Apple: “Samsung smartphones were outright iPhone copies”

A documentary about Apple reveals what the US tech giant really thought about their Korean rivals from Samsung.

It’s been 15 years this year since we first saw the iPhone. We all know the extraordinary story of Apple’s smartphone and how the iPhone guided the phone world in a transformation. To reflect on that, the Wall Street Journal has made a new documentary about the iPhone. There are talks with iPhone users, co-inventor of the first iPhone Tony Fadell and Apple marketing boss Greg Joswiak. Of course we talk about everything.

Rivalry

One of the segments is about the competition that quickly arose with the rapid rise of Android. The main focus was on the fact that Apple was late when it comes to large smartphones. Only from the iPhone 6 and especially the 6 Plus did Apple better respond to this. Have other manufacturers, especially Android smartphones and Samsung, for example, had a major impact on how Apple did and does their business?

“Samsung is Apple copy”

Joswiak admits: That competition started out as a nasty rivalry. Apple did not find the beginning of Samsung innovative at all. “It was just a copy of our idea and our hardware, with a slightly bigger screen. We weren’t too happy about that.” For example, it led to a lawsuit in 2011 that Apple filed against Samsung. Apple thought the Koreans copied their idea with the Galaxy smartphone line. Initially, Apple won that lawsuit and Samsung had to open its wallet for about 1 billion dollars. However, Samsung fought back and so a reduction of that amount was reached as a settlement. So the competition between Apple and Samsung has not always been peaceful.

The entire mini-documentary can be viewed at the Wall Street Journal.