Apparently not satisfied with originally seeking to ban only 8 of Samsung’s devices, Apple (AAPL) filed documents in San Jose federal district court on Friday asking a judge to end Samsung’s release of what Apple called: “copycat products”, by banning four additional Samsung devices, including Galaxy Note, the Galaxy S III, and the Galaxy note 10.1 tablet, which according to the iPhone and iPad maker violate the company’s intellectual property and should be banned from sale in the US market.
In February, Apple alleged that at least 17 Samsung devices infringe its patents, but the new filing lists 21.
The amended Galaxy complaint include, “new smartphones, media players, and tablets that Samsung has released beginning in August 2011 and continuing through August 2012.”
Apple’s latest court filing — not to be confused with the recently decided Apple v. Samsung trial in which
Apple was awarded $1.05 billion by a jury on Aug. 24, finding Samsung had copied critical features of Apple’s hugely popular iPhone and iPad — puts the South Korean-based company in a more critical position from a market-share perspective then before. As WSP wrote earlier this week, Apple originally asked for a ban of only 8 of Samsung’s products, many of which were older models and replaced by new ones, or weren’t even available any longer in the US market. But the soaring sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Note, and particularly the sales of its flagship Galaxy smartphones, which have stretched Samsung’s lead over Apple as a smartphone maker, change the stakes of the coming court battle between the two tech giants fighting for supremacy in the smartphone market, estimated to be worth $219 billion.
If Apple is granted injunctions against these two particular products — soaring sales of its Galaxy smartphone drove Samsung’s latest quarterly profit to $5.9 billion, a record — Samsung will lose a significant chunk of revenue from its US sales, which in turn will negatively effect its bottom line. According to market intelligence firm IDC, for the second quarter of fiscal 2012, Samsung exceeded sales of 50 million Galaxy smartphones while Apple sold only 26 million of its iPhones.
With Samsung finding itself at the top of the smartphone vendor list, followed by Apple, Nokia (NOK), HTC and ZTE, the stakes to retain and increase market share couldn’t be higher indeed.
Personally I would like to try some of Apples products. But I can’t afford the stupid prices they put on some of them. until then leave other companies alone.