There are many companies embattled in a quest to gain the largest market share in both the tablet and smartphone markets, and the recent court cases between Apple and Samsung has offered us a strong indication as to the inner workings of the firms locked in the fight for supremacy. Internal documents have been leaked to the San Jose case revealing much about the practices of both companies, while some of the big cheeses of both electronic outfits have leapt from obscurity to make their feelings known.
Last week, some internal documents of Samsung’s showed how the Korean company allegedly placed images of the iPhone side-by-side with its own devices, scrutinizing every detail of the Cupertino creation in order to achieve what Apple had already managed. Apple calls such behavior plagiarism, and with so many Samsung products – particularly those of the Galaxy variety – looking incredibly similar to the iPhone and iPad, Tim Cook’s company is seeking around $2.5 billion in damages.
Samsung has had quite a bit of success in the smartphone stakes, and is currently the market leader having wrestled the place away from its bitter rival earlier this year, but in terms of tablet sales, it’s common knowledge that the iPad has, through three iterations, remained largely unchallenged by the few dozen other (mainly Android) slates on the market.
Despite most of the world seeing the iPad as the only significant device in the tablet market – at least prior to the Nexus 7 – Samsung saw its Galaxy Tab as a real player, and even once claimed shipments were in the millions. Whether that was true or not, the popularity of its Galaxy Tab devices has fallen so much, that in the last quarter, only 37,000 units were shifted Stateside.
Sales figures are usually a well kept secret between companies of this magnitude, but the court proceedings have forced them to be used as evidence, and although the meager sum total would be embarrassing enough by itself, there is also a huge discrepancy between the figures the IDC collated. The market intel firm estimated around 2.4 million Galaxy Tabs were sold worldwide in the three months up to July 2012, so if Samsung did only manage to shift 37,000 in the US, that would mean 98.5% have been sold throughout the rest of the world – despite America being one of the largest consumer markets worldwide.
According to AppleInsider, over 67% (or 25,000) of the 37,000 were older, end-of-line models sold for an average price of $360, while the internals also showed 6,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE units sold for an average $545.
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