct that Apple probably never shared the design with them since Apple does not tell any supplier which products or program their parts are even being considered for. Many times Apple has Foxconn buying the generic parts for them so supplier have no idea if the purchase is made for Apple or not.
Keep in mind apple does build prototypes for all their internal testing and development and many times they use the same companies to prototype parts as sumsung uses so I have no doubt that Samsung saw prototypes long before they were ever revealed to the public
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
Oh please.
As for the hardware, almost all smartphones have been copying the iPhone to one degree or another. The Galaxy is one of the worst offenders on that score as well. Take a look at the Palm Pre for an example of a design that tries to be a little different.
A risky lawsuit.
Even if Apple wins, they may see a net loss, because they more or less rely on Samsung to meet the market demand on their products.
And Samsung needs Apple so that they can manufacture tablet and mobile phone components at a scale that significantly lower their cost, thus benefiting not only Apple but Samsung's own tablets and mobile phones.
You and I know there are no one way streets in any commercial transaction.
So what radical form are manufacturers supposed to take to not look similar to each other?
I don't know dummy. Maybe ask Apple's designers. They can tell you.
Apple could be forcing Samsung to make a choice, either to be a component supplier to Apple or be a Electronic supplier competing with Apple. In the case of Apple having other sources that not going to be hard. For memory they got other choices who would love to have larger share, same goes for displays, and their are rumors that apples is moving the SOC production to another company anyway.
As someone already pointed out does Samsung think they can make $8B in electronic sales to make up the lost in component sales they risk if Apple changes suppliers. In little over a year Apple can completely design out Samsung if they wanted to.
How does 4% of sales make Apple the second largest Samsung customer after Sony? Does Sony have 5% or 10% or 90%? and if so then how many other customers does Samsung have? would have to be an awful lot of customers if Sony is say, 20% and Apple is 4% and no other single customer is close to 4% - 75 other customers each around 1% ?
Yes Samsung has 100's of customers all fighting for a few fraction of a %, The fact that Apple and Sony have about 5% is important to Sansung.
They could potentially halt all sales of iPhone and iPad in the US.
Why aren't people talking about this?
There could potentially be a halt of sales of BOTH Galaxy devices AND iPhone/iPad devices.
How does 4% of sales make Apple the second largest Samsung customer after Sony? Does Sony have 5% or 10% or 90%? and if so then how many other customers does Samsung have? would have to be an awful lot of customers if Sony is say, 20% and Apple is 4% and no other single customer is close to 4% - 75 other customers each around 1% ?
Um, have you noticed all those TVs and refrigerators and phones with the Samsung logo on them? They sell those to millions of customers. Apple is one of their largest component customers, but their retail sales account for a large percentage of the $142 billion.
Of the $142B that Sam Samsung makes most of that comes form heavy industry like construction and ship building.
Samsung doesn't MAKE $142B, that was revenue (i.e. make = profit).
In 2009, they had a Net Income of $13.8B (not quite the same as profit, but a closer indicator I believe).
Nobody is talking about the counter suit of wireless patents against Apple?
They could potentially halt all sales of iPhone and iPad in the US.
Why aren't people talking about this?
There could potentially be a halt of sales of BOTH Galaxy devices AND iPhone/iPad devices.
I guess we'll see what happens with that one. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Apple gets ripped off all the time, but if they've "taken some liberties", then they need to be held accountable just like anyone else.
And yes, I was pretty disappointed in Apple over Confabulator and Watson. It's not cool to eat your young.
To be fair to Samsung (& all the other phone manufacturers out there) there's not really anything they can do about having a similar look to the iPhone.
Seriously, how else can you make a touch screen phone? The display naturally sets the design, it's rectangular and usually 3.5". Apart from rounding the edges a bit more and maybe making it bright green what else can they do!
The OS is also very similar & Apple should sue google accordingly.
Apple might as well issue a law suit against every major phone manufacturer out there and just do it in one go.
