everyone who wanted something different.
Want a small screen? Samsung had it (the Galaxy S). Do you prefer a
bigger screen? Samsung was preparing to release that too (the Galaxy
Note). Are you looking for a massive screen? Samsung had that as well
(the Galaxy Tab). And many other products at every price point in
between.
“We strongly believe we have our own competitiveness,” D.J. said,
pointing to the fact that Samsung had registered far more patents in the
United States than Apple. In fact, D.J. said, Samsung was the inventor of a
multitude of hardware technologies. Steve Jobs had elected to use these
technologies in the guts of the iPhone; Samsung’s chips, in fact, made the
iPhone possible.
In August 2012, a California court ruled that Samsung had copied the
patents and the “look and feel” of Apple products. Samsung, however,
won legal victories against Apple in the UK, Japan, and South Korea.
Samsung executives saw the lawsuits as the subplot of a bigger story, a
debate over where to draw the lines between inspiration, imitation, and
outright copying. Samsung was known in the industry as a fast executor
and an incremental innovator, different from Apple’s style of creating the
one, big product.
Samsung watched how disruptive products like the iPhone fared on the
market and then, when the path to success was clearer, released its own
smartphones. Seeking an edge, its mission was to improve the
smartphone’s hardware features in small steps: a bigger screen, a longer-
lasting battery, a water-resistant exterior. Gaeseon is what Koreans call this
process of “incremental innovation.” To the Japanese, it is kaizen.
Apple did not invent the smartphone, a product category dominated by
BlackBerry. It was inspired by other companies to disrupt the industry.
Steve Jobs was an admirer of Sony and its corporate culture. Apple
designers borrowed Sony designs that changed the direction of the iPhone.
Pulling together a thread of ideas and technologies that already existed,
Jobs created the iPhone.
Samsung executives felt Apple was trying to create a monopoly with
generic patents like the iPad’s black rounded rectangle shape, a patent so
silly that a court threw it out. “We are going to patent it all,” Jobs once
said.
He also blatantly mocked Samsung and other competitors, calling their