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Apple Kills Sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus in the US, For Now
It's not looking great for companies who want to compete with Apple against their mobile products. Not because Apple is out-innovating them with superior products at great prices, but because they're winning court injunctions against sales of these competitive products over alleged patent infringements. This is exactly what the customer wants to see, right?
Apple this week won two injunctions against their Korean competitor, Samsung for their Galaxy Tab tablet device and later the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Now Apple is looking to block sales of the critically acclaimed Galaxy S III too. Apple have used four high-powered patents as their primary weapons: "data tapping", Siri and unified search, slide to unlock and word completion on a touchscreen.
The injunction on the two devices came from federal judge Lucy Koh on Friday, citing likely "irreparable harm" to Apple if sales of these devices are allowed to continue and setting a trial date in 2014. However, such injunctive relief doesn't come for free to Apple, since they must now stump up $96M to allow the injunction to go ahead - a small price to pay for such a wealthy company. This sum represents the estimated value of lost sales to Samsung, should Apple lose the case.
Note that heavyweight injunctions like this are not made lightly, which means that the judge feels that Apple has a good chance of winning its case. In the meantime, us, the customers lose out on competitive products for the sake of Apple's fat profits, due to reduced competition in the marketplace and the fear, uncertainty and doubt that this casts over anyone wanting to invest their hard-earned money in non-Apple products. Unsurprisingly, Samsung is likely to appeal the injunction.
The pair of setbacks for Samsung this week put a damper on an exciting week for Google and Android. The company announced its first branded tablet, the Nexus 7, made by Asus; and introduced the next version of Android, Release 4.1 "Jellybean." Nevertheless, Google acknowledged that the injunctions issued against Samsung's Android products were a buzz kill for the search giant.
"We’re disappointed with this decision, but we believe the correct result will be reached as more evidence comes to light," it said in an e-mailed statement to Wired magazine.
Posted by | Sat, Jun 30, 2012 - 05:50 PM
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