Apple already complained of HTC
Google don't make money from android neither they do products for customers with it. Google is not concerned by patent here.
The more I think about this this could be an attempt on Apple part to get Samsung to decide which of their business are more important to them. Of the $142B that Sam Samsung makes most of that comes form heavy industry like construction and ship building.
Really, cos I see that in 2009 out of $172B revenue, $117B of that is "Samsung Electronics". Where did you get your figures from?
Of the $142B that Sam Samsung makes most of that comes form heavy industry like construction and ship building.
Who is this Sam Samsung guy?
And that's exactly Apple's point. There was a large variety of different devices before the iPhone came out and no one unifying theme. Then Apple introduced the iPhone and suddenly dozens of near clones appear.
Too bad none of the major phone manufacturers was able to innovate on their own.
Exactly!
A while back I was at a restaurant where I admittedly peeked at a guy using his phone at the next table. I thought it was an iPhone at the time, but the grid on the screen seemed a little off. After seeing these pictures, it could very well have been this phone that I mistook for an iPhone!
The comment above gets it exactly right. The look and feel of the physical design and the menu systems of smart phones was all over the map. Heck, I remember throwing away my wife's Samsung phone because, after a year, we still couldn't get photos off the darn thing onto the computer (no way to update the "OS" to fix the menu bug). The single biggest unifying event in the industry was Apple releasing iPhone. Then all the big players got their copy machines fired up and came out with the clones...and tech geeks like me are now mistaking these cheap knock-offs for the real mccoy.
I actually have to give Microsoft credit here. They made a very reasonable effort to not copy everything about the iPhone in Windows Phone 7. The UI design is significantly different enough that, for the first time ever, I don't feel like they just ripped off Apple. What, couldn't Samsung hire an art director with a little originality?
When tens of billions of dollars in profits are on the line, big companies will stop at nothing. So they blatantly copy. It's sad: They have no scruples about doing it, they're defensive when they get caught, and then they fire back offensively with their own lawsuits when someone seeks damages from their theft. I think they need to take it a little less personally: "Yeah, we made a bad judgement call and came out with a product that looks too similar to yours. Our bad. Let's come to an agreement on damages, and we'll try to do better in the future."
I'm sure Apple isn't immune to this either, but it seems to me Apple has a lot more character. I can't think of any cases where they blatantly ripped off a successful product...seems to me they're more likely to license it or buy it. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they don't come to mind.
Granted, I don't know any details surrounding these lawsuits and I have no connection to either company. As a developer and content creator, I just hate to see it when someone steals someone else's work.
To be fair to Samsung (& all the other phone manufacturers out there) there's not really anything they can do about having a similar look to the iPhone.
Seriously, how else can you make a touch screen phone? The display naturally sets the design, it's rectangular and usually 3.5". Apart from rounding the edges a bit more and maybe making it bright green what else can they do!
The OS is also very similar & Apple should sue google accordingly.
Apple might as well issue a law suit against every major phone manufacturer out there and just do it in one go.
Many, many, years ago I had an IBM Simon phone with a touch screen (and a stylus). Trust me, the user interface was completely different from Apple's. Just because it has a touch screen doesn't mean it has to look *anything at all* like an iPhone.
Granted, the Simon wouldn't compete in today's market, but it's proof that you *can* come up with something completely different and still use a touchscreen. For that matter, Win 7 phones do a pretty good job of looking different from an iPhone (versus the Samsung units, anyway).
Trade dress is also an actionable lawsuit, where one company creates a look or environment and another copies it. Do an internet search, there are tons of restaurants suing other restaurants for emulating the others environment.
The whole affair is bizarre. Apple's lawsuit is also pretty unwinnable. The case they want to make is that 'people should be more courageous, farsighted and original'. Yeah, I guess they should be, but they're not. That's why no one was making 'tablets' before Apple, and now everyone has a tablet or 'plans' for one. It's why houses on the same block look alike. It's why everyone (except maybe the top, top boss) in a corporation dresses alike.