Apple company said, in the American lawsuit filed by Samsung, that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus terminal copied functions of the iPhone only with the idea of stealing part of the market share of the smartphone produced by Apple. As a defense to these accusations, Samsung's lawyer claims that in 6 months the Korean company sold Galaxy Nexus terminals worth 250 million dollars, and these "tiny" sales do not compare to the 16.5 billion dollars generated by the sales recorded of iPhones in a single fiscal quarter.
Samsung, sought to steal market share by selling a Galaxy Nexus phone that copies a feature that makes the iPhone's Siri virtual personal assistant so compelling, Apple Inc. told a US appeals court. "This was the beat-Apple strategy," Apple lawyer Mark Perry of Gibson Dunn, said yesterday in arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. "This was the top of the line, Cadillac phone they trotted out to compete with the iPhone." Samsung lawyer John Quinn said Apple, which has the biggest share of the US market, wasn't harmed by the "minuscule" sales of the Galaxy Nexus, so there's no threat if the phone remains on the market. Apple reported that it sold $16.2 billion worth of iPhones in the third quarter ended June 30. By contrast, Quinn said, Samsung sold $250 million of the Galaxy Nexus device in the first two quarters it was on the market.
Apple is trying to remove the device from the market, but those from Samsung are defending themselves by saying that they had poor sales with this device, and their strategy calls into question the high sales numbers presented by analysts. Although we are only talking here about the US market, the Galaxy Nexus would only capture 0.5% of the American market and considering that we are talking about a terminal also promoted by Google, the device does not seem to have had the success that many were presenting.
Apple says that Samsung copied in the Galaxy Nexus a technology for unified searches in iOS, and in the US the terminal was temporarily removed from sale based on a court decision. Now Apple is trying to impose a permanent sales ban, but it is premature to say whether it will succeed or not.
