Apple, Samsung battle: The global legal war you haven’t heard of

If you think Apple's biggest priorities in 2012 are bringing the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 to market, you'd likely be wrong.

Perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic, but despite the headline-grabbing, revenue-busting potential of these two upcoming almost-guaranteed blockbuster product releases, they're nowhere near as pivotal to the future direction of the company — and more broadly, the industry — as its ongoing battle with Samsung over copyright and intellectual property.

While most gadget-seeking consumers are likely unaware of the company's courtroom clashes, the year-long dispute that has now spilled into at least 10 countries could very well decide how the next generation of smartphones works and looks, and who has the right to design and market them.

Legal laundry list

For much of the past year, Apple and Samsung have been engaged in a growing legal battle over who owns the intellectual property at the centre of today's hottest mobile devices. Apple sued Samsung in a California court last April, claiming the Android vendor's smartphones infringed on Apple's IP. Apple contended Samsung's designs, packaging and marketing were too similar to those created for its iPhone and iPad.

Samsung followed up with lawsuits of its own, countersuing in Germany, Korea and Japan over Apple's use of technologies Samsung claimed as its own. The fight took a particularly nasty turn in the runup to the all-important holiday shopping period when Apple tried to get an Australian court to stop sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet — Samsung's closest competitor to the iPad.

The bid failed, but a similar injunction in a German court succeeded in knocking those same devices off of store shelves. Samsung later did an end run around the injunction by bringing a slightly updated model — the Galaxy Tab 10.1N — to market, but the nastiness of the tit-for-tat court action underscores how much is at stake in this escalating fight.

Despite the fact that litigation is a normal course of business in the tech space, the war between Apple and Samsung is particularly vicious given the competition between the two for mobile dominance.

Who dominates the market?

In one corner is Apple, whose iPhone and iPad respectively defined the modern form factors and capabilities in each market. In the other is Samsung, which has emerged from the pack of Android vendors as the most serious threat to Apple's throne.

Strategy Analytics reports Apple passed Samsung late last year to take over as top global smartphone vendor for the quarter. Apple shipped 37 million smartphones in Q4 2011, 500,000 more than Samsung. Its 23.9 percent market share edged Samsung's 23.5 percent. Nokia was third with 19.6 percent. Over the full year, however, Samsung still prevailed with 19.9 percent market share compared to Apple's 19 percent.

On the tablet front last quarter, Apple's 58 percent market share continued to dominate, but it was down from 68 percent in Q4 2012. Android devices, on the other hand, snagged a record 39 percent share. Samsung stopped reporting tablet sales early last year, but the company is widely believed to be the dominant Android vendor and the one most likely to challenge Apple head-to-head.

Competition fuelling litigation?

The rapidly evolving competitive environment between the two companies lies at the root of their current litigation fest: By tying each other up in court, both organizations hope to divert the resources and attention of the other, and limit their design choices as they bring new products to market. This strategy is hardly new, of course, but the scale of this particular battle is notable, as is its potential impact on subsequent generations of devices.

Apple's latest salvo, announced earlier this month, extends its original California lawsuit to a range of new Samsung devices introduced over the past year, including the top-selling Galaxy S II phone and Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and Galaxy Tab 8.9. The updated suit also includes patent infringement claims on a wider array of technologies, including data syncing, slide-to-unlock and missed call management. It's all part of a larger strategy — including legal action against HTC and now-Google-owned Motorola Mobility — designed to throw a wrench in the growing Android juggernaut. By blocking market access for new devices and dragging vendors into multinational litigation, Apple hopes to make life more expensive for the competition as it attempts to put the brakes on continued Android market share growth.

For its part, Samsung's German strategy — throw a new bezel on an existing device and slightly update the software that runs on it — could become the cornerstone of a global campaign designed to sidestep Apple's attempts to quash new product releases from the its increasingly aggressive competitor. However it all plays out, it's clear the courtroom drama won't end soon. Indeed, ultimate ownership of the technologies at the core of today's top smartphones and tablets may never be fully decided, a reality that could increasingly place limits on what devices are available, where and when they're available, and how much they cost.

Carmi Levy is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist. The opinions expressed are his own. carmilevy@yahoo.ca