14 DAY TRIAL // In the Apple vs. Samsung war, some would say that the customer is the winner, but we don’t believe that to be true. Both companies have the financial resources to publicize a media fight while a price war is something unimaginable.
We’re not saying that a price war is desirable, but playing tag with “mine is rounder than yours” is not really what technology enthusiasts were envisioning as the definition of the term competition.
In our opinion, we thought that democracy and capitalism was all about competition and the freedom the competitors have to take something and make it better.
Apple argued some time ago that Samsung’s workers studied the iPhone in the development process for the Korean-made smartphones and that screen icons had rounded corners.
Never mind how pathetic and undemocratic such an arguments is, the question is if a company is or is it not allowed to study the competitor’s products and take something round and make it rounder.
The competitor should be free to make it bigger, rounder, thinner, lighter etc.
We don’t believe Jaguar should sue Skoda for making cars with rounded shapes and thus we don’t believe Apple should be allowed to do the same.
The customer ultimately loses as the comparison is not feature- and specifications-based, but it is PR-based.
One other dramatic way in which the customer’s interests are clearly being hurt is complete banning of a product on a market, like HTC One X was temporarily banned despite being superior to Apple’s iPhone in several ways.
While we completely disagree with Apple’s tactics, we can’t condone Samsung’s new anti-Apple commercial that’s reportedly being shot in Los Angeles right now.
The Korean company’s tablets have clear advantages over Apple’s iPad while Apple’s product has its own distinctive and well-designed features.
An informed buyer will certainly make the right choice and that’s ultimately the point, to allow the buyer to make an informed choice and not mislead him with false advertising like LG did with its IPS7 monitors.
We reported on LG’s situation here.
Moreover, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone is clearly superior to Apple’s iPhone 4 in almost every aspect so there’s no need for such information / disinformation campaigns.
SGS3 sales talk for themselves and thus Samsung should protect the patents that it currently holds and protect its right to sell compliant devices anywhere in the world, but refrain from such tactics.
Samsung’s upcoming 11” quad-core tablet will also apparently be superior to Apple’s current version of iPad so there’s really no need for such an elaborate PR stunt.
This is a sure way to get the lawyers rich.
