Samsung & Apple: Are they Competitors or Co-Operators?

Do you know what has been powering Apple’s iPhones, ranging from the original iPhone released in 2007 to the latest iPhone 4S in 2011: SoCs manufactured by Samsung. Not only for the iPhone, but also for Apple’s Macbooks, Samsung is one of the most critical component supplier as it supplies parts like DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) module and SSDs (Solid State Drives). But do you know who has been suing ‘Samsung’ all over the world for the past few months: Apple. So, are they Competitors or Co-operators?? Let's find out.

Before Samsung, Apple already had a long list of lawsuits filed against Android device manufacturers like Motorola (who actually was the first to file a lawsuit against Apple), HTC etc. as it believed that the technologies being used by the devices seemed to infringe a number of Apple patents.

I believe that the actual fillip for Apple to file a patent lawsuit came when Samsung came out with the ‘Samsung Galaxy S2’ which was touted by the reviewers of many gadget websites, as the best Android Smartphone available at that point of time and they foresaw that it would sell in millions. Also, many tech enthusiasts believed that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is one of the best Android tablets that have come closest to dethroning iPad in the tablet category.

Apple had a filed a host of patent infringement cases: 7 utility patents, 3 design patents, several iOS system application icons case and a host of trade dress registrations and packaging that each of Samsung's devices come with. I am not going to detail what each and every patent infringement case was but some of the bottom-line things that you need to take note of are as follows:

• Apple believed that Samsung’s Galaxy range of phones like the Galaxy S 4G and the Nexus S were awefully similar looking to the iPhone.
• The way Samsung had modified the vanilla Android OS with its ‘TouchWiz’ skin to display application icons also had an overwhelming resemblance to the way Apple was displaying icons on both the iPhone and the iPad.
• Apple also had a problem with the way Samsung had packaged its phones. It said that the packaging was also very similar to the way in which its iPhones were packaged.

On a funnier note, there was a recent incident where a Judge had held the iPad 2 (Apples’ tablet) in one hand and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Samsung’s tablet) in the other and asked Samsung’s group of lawyers to distinguish both the devices from a distance of 10 feet away. Samsung’s lawyers did pick their own device correctly but not before an aweful lot of time had passed. This shows that there is a lot of similarity between the iPad 2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and when you have a look at their external design and specifications it is not hard to fathom why. This might be the reason why Apple has been able to get a temporary injunction on Samsung selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and Galaxy Tab 7.7 in Germany.

Samsung has also filed some lawsuits against Apple citing that Apple’s iPhone violates patents related to wireless communication: 3G. Samsung claims that Apple can’t sell a 3G compatible device without using Samsung’s Technology.

The irony is that even as Apple and Samsung are trading blows against each other, Apple has reportedly awarded Samsung the contract to supply the next-gen Quad-Core A6 CPUs which are most probably going to be used in iPhone 5 (or whatever the next generation iPhone is going to be called) and the iPad 3. Apple had reportedly considered other options like the ‘Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’ (TSMC) but had found that TSMC hasn’t quite stabilized its foundry good enough to manufacture the A6 CPU.

So, are they Competitors or Co-Operators? The Question still remains..!!

Stay Tuned..!!