The ongoing Apple-Samsung litigation - which is slated to wrap up early next week - has given us a number of interesting peeks into the inner workings of two secretive companies.
The ongoing Apple-Samsung litigation – which is slated to wrap up early next week – has given us a number of interesting peeks into the inner workings of two secretive companies.
Apple, of course, alleges that Samsung, in an effort to remain competitive, was blatant in its efforts to copy the iPhone. Indeed, one of the more interesting documents to emerge at the trial was an internal Samsung email that made its way into evidence and contains some telling language from JK Shin, Samsung’s head of mobile communications.
The email in question, which Samsung fought hard to keep out, was able to make its way into evidence after Samsung attorney John Quinn referenced it while examining Samsung strategist Justin Denison. Consequently, the full contents of the email became fair game. The email reads:
Influential figures outside the company come across the iPhone, and they point out that ‘Samsung is dozing off.’ All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide. Yet when our UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth. It’s a crisis of design.
A “crisis,” eh? Well desperate times call for desperate measures, and as we’ve highlighted before, Samsung was overtly preoccupied with Apple’s own iPhone UI, as evidenced by a lengthy internal Samsung memo comparing, side by side, how Samsung can improve the Galaxy S smartphone by making it more like the iPhone. Some other tidbits from the email include:
I hear things like this: Let’s make something like the iPhone.” … When everybody (both consumers and the industry) talk about UX, they weigh it against the iPhone. The iPhone has become the standard. That’s how things are already. … Do you know how difficult the Omnia is to use? When you compare the 2007 version of the iPhone with our current Omnia, can you honestly say the Omnia is better? If you compare the UX with the iPhone, it’s a difference between Heaven and Earth.
via All Things D
