Whether you're on Android or iOS, you can't help but admit that the first iPhone, released in 2007, laid the foundation for the modern smartphone. Apple's phone was the first to popularize touchscreens, and the company was also the first to open an app store. Other vendors quickly followed suit, and one of them has managed to surpass Apple in smartphone sales: Samsung.
This, as you can imagine, didn't sit well with the company's top executives. Perhaps in an attempt to downplay Samsung's success, an Apple executive says that the South Korean giant's phones were just bad copies of the iPhone.
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The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern today shared a new documentary about the evolution of the iPhone ahead of the 15th anniversary of the device's launch on June 29, 2007. The documentary includes an interview with Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak and iPhone co-creator Tony Fadell.
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One part of the interview reflects that Android smartphones were getting bigger screens years before the iPhone. When asked about how important a role Samsung and other Android smartphone makers played to Apple at the time, Joswiak admitted that they were "annoying" and accused them of poorly copying Apple's technology.
"They were annoying," Joswiak said. "And they were annoying because, you know, they stole our technology. They took the innovations that we had created and they created a bad copy of it, and they just put a bigger screen around it. So yeah, we weren't happy."
Samsung introduced the 5-inch Galaxy S4 in early 2013, at a time when the iPhone 5 had a 4-inch display. Apple eventually released its first larger smartphones with the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, and the devices were among the best - selling iPhone models ever .
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Apple sued Samsung in 2011 for patent infringement, claiming that Samsung copied the iPhone design with its own Galaxy smartphone line. Apple was initially awarded about $1 billion in damages, but the amount was reduced in a subsequent retrial. In 2018, Apple finally settled with Samsung and issued the following statement:
We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers. This has always been about more than money. Apple sparked the smartphone revolution with the iPhone, and it's a fact that Samsung has blatantly copied our design. It's important that we continue to protect the hard work and innovation of so many people at Apple.
We are grateful to the court and are pleased that it agrees that Samsung must pay for copying our products.
The full documentary can be watched on the Wall Street Journal website and provides an interesting look at the history of the iPhone
Source of information: macrumors.com
