On Friday, August 25th, the jury for the largest patent trial in U.S history released its verdict that Samsung owed Apple over one billion dollars for patent violations. Apple is now looking to get eight of Samsung’s phones barred from sale in the United States for their similarities to the iPhone. Chitika Insights decided to examine the impact such a ban would have on Samsung and Apple.
— Regardless of result, Apple’s Injunction Request Unlikely to Impact Market —
On Friday, August 25th, the jury for the largest patent trial in U.S history released its verdict that Samsung owed Apple over one billion dollars for patent violations. The ruling identified a variety of Samsung’s phone and tablets as infringing products. Some of the patents that Samsung violated include the scroll bar bounce back, and way to easily scroll and zoom. The company was also cited in the verdict for the similar look of some of Samsung’s phones compared to iPhones, called “trade dress.”
Apple is now looking to get eight of Samsung’s phones barred from sale in the United States for their similarities to the iPhone. The contested phones include the Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S II AT&T, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy S II T-Mobile, Galaxy S II Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge, and Galaxy Prevail. All of these phones are among Samsung’s older models. Chitika Insights decided to examine the impact such a ban would have on Samsung and Apple.
For this study, the Insights team analyzed a sample of hundreds of millions of online impressions from our ad network between August 18th and August 24th, 2012, giving us a representative picture of the Internet in the United States as a whole. Impressions of the eight Samsung phones and the iPhone were then used for the below graph. The results displayed are a weekly average of each phone’s Web share amongst all the phones included in the study.
Even when all the contested phones are combined, iPhone users generate nearly eight times the Web traffic. Additionally, with none of these phones being recent releases, it is unlikely that such a ban, or a lack thereof, would have a significant effect on Samsung or Apple market share or momentum. Samsung is close to, or has already, released several new, non-patent infringing flagship phones, and the upcoming release of the iPhone 5 will excite both new and old Apple customers, along with push the price of older models slightly lower.
We’ve included an additional breakdown of the potential impact of this ban in the graphic below:
