The Lawsuit That Destroyed Smartphones

At the start of the 2010s, Apple and Samsung entered the courtroom in a battle over the DNA of their most well-known products, the iPhone and Galaxy lineup. This wasn’t just a war over trademarks or patents, but a clash for the design of the modern world. Combined, these two devices have sold over six billion units since their launch in the late 2000s, generating upwards of $3.7 trillion in revenue. For perspective, that is higher than the nominal economic output of France, Canada, and Russia. As massive as those figures are, once those two giants walked out of the room, the course of the smartphone industry would change fundamentally, but in a way that went over our heads for years. As the company built up to the release of the iPhone in 2007, Apple filed a handful of patents centred on the device's basic shape in January of that year. These patents would include essential features we take for granted nowadays, such as rubber-band scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. While we were promised the future of smartphones would look more like they came out of Star Wars or Cyberpunk, what we ultimately got were the simple, plain slabs that could slip into our pockets and vibrate for notifications. But to understand why the phones of today are the same design copied and pasted, we have to take a trip down memory lane, back to the boardroom meeting that would change everything. We’ll get to that in a few minutes, but first, let’s take a look at the starting point of this conflict– the moment Samsung made a pivot so radical it made Steve Jobs boil. #apple #tech #technology #youtube #smartphones #samsung #android #iphone #ios #computers #business #engineering #geopolitics #europe #uk #japan #southkorea #australia #usa #canada #stevejobs #educational #history #future #samsungcopiedapple #lawsuits #samsunggalaxy AllThingsDigital: https://allthingsd.com/20120807/samsu...