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Samsung internal doc: 125 iphone pic competitive analysis
- nilsbunger 14y agoIt's a fascinating doc. Is there a point where you cross the line from "inspiration" to methodically duplicating every last detail? Or should it not matter?
- arrrg 14y agoI think that’s an interesting moral question – but I also think it shouldn’t matter legally. That said, I can get behind legal protections for consumers (not companies) to not be deceived. I’m not sure that’s the case here, though, and at any rate, Samsung’s phones now look sufficiently different as to not be confused with any Apple products.
- nilsbunger 14y agoYes, I also learned a lot about "trade dress" from this suit. It does make sense to me that intentionally making a device so similar that it confuses consumers shouldn't be allowed. It's a different issue than SW patents, and seems more clearly wrong to me.
- biggfoot 14y agoIt is a competitor analysis document. Lot of products do this. Much of the feedback in that sheet is just honest comparison and improvement suggestions.
- cmelbye 14y agoIt's not just an analysis. They systematically compared every aspect of the phones where the iPhone had the advantage, and then provided a directive on how their phone should be modified so it was more like the iPhone. That's not merely analysis, it's concrete directives.
- biggfoot 14y agoYour comment suggests that Samsung went out of its way to ape the iPhone because it wanted to ape the iPhone. If you had some other brand in their place as a market leader then it would have been that brand's phone in place of iPhone And NO I don't think they are aping it. Such analysis is everyday stuff ...
- lusr 14y agoIncredibly deceptive title. It's a UX review. What did you expect Samsung to do, sit around and wait for customers to complain or be proactive in ensuring a high quality UX? What exactly is wrong with using the market leader to establish how great your UX is in your competing product?
- rendezvouscp 14y agoAgreed; it doesn’t feel like instructions to copy, rather recommendations for how the user experience can be improved. I wish the original[1] was the one on the front page right now. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4353762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4353762
- duskwuff 14y agoA typical UX review would be evaluating an interface on its own merits, not by comparing and contrasting everything to the way a competitor implements it (and recommending that everything be changed to look and behave more like the competitor).
- ljf 14y agoThis list is only this things Samsung felt the iPhone was doing better - there are lots of other things that differentiate the two phones, this is not a doc on how to clone the phone, but how to follow it's best practices.
- vidarh 14y agoThat sounds like an incredibly idiotic waste of resources when faced with a dominant market leader. Every place I've worked we'd consider how we stacked up with the market leader first, because that's what we'd be compared to.
- duskwuff 14y agoYou don't become #1 by playing catch-up.
- nilsbunger 14y ago
- rendezvouscp 14y agoOf note, on page 131: “Strong impression that iPhone’s icon concept was copied” “Directions for Improvement: … Remove a feeling that iPhone’s menu icons are copied by differentiating design.” Even the evaluator determined that the layout of the home screen was too similar to iOS.
- biggfoot 14y agoIMO nothing illegal or underhand here. Most products do this. If I'm not mistaken many products release detailed descriptions to competitors under some kind of NDA too.
- jayfuerstenberg 14y agoThe only potential problem with this document (from a legal perspective) is that it only references the iPhone. Samsung should have shown other devices as well.
- Blara 14y agoCare to elaborate on that?
- ljf 14y agoI wonder if that will come out in time - I'd be very surprised if Samsung only conducted detailed competitor analysis of a single phone/brand.
- tomp 14y agoWhat if there were other reviews referencing other phones as well? I imagine they would be much shorter, though...
- kenjackson 14y agoThis actually looks like good competitive analysis more than anything, IMHO. In some sense I expect most companies to do something similar. I'd hope that Ford walks through Toyota, BMW, Honda cars with a fine tooth comb understanding all of design trade-offs and places where they can improve. I want companies to be comfortable looking at and improving over their competitors, rather than being in constant fear of being sued.
- nilsbunger 14y agoWithout the bottom directives, I'd agree it's good competitive analysis, especially if similar documents exist for multiple vendors' phones. But the bottom directives turn it into a PRD (requirements doc), and the directives themselves call for steps that make the devices much more similar.
- vm 14y agoExcellent point - Samsung looked at the iPhone design as the definitive source, rather than deconstructing use cases or consumer needs. Even the icons and color themes are the same on many screens. That by itself shows that Samsung copied Apple in prior product reviews as well. Kinda funny that they still had so many design discrepancies...
- nilsbunger 14y agoYes, that's a good way to put it. And a "good" competitive analysis would also analyze Apple's weaknesses, and seek to exploit them. (e.g. turn-by-turn nav, google mail integration, better multitasking, whatever)
- vidarh 14y agoNot if your product is lagging so clearly on ridiculously basic stuff that you get a far better ROI on just fixing the glaringly obvious deficiencies you have compared to the market leader.
- 14y ago
- roblopes 14y agoI'm confused, Samsung is being sued for copying iPhone when Samsung uses Android? So did Apple copy Android..... Is this the real question?
- biggfoot 14y agoApple has beef about the UI which is deceptively similar on the first few models released by Samsung
- slurgfest 14y agoWhat was 'deceptive' about it? Was Samsung trying to get people to confuse its phones with iPhones and buy them by mistake? edit: it is a serious question - why does the word 'deceptive' apply? Can this not be another Android vs. Apple thing (I do not own either kind of phone)?
- sbuk 14y ago"Was Samsung trying to get people to confuse its phones with iPhones and buy them by mistake?" Yes, that's what Apple are suggesting. FWIW I can offer you some anecdotal evidence. Shortly after the original Galaxy S (GT-I9000) was released, my partner (who was by then using Android) saw the advert for it and said "crikey, that's a bit close to the bone, isn't it?" refering to it's similarity to the iPhone. She said this before any of the brouha-ha had started. Again it's purely anecdotal so take it at face value.
- Blara 14y agoBut she didn't say: "Look a new iPhone" so in other words she saw that it was in fact not an iPhone?
- sbuk 14y agoThat's not the point. That people need to do a double take to realise the thing wasn't an iPhone is bad enough IMHO. Samsung look to have gone out of their way to actively make the Galaxy S look similar enough to the iPhone that there is confusion. I cannot accept that the near facsimile is through "inspiration" or is coincidental. This document, contrary to what other posters have said, does not resemble a market product analysis. It's an evaluation of what they think they can get away with copying. It's very definately a smoking gun.
- esolyt 14y agoBasically Samsung is comparing their product with a strong competitor's product and emphasizes its shortcomings. I wouldn't call this a document showing they copied iPhone.
- cmelbye 14y agoDid you miss the part where below every shortcoming they issued a directive to change their product to be more like the iPhone? This isn't merely a comparison.
- gjm11 14y ago1. Product explodes when red button is pressed. FooCorp's products do not explode. Suggested improvement: fix our product so it doesn't explode. 2. This menu is really confusing because it has lots of entries in an arbitrary order. FooCorp's product has simpler, better structured menus. Suggested improvement: rationalize and simplify menu structure. 3. This dialog box is full of ugly scaled-up bitmap graphics. The corresponding thing in FooCorp's product does not. Suggested improvement: either provide carefully created bitmaps of the right size, or use vector graphics that scale nicely. O NOES THEY COPIED FOOCORP AT EVERY POINT THE LOUSY PIRATES Nonsense, right? But most of Samsung's document is like this. They've gone through their product and their leading competitor's, looking for places where the competitor provides a better user experience, and suggested ways to make their product better. Often that amounts to "do the same as the iPhone" because what happened is that they did something silly and Apple didn't. Which, sure, is good for Apple and bad for Samsung, but it's got nothing to do with patent infringement. (And perhaps what they actually ended up doing really was just copying the iPhone everywhere. But this document doesn't say "copy the iPhone everywhere". It mostly says "here are lots of places where we did a bad job and Apple did a better one; learn from them", and there is nothing wrong with that.)
- andybak 14y agoIt must be noted that many of the recommendations were NOT followed. (I owned an S1 and an S2)
- CamperBob2 14y agoAnybody got a downloadable .PDF link? Scribd can get bent.
- damncabbage 14y agoThere's a "Download" button at the bottom of the screen. No account needed; just click it and it downloads the PDF.
- CamperBob2 14y agoHmm. Thanks -- the link in the article looks very different now. Yesterday, the document had various ads inserted in it, and was framed by "Download" links and various other buttons that demanded a Facebook or Twitter login. I'm not seeing any of that now, just the button you mentioned, which works.
- olalonde 14y agoTwo things I'm wondering about: - The document states it is highly confidential. Was it leaked? Otherwise, why does it state it is confidential? - Samsung is a Korean company. Why is their internal document written in English rather than Korean? Is it common for multinationals to operate in English despite their country of origin?
- tvdw 14y ago- The judge required the documents to be released - It is a translated document
- Happer 14y ago- I'm not familiar with American law, but I presume the document has the status confidential, until it is allowed as evidence by the court. - read page 133. It shows a signed Certificate of Translation.
- redcap 14y agoBear in mind that the term "confidential" only applies inside the company - that company needs to ensure its security is good enough. However, when it comes to a court case you have document discovery and I presume this "confidential" document turned up. The judge gets to decide whether it can be used as evidence, and I presume the only thing he or she considers is whether it is relevant to the case - the "confidential" part is irrelevant.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- saddino 14y agoWe could save ourselves a lot of back-and-forth commenting by understanding that it doesn't matter whether this (or any) document on its own is damning or a smoking-gun. What matters is the totality of the evidence. That's what the Jury will consider. Saying "this just looks like a competitiveness analysis" is missing the overarching point. And the same will hold true for evidence introduced by Samsung.
- ericcholis 14y agoAnybody else bothered by the constant use of i-Phone rather than the actual branded name, iPhone?
- kenster07 14y agoI don't believe the UI was copied, but that is not the relevant issue. The LOOK OF AN ICON is not worthy of a patent. This sort of UI is not worthy of a patent. So, case dismissed, imo.