From Jay's piece:
For the past few years, Samsung has done a fantastic job evolving and adapting – seeing what’s popular and going with that flow. There are plenty of lessons that all manufacturers could learn, especially Nokia. Being swift to adapt. Failure to adapt, failure to thrive.
The introduction of the iPhone saw Samsung’s best move yet, to reproduce the iPhone itself with SGS, SGSII and Ace. Essentially the ‘poor man’s iPhone’. Why not? People were interested in iPhone and Samsung offered consumers a chance to own one that was less expensive, and perhaps did a few extra things the original didn’t. They’d still have the look and feel of the iPhone – an important criteria for people to pay attention to their products.
Samsung’s adaptations were perhaps too quick, and too similar. Instead of taking the longer route with their own design, they took something that was already popular, cloned it and put their name on it. Well pretty much. It kinda felt like they were cheating and getting away with it. It was especially odd since Samsung could definitely make nice looking phones on their own. But it wasn’t about that. It was about getting popular ASAP.
Today, Apple have been awarded over 1 billion dollars ($1,051,855,000) in damages for the Samsung vs Apple drama, which it seems sides with Apple’s claims. Earlier this week we heard how Apple used [a] Nokia [Lumia] to showcase the possibility of producing phone designs that were not iPhoney to the detriment of Samsung.
What’s the significance for Nokia in all of this? Perhaps even more recognition for Nokia designs and designers, the ones who strived to recapture praises from the media for the sleek N9/Lumia?
Harder time for Android (though I don’t quite see them being TOO affected by this)? Some outlets have mentioned a possible ban on Samsung products, which would go very well for Apple but also Nokia. Whilst Nokia was shaken up by iPhone, they could have weathered it with their own strategic responses were it not for the unanticipated march of Sammy Droids.
Perhaps more attention for Windows Phone?
Indeed. Turbulent times in the smartphone world. From Nokia's perspective, maybe the changes in Android which will be introduced as a result of all this might divert some attention towards its choice of the very iPhone-unlike Windows Phone platform. Might. Windows Phone itself is, like Nokia generally, itself undergoing the troubled transition from WP7 to WP8, along with uncertainty over app compatibility and a lack of upgrade path for existing hardware. It's certainly all change on every front....
Nokia and Apple struck out their own (past and future) cross-licensing deal a while back, of course, with things like Apple's UI patents taken into account but with Nokia coming out the big overall winner, thanks to its larger and more longstanding patent portfolio. So there should be no similar surprises coming on a legal front for any of the devices covered on the 'All About' sites, but today's news is certainly of interest.
Whether the news is just a blip in Android's road to world domination or a definitive turning point in the Apple-Google war remains to be seen.