Since todays announcement of Apple filing a lawsuit against Samsung over their Galaxy line of tablets and smartphones, I wonder how Samsung is really feeling about this.
It seems incumbent upon Samsung to really try something new and interesting when it comes to how they approach their hardware design. It’s clear as day that when they saw how well received the first generation iPad was received that they needed to get into that market. I’m sure they probably were smacking themselves as to why they didn’t innovate in the tablet area sooner than Apple. What’s done is done though and for better or worse, they took the Android plunge.
I would be willing to bet money that if you put a Galaxy Tab and iPad in front of any normal person and asked them if they looked similar, that person wouldn’t hesitate for a moment and say the Galaxy tab is remarkably similar to the iPad (eschewing the sheer display size difference).
There in lies the problem with Samsung’s design. It’s a clear rip off of the iPad, right down to the physical size of the USB connector. It seems rather shameless to me that instead of sitting down and trying to do something different, they just decided to iPad-ify their own design. I’m not going to presume what design direction they should have gone with, so I’m merely positing that a unique and original design of their own would have been preferable.
Hindsight is always 20/20 though, and I’m sure had they known what they know now, they would have veered off into a different direction to avoid a lawsuit.
Samsung has had a pretty good record of making fairly good quality products, mainly their line of HD TVs. It stands to reason though that if you’re a company of their magnitude, you would seriously need to put some resources behind forming a high quality team of people to work on a competitive device to the iPad. Does Samsung have that kind of team? At a glance you might say no, however it’s extremely difficult to make an assertion on that without knowing the inner workings of the company. Perhaps they do have a great team of fully qualified engineers and designers, but that team is being hampered by the bureaucracy of a terrible marketing and management team.
The bottom line is, Samsung should really be ashamed that they even put themselves in this position to be sued. If they (whoever calls the shots) had the foresight to do something truly unique, they wouldn’t be in the position they are in now